The nature of information dissemination is changing rapidly and India is not immune to these sweeping changes. Traditional analyses of information consumption, which focus on the medium, often overlook the profound shifts in human psychology, driven by the rise of social media. This shift has led to instant gratification becoming the norm, impacting political narratives, with the potential to alter election outcomes. In India, growing social media use in the vernacular languages, combined with a largely unregulated digital space and a highly competitive, polarised political environment, necessitates vigilance to manage disruptive misinformation.
‘Going viral’ as objective
Recent studies such as “Accelerating Dynamics of Collective Attention” which was published in Nature, highlight a dramatic decline in human attention spans — from 2.5 minutes two decades ago to just 45 seconds today. This decline is mirrored in the popularity of concise social media content, i.e., short videos of less than a minute and ‘articles’ that span less than 200 characters. Short and snappy content is easier to produce. The focus is on the potential of the content to go viral rather than the content itself. Such content, which is much easier to produce and designed for ‘viral spread’ rather than depth, enables previously obscure figures to become influential by catering to short attention spans. Social media algorithms exacerbate this by promoting viral content, which often drowns out more substantial, factual narratives. Thus, it is entirely possible that factually unsound content travels around the world several times faster before rebuttals can even be thought of.
