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How WhatsApp ‘Truths’ Thrive on Middle-ClassAnxietiesSOHINI SENGUPTA

Sohini Sengupta (sohini.sengupta@tiss.edu) teaches at the School of Social Work, TataInstitute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.Vol. 54, Issue No. 37, 14 Sep, 2019

Security and responsibility are persistent themes in the ‘junk’ information that spreadsrapidly on middle class WhatsApp groups with large memberships. The ‘affordances’ ofsocial media enables ‘emotional targetting’ of messages that claim to be about ‘true’incidents.

As schools reopen after vacation in monsoon-drenched Mumbai, middle-class mums, armedwith smart phones, deep dive into demands of competitive education. School groups on themessaging platform WhatsApp buzz with class notes, work sheets, test questions, directionsto uniform shops, rate-charts for tuition, and children’s achievements. Ever so often, therhythm of this industrious hive is broken by messages with dire warnings: toxic food,contaminated packaged juice, terrorists, drugs in the play ground, surveillance byauthorities, loitering strangers, fake police, false gas meter men, corrupt, sold-out press,political parties sympathetic to enemy countries, military police drills in the city, and sundryother threatening “forwards.”

In a relatively free week in July, a message forwarded in a school group with 257participants described a child’s death. The bi-lingual message (in Marathi and English) wasaccompanied by a garlanded image of a boy captioned “heartfelt condolences.” The cause ofdeath for the 10-year-old boy was a “heart attack” that was induced by the pressures of

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school, and parents. The message entreated mothers to not rush their sleepy and hungrychildren into inhuman routines. The first question asked by harried school mums, tornbetween duty and guilt was whether the post was “authentic,” to which the only responsethey received was that it was a valuable idea, regardless of whether or not it was true. Oneof the mums posted the report of a similar sounding incident from a news website, notnoticing that it was from two years ago and had different details. The message had churnedthe otherwise self-assured group into a boil of anxiety. Mothering roles, and performancesare significant for middle-class Indian women shaped by a “pro-natalist culture” (Nandy2017, Reissman 2000:113, Donner 2006). Failing to live up to good-mothering standards is apermanent preoccupation.

Philip Glassner (2015) argues that scary stories are most effective in obtaining a responsefrom people because they evoke a visceral reaction, and create a wish to take action to

protect oneself, and one’s community. [1] The perceived existential threats that led to aseries of violent incidents in India between 2017 and 2019, have been attributed to false

stories spread on WhatsApp.[2] Created in 2009, WhatsApp, the messaging platform owned

by Facebook, has an estimated 1.5 billion users.[3] In 2017, 200 million users were from

India. According to some estimates, this number has doubled.[4] The rise in usage has beenexplained by cheaper smart phones and cheap data. Its end-to-end encryption allowssenders and receivers to view media and read messages that are stored at the device level.

A brilliant and affordable social communication platform-used by just about everyone,WhatsApp has gathered an unseemly reputation: spread of misinformation (see Ingram

2018)[5], inciting mob-violence and influencing elections.[6] A recent study found thatideologically extreme, and factually incorrect information proliferated during critical public

moments.[7] A 2018 study has concluded that Twitter users preferred sharing falsehoods due

to novelty, curiosity, prestige and other reasons.[8] The 21st century post-truth world ischaracterised by competing convictions, and elite manipulation of ‘truth markets’ through“emotional message targeting” (Harsin 2018).

This article examines the spread of rumours and misinformation on WhatsApp groups inMumbai. It will discuss how security, and responsibility are constant themes in the ‘junk’information on WhatsApp school groups. The article argues that the “affordances” of socialmedia, speed, replicability and affordability (Boyd 2011) enables “emotional targeting” ofmessages that claim to be “truthful” or significant. Besides instrumental aims (sellingproducts, or influencing voting), these messages achieve the insidious purpose of blurringthe line between fact and falsehood in ways that erodes trust in formal institutions. Basedon the analysis of selected WhatsApp stories, this article demonstrates that the promise ofweb 2.0 as progressive, transformative and democratic appears to have been captured bypost-truth “viral content” that promote anxiety, insecurity and xenophobia.

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People tend to believe in stories that support their pre-existing beliefs. Their “known fearsand hopes” are used to spread rumours through networks where it will thrive (Sunstein2010). This is reminiscent of Jacques Ellul’s argument (1973:56) that propaganda is nothingmore than “cleverly presented truth” that “lingers in collective consciousness.” Rumourshelp people in attributing responsibility for misfortunes, produce judgements, and createconsensual “truths” (Stewart and Strathern 2004:Loc2293). These insights from rumourscholarship highlight the subversive potential of misinformation flowing through

WhatsApp.[9]

Two recent stories that circulated as message-forwards will be discussed in this article.Based on Wardle’s (2016), typology of “fake news” the WhatsApp stories described in thisarticle are, "fake information" and "manipulated content." These stories can also bedescribed as “dread” rumours (Sunstein 2010). Other relevant terms that will be used aremisinformation and disinformation. Following Ross and Rivers (2018), misinformation refersto the “inadvertent sharing of false information,” and disinformation constitutes “malicious,purposeful creation and dissemination of untrue information.”

An Attempted KidnappingA message posted on a school group on 8 August 2019, came with the title, “scary incident,”naming a neighbourhood familiar to the school group. It asked people to be “aware andcareful” and to “spread the word” after listening carefully to the “audio clip” thataccompanied the message. In the audio-clip, a youthful woman’s voice speaks in Hindi and

English in an even tone, as follows [10] :

‘I was standing there to pick up Liana, when a van came. There were two‘ladies’ and one driver in the van. They had festoons, balloons and caps:‘decoration items’ that you need for birthday parties. They asked me theaddress of a school and they showed me a paper as well. I didn’t see the paperbecause I knew the address they were asking for. I started guiding them, "youknow you have to go straight and take the fourth left." Before I complete mysentence, one lady pulled me inside. She held my hand and she just pulled meinside. Then the other lady jumped out and started pushing me from the back.And the one who was pushing me, I hit her hard twice with my elbow….The onewho was pulling me inside, I bit her. When I bit her, she just left me….I startedstruggling with the lady, who was pushing me. Then I scratched her…And sheleft me I don’t know what happened to her. Maybe she saw, that I had escapedfrom the hands of the other one, so she alone won’t be able to manage. She justleft me. I fell down on the road. And these people left with the van…..I was in ablank situation. I didn’t want my daughter to come to know about it. Within 2-3minutes, I saw the bus. It was very isolated. Though our area, near Bablusandwich, ‘you all must be knowing’…I live in the lane in front of ‘Bablu

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Sandwich’. And it is not that isolated. But ya, day before yesterday, comparedto other days, it was isolated, it was also raining, there was no-body out there.Unfortunately Bablu Sandwich was closed. There is a medical there and adoctor’s dispensary. Everything was closed, noon-time…that day it was verylonely. So anyways, by the grace of god I am fine. And I have a little musclepull, am a little hurt…..But I am safe now. And everybody please take care. Ifyou keep talking on your phone when you are standing at the stop, I don’tknow how you can take care of yourself but it’s a request. Don’t tell anybodyaddress! Let people go to hell. Pretend you are deaf and dumb, literally!

(Transcribed and translated from Audio Clip forwarded on a WhatsApp schoolgroup on 08 August 2019)

In general, non-school related messages receive little response from the busy mums. Theabove message created a brief online flutter. A few rapid messages were exchanged, askingwhere this incident had taken place. It is not clear why the first sender assumed that theincident had taken place in her neighbourhood, and stated this in the message. There wasmuch speculation about the location of the Bablu Sandwich shop, that became BabuSandwich shop after a few exchanges. Some mums speculated about “Love Lane.” Oneparent suggested that they knew about a “Babu/Bablu Sandwich” and a “Lovelane” inByculla, in South Mumbai. These conversations were attempts to establish the authenticityor relevance of the message. A group member said that the message had come to her fromher mother who lived in Malad, West Mumbai. Some messages were punctuated withgrinning emojis.

Some school mums became less hassled as they realised it was not in their neighbourhood.Others tried to establish authenticity since it came from other groups of trust, such asfamily. Based on my offline conversations with school mums, an important metric of trust tofilter out the “rubbish” one receives on social media, was the origin of messages. If aforward came in a family group, then it had a better chance of getting attention, and beingcirculated. Observers have described this as a “close network of peers.” But how difficult oreasy is it for non-experts to track the source or the authenticity of incidents described insuch messages?

Unlike text messages, audio and video clips are particularly hard to trace online. Using asimple Google search based on key words in the message took me to a housing societyconversation on Facebook from Western Mumbai, dated 6 August 2019, that had received

the same audio-clip and message.[11] The conversation, here on a public-Facebook pagefollowed similar themes. Some members were scared. Most initially tried to locate the placewhere the incident had taken place, thereby indicting many sandwich shops named Babu orBablu in various Mumbai suburbs. Eventually a member of the group posted a messagesaying that there was no Bablu sandwich shop in their area and no such incident could have

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taken place there. People were requested to “not spread panic in the society.” This messagereceived 127 angry, 17 funny and 50 likes in Facebook reaction terms. 56 membersresponded with their own comments.

During this Facebook exchange, I found that someone had posted a screen-shot of anewspaper article as evidence that the audio clip was a viral hoax. The news article in Hindi,described how a young woman, who was an aspiring actor, in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, hadbeen arrested for spreading rumours about her own abduction by circulating a “fake” audioclip. While most members were relieved that the message was a “viral hoax”, some (like inthe school group) wrote that irrespective of the “truth,” it conveyed a warning that shouldbe taken seriously since such incidents were common, and people should stay “safe, vigilantand alert”. Many were relieved, since the message had scared them. A few disregarded thenews article, and continued to speculate about the location of the incident.

The news article referred above was published in Dainik Bhaskar on 3 August 2019.[12] Thetitle of the article was, “A case registered by Indore police on the person accused ofspreading rumours about her own abduction on WhatsApp” (translated from Hindi). Childabduction is the subject of the most common rumours on WhatsApp, and other social mediaplatforms, directly attributed to mob violence towards suspected perpetrators leading to

several deaths.[13] Traditional news media and fact checking websites have reportedextensively on this phenomenon. Some details, about how this particular story had spread,is provided in the article, including the location of the much-discussed ‘Bablu Sandwich.’The article states that the arrested woman had created the “viral audio” and posted it first,in a school WhatsApp group that she was a part of. The police took note of the “viral audio,”and began an investigation that included checking the CCTV footage in the area. They wereunable to find proof of this event either from the footage, or from witnesses in the area. Onbeing questioned by the police, the author of the message had admitted that she had madethe audio and posted it on the WhatsApp group as a joke. The irate Indore police hadrequested people to verify the authenticity of information before spreading it.

What is interesting, for the purpose of this article, is that the described WhatsApp hoax wasspread at a time when the Madhya Pradesh administration was dealing with severalincidents of violence based on WhatsApp-child-abduction rumours. In July 2019, two womensuspected of child abduction were beaten to death by angry mobs in MP. The abductionstory described above relates to a completely false incident, but it is a story that somenetworks are ready to believe. It is not only that rumours work effectively throughsuggestions, and thrive on prevalent fears, but also on how social media platforms aid thecirculation of sensational claims, that are shared more eagerly than corrected information.It requires effort and motivation to convince others in a shared network about the truth orfalsehood of a piece of information.

While such “viral hoax” type stories have a short life span, they are quickly succeeded by

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similar stories. What is most alarming about this story is how it was created in an

environment that was already vitiated by violence.[14] The story drew upon this fear-filledculture, to be believed, and thus to thrive and also contribute towards maintaining andamplifying this narrative across many networks, neighbourhood, cities. Kidnapping storiesabout gangs run by women, may threaten any woman whose appearance is deemed strangeor who is seen with a child or near schools, bus stops, or parks.

Three weeks from the viral hoax audio (on 25 August 2019), a series of images wereforwarded on the same school WhatsApp group. One showed a dishevelled and upsetmiddle-aged woman, with another woman holding a uniformed child’s hand in thebackground. A second image showed the open boot of a van, inside which sat three smallchildren. The third showed a police van in the background, and the same woman inforeground (her image was circled). The text in the forwarded message tied the images (inMarathi) as follows: the woman had been found acting suspiciously near a known suburbanschool (Sahkar Vidya Prasarak Mandal - Sahyadri) in Greater Mumbai, a group of womenhad caught her, and found suspicious things in her bag like “a spray, chocolates and biscuitpacket.” The message speculated that maybe she was part of a “team of child abductors.” It

ends with the missive: “Take care of your children yourself.” [15] No one refuted this story.There was nothing related to the named school or the suburb in news media.

How to Protect Yourself in Case of Fire On May 25, 2019, a message circulated in a housing society is WhatsApp group with theheading “Public Message” that ended with the missive: “Save life by sharing this post.” Thetext of the message was as follows:

‘Many years ago there was a big fire at a five –star hotel (J P Hotel) in upscaleVasant Vihar. So many people died. But the Japanese and the American guestsat the hotel survived. Why? Because they put wet towels under their doors sothat no smoke enters their rooms. They put wet handkerchiefs on their facesand lay on the floor, as the smoke moved up. Most deaths are caused by smokeinhalation, not fire. Most Indians in the building jumped out of their windowsand many died. The critical difference has to do with training. General publicshould be made aware of what to do and how to behave in case of fire. Be alert,be vigilant. Do share with family and friends.’ (WhatsApp message on 25 May2019)

While the first story described in the previous section refers to a recent personalexperience, this message based its argument on an incident that had taken place at anindeterminate time, at a location (Vasant Vihar) that could be in any city in India. Beyond,these factual ambiguities, one of the most interesting things about the message was its

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timing.

On May 24, 2019, a major fire at a coaching centre in the city of Surat, Gujarat, had led tothe death of 20 people. Among those who had died in the fire were children aged between14 and 17. According to several news media sites: “Videos posted by witnesses on socialmedia showed several students jumping out of windows on the top floor of the four-storey

building to escape the blaze.”[16] Sixteen people died from burns, and three from injuries asthey jumped out of the window. A preliminary investigation found poor-quality roofing

material, and the absence of a functional fire escape.[17] Outraged citizens had taken tosocial media, posting disturbing videos of children jumping to death from the burningbuilding. On Twitter, angry people directed questions at the Chief Minister about a range offailures from fire safety, illegal construction, permissions for building constructions. Theydemanded that the responsible, corrupt officials and building owners be held guilty, and

legal action be taken against them.[18]

Children going to coaching classes are an integral part of daily lives of urban middle-classhouseholds. Their level of identification with such incidents, and the consequent emotionalreaction would be high. The WhatsApp forward about “the fire story” from “many years ago”provided an alternative interpretation of responsibility in case of fires that shiftedaccountability towards the affected individuals. Based on the story, it can be believed thatthe individuals who succumb to hazards may have contributed to their own vulnerability bynot acting appropriately.

A disturbing image that connected the Surat fire with the WhatsApp hotel-fire story was thatof “people jumping out of windows.” It is dangerous to suggest that wet towels and apresence of mind can replace safety protocols, building codes, risk reduction measures andaccountability failures. The WhatsApp story also makes an emotional connection bysuggesting a cultural (and perhaps a racial) superiority of the American and Japanesesurvivors against the Indian victims, which evokes familiar themes of civilizationalcompetitiveness. How did the Americans survive, and why did the Indians die? A long-standing middle class preoccupation has been how the well-ordered West cannot bereplicated in Indian cities.

Did the WhatsApp forward refer to an incident that had really taken place? Searching forthe source of the message, led to some disturbing connections. A post with the same contentas the 25 May WhatsApp-hotel-fire story was shared on Facebook on December 31, 2017.[19] What could have motivated the 2017 Facebook post? On 29 December 2017, a fire at a

roof top restaurant in Mumbai, the “Kamala Mills fire” led to the death of 14 people.[20] TheFacebook message appears in an article on an online news site: “Its not just Mumbai, most

of New Delhi’s urban chic places are deadly fire-traps.” [21]

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On January 2, 2018, a popular Indian writer posted the same content (as a 2017 post andthe 2019 WhatsApp story) on Facebook under #KamalaMills #Fire. The message received

28 approving comments and 396 shares.[22] This message was posted on January 2, 2018, aday after the owners of the Kamala Mills restaurant were arrested for culpable homicideand the municipal authority took steps to demolish illegal constructions operating as

restaurants, pubs and food joints.[23] Clearly, the hotel-fire story is a social media staple thatappears periodically with the intent to shape public opinion following terrible fire events.

A dogged search for the "incident" referred to in the WhatsApp story led to an interestingfind. The closest match was a 1986 fire disaster at the Sidharth Continental Hotel, in Vasant

Vihar, Delhi, in which 37 people had lost their lives.[24] Twenty three of the 37, who died in

the fire, were foreign tourists and the incident received international media coverage.[25] Among the casualties were nationals from Britain, Japan, USA, Iraq, West Germany,

Argentina and the Soviet Union.[26] Survivors later claimed that the hotel lacked emergency

evacuation facilities.[27] A Delhi Court acquitted the senior management officials who had

been charged with criminal negligence for lack of evidence in 2005. [28] Another fire disastertook place in 2008, when a fire broke out at the Grand Hotel in Vasant Kunj, Delhi. In this

case all 225 guests had been safely evacuated.[29]

It would be impossible to establish that the WhatsApp story was based on either of the twoincidents described above. The hotel-fire story is simply "manipulated" content, with amisleading title "public message," whose purpose and motivations are suspicious because ofthe time at which it is being shared. The point of citing the Delhi incidents above is to,firstly, highlight the difficulty of proving or disapproving some types of content that claim tobe true. Secondly, provide a contrast between the tone and emphases of the real-life fireincidents (1986-Delhi and 2019-Surat) as reported in traditional news, and theinterpretations offered by WhatsApp stories. Drawing insight from reflections about 21stcentury "post-truth," what is taking place here is the use of social media for “strategicattention and emotion management” in a context characterised by crumbling trust in publictruth claims and authority (Harsin 2018).

Combating MisinformationDrawing insight from two groups of scholarship, the anthropology of rumour and newmedia, this article analyses two recent stories on middle class WhatsApp groups (school-mums and housing societies) in Mumbai. The article finds that, WhatsApp rumours andgossip enable a “projection of guilt” without any need for accuracy or verifiability (seeStewart and Strathern 2004). However, for these stories to have extreme consequences,such as mob violence, they would require an encouraging ideological environment. Fearful

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contexts activate rumours, and ambiguous stories that would otherwise remain in theshadows of ambiguity become evidence to justify violent (retributive) action. In the abovecase, the abduction-hoax-audio, and the fire-disaster-spin, both found an audience amonggroups that would be naturally concerned about such issues, but their susceptibility to suchmessages would be heightened in the immediate aftermath of real crisis. The effect of aconstant flood of such stories, artfully placed, would be to maintain a permanent state of‘liquid fear’ that ‘haunts us for no visible rhyme or reason’ (Bauman 2006).

Social media platforms like WhatsApp have been blamed for unleashing the “dark forces” ofthe Internet. WhatsApp itself has avoided accepting total responsibility and particularlyresisted demands for creating “traceability of messages” by compromising its end-to-endencryption. A powerful, convenient and affordable medium for information exchange that isused by millions for exchanging legitimate information; school homework, governmentdepartmental functions, social events, business, gets transformed. As peers engage inWhatsApp communication, reasonably secure in the knowledge of each other, throughonline and offline interactions, they form a “filter bubble” (Pariser 2011) that receive,believe and lend legitimacy to misinformation and disinformation. A possible technologicalsolution to check the rapid spread of misinformation could be for WhatsApp to reduce theease with which information can be sent to hundreds of people in an instant. Maybe it istime for WhatsApp to try a pilot that disallows forwarding any content from one person to agroup.

End Notes:

[1] See https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/12/15/are-americans-fears-leg...

[2] See https://www.wired.com/story/how-whatsapp-fuels-fake-news-and-violence-in...

[3] Constine, J. 2018. Facebook survives Q4 despite slowest daily user growth ever.https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/31/facebook-q4-2017-earnings/?_ga=2.24276...

[4] See https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/technology/whatsapp-now-has-1-...

[5] See https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/india-whatsapp.php

[6] See for instance, the detailed report on mob violence based on child abduction rumoursin the July 2018 Indian Express,https://indianexpress.com/article/india/murderous-mob-lynching-incidents-in-india-dhule-whatsapp-rumour-5247741/. A more recent report, A September, 2019 report in IndianExpress, https://indianexpress.com/article/india/murderous-mob-lynching-incidents...

[7] See https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/93/2019/05/EU-Data...

[8] See https://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146/tab-article-info

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[9] Note on Methodology: Data for this article is based on information shared by friends,colleagues, family members and those received by the author, as well as conversation withmembers of school groups.

[10] Note on transcription: The transcribed part in English is in italics, Hindi sentences havebeen translated by the author

[11] The link of the public group where the discussion took placehttps://www.facebook.com/groups/10007059830/permalink/10157357109934831/

[12] See https://www.bhaskar.com/mp/indore/news/mp-news-case-against-a-woman-who-...

[13] See Chaudhury, P. 2019. False Rumours of Child Kidnapping Gangs viral on SocialMedia: A compilation. https://www.altnews.in/false-rumours-of-child-kidnapping-gangs-viral-on-...

[14] Mob violence based on child abduction rumours peaked in July 2018, reported bynumerous newspapers and reappeared in July-August 2019. The incidents resemble ‘copycatcrimes’: based on ‘live model or media content concerning a prior crime (Surette 2017).’https://oxfordre.com/criminology/view/

[15] This message and the images were also found inhttps://www.facebook.com/pg/nitusarts/posts/, posted on 22.08.19

[16] See https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/huge-fire-at-multi-storey-building-in-su...

[17] See https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/huge-fire-at-multi-storey-building-in-su...

[18] See https://twitter.com/vijayrupanibjp/status/1131905435001163778?ref_src=tw...

[19] https://www.facebook.com/DADARPRABHADEVI/posts/many-years-ago-there-was-...

[20] See https://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/29/asia/mumbai-fire-restaurant/index.html

[21] See https://theprint.in/opinion/culture-chalta-hai-creates-fire-traps-cities...

[22] See https://www.facebook.com/iamchetanbhagat/posts/kamlamills-firemany-years...

[23} See https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/kamala-mil...

[24] See https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/indiascope/story/19860215-fire-disast...

[25] See https://www.nytimes.com/1986/01/23/world/34-killed-in-hotel-fire-in-indi...

[26] See https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-01-23-mn-28085-story.html

[27] See https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-01-23-mn-28085-story.html

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[28] See https://www.outlookindia.com/newswire/story/accused-in-five-star-hotel-f...

[29] See https://www.hindustantimes.com/delhi-news/fire-breaks-out-at-the-grand/s...

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Wardle, Claire, (2016): 6 Types of misinformation circulated this election season.https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/6_types_election_fake_news.php

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