Mumbai, India – On one channel, a male journalist accused an Indian Muslim man of being sympathetic to Palestinians and asked, “When Hindus suffered atrocities in Pakistan and Afghanistan, were you on their side?” .
On another channel, a journalist asked Muslims living in Ayodhya whether they were happy that a Ram temple was built on the site of a centuries-old mosque that was demolished by Hindu nationalist mobs. , he asked happily.
A female anchor on another channel said there is a conspiracy underway to turn India's southern state of Kerala into an Islamic State, and the center of the conspiracy is Wayanad, the constituency of opposition leader Rahul Gandhi. He said there was no evidence to support that claim. Allegation.
With more than 460 million users, India is YouTube's largest market, with four out of five Indian internet users consuming content from YouTube. More and more Indians are getting their news from YouTube.
However, what is offered doesn't always make the news. Some of India's most popular YouTube news channels are increasingly serving up small amounts of disinformation and Islamophobia, targeting their critics and opposition leaders while also targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his They often support the political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
It's a common phenomenon for partisan YouTube influencers to create political content that favors one side of the political divide, but what makes these channels unique is that they ostensibly present fact-based reportage and ” It claims to be a “News” channel.
From mocking and attacking Mr. Modi's political rivals to spreading conspiracy theories about Muslims seeking to harm Hindus, these channels can complement the Bharatiya Janata Party's own campaign efforts. many.
These channels, while less well-known than mainstream news channels, have millions of viewers and are important to how the world's largest democracy consumes news as India prepares for national elections. plays a major role in.
For example, NMF News, which ranks among the top 100 YouTube news and political channels in India, has over 18.2 million subscribers and over 8.1 billion views. With over 8.83 million subscribers, India Headlines has nearly 3 billion views. With 3.2 million subscribers, Rajdharma News has around 900 million views.
With such wide-ranging influence, there is growing concern about how such “news” outlets shape perceptions and opinions, especially during election season.
Research shows that Indians trust the news they watch on YouTube and WhatsApp more than news delivered by mainstream media, but many believe that YouTube plays a role in promoting disinformation. He warns that he is doing so. Already, the World Economic Forum's 2024 Global Risks Report concluded that the most serious risk facing India is the fallout from the spread of disinformation.
Most of these channels investigated for this article routinely promoted disinformation against Muslims, dissidents, and critics of Prime Minister Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party in the name of reporting “news.”
NMF News has denied such allegations of bias, according to bureau chief Pankaj Prasoon, but said the station is a “fast-growing” channel whose approach is “sometimes right-wing” but always “fact-based. “There is,” he claimed. NMF News from Jharkhand state in eastern India. Headline India and Rajdharma News did not respond to repeated requests for comment via published emails.
disinformation, propaganda
As election campaigning intensifies in India, so too does disinformation on these channels.
On March 13, NMF News published a three-minute report on its channel about the publicly funded Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, one of India's leading universities. JNU has been a target of the Modi government for its left-leaning student politics and is often referred to as an “anti-national” venue by many Modi supporters.
An NMF news report titled “No more sloganeering at anti-national strongholds in JNU” rehashes and repeats this political rhetoric. The magazine lamented that universities had become “centers of anti-national activities” over time, attributing the cause to the “rapid spread of left-wing ideology,” and went on to write “JNU I decided to screen a new movie titled “. Revelatory tagline: “Can one university of education destroy a nation?”
Another article is titled “Amit Shah's firm action horrifies Rahul'' and features thumbnail images of Modi aides and Home Minister Amit Shah, with Rahul Gandhi folding hands. . Yet another video mocks Gandhi's recent travels across the country to meet his supporters.
reduce the number of critics
Not just NMF. The study, conducted by Narrative Research Lab, a New Delhi-based data lab that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to track print media and social media content, found that NMF, Rajdharma, Headlines India, Shining India, Content across six Capital TV channels was analyzed. and O News Hindi – and we find that coverage of India’s opposition parties has gone quiet and its leaders are almost invisible. By contrast, Prime Minister Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party loomed large, and their coverage was nearly always glowing.
The lab analyzed 2,747 videos published by these channels from December 22, 2023 to March 22, 2024. The results showed that across all channels, some of the most frequently used words in titles were “Modi”, “. “Bharatiya Janata Party” and “Yogi” refer to Uttar Pradesh's hardline Bharatiya Janata Party chief minister Yogi Adityanath, but references to opposition parties and leaders are rarely used.
The institute's “sentiment analysis'' found that the word “Modi'' is commonly used throughout the videos, containing both negative and positive sentiments, while It was found that most references to sect figures appeared in negative phrases.
Sundeep Narwani, co-founder of Narrative Research Lab, said these channels serve a useful purpose as “vehicles” for negative targeting.
“These channels have become an easy way to target Mr. Modi's critics and opposition leaders,” Narwani said. “In many cases, political parties may not want to engage in such negative targeting, so such channels provide an easy means to do so.”
Neil Madhav, an independent journalist who co-authored an award-winning study on the functioning of these channels for the New Delhi-based magazine Caravan, says many of these channels are part of the Bharatiya Janata Party's social media messaging. “It's an essential part,” he said.
“Very often, the BJP social media handles videos posted from these channels,” he said. “Additionally, supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party are leveraging the party's social media apparatus to disseminate these videos among party cadres,” he said, thereby increasing the channel's reach and resulting He said that it contributes to generating revenue from clicks and views.
At least four of these channels (Rajdharma News, Headline India, Shining India and Capital TV) have been given access to interviews with Chief Minister Adityanath in the run-up to the 2022 Uttar Pradesh elections. Ta.
stir up Islamophobia
On a daily basis, these channels amplify Islamophobic sentiments and use anti-Muslim metaphors.
Days before Prime Minister Modi dedicated a temple to the Hindu god Ram in Ayodhya, built on the site of a centuries-old mosque destroyed by a Hindu nationalist mob in 1992, a reporter from Rajdharma News said: Interviews were conducted with Muslims near the site, asking leading questions.
“People say that Muslims are very happy with the construction of the temple and celebrate its consecration like Diwali. Really?” the reporter asked, referring to the popular Hindu festival.
In the early 1990s, a BJP-led movement to build a temple at the site resulted in nearly 2,500 deaths in violence (PDF). Still, reporters ask provocative questions to Muslims in the city. “Some Muslims say Ram is also their ancestor,” the reporter added. “Do you think Muslims will maintain peace on January 22nd?” he asked another, referring to the day of the temple's dedication.
In July last year, sectarian violence between Hindu and Muslim communities gripped parts of the northern state of Haryana. Another Rajdharma reporter, who was reporting on the riots, walked up to an elderly Muslim man and asked him if he was feeling unwell. When he answered in the affirmative, she lashed out teasingly. Did you work too hard on July 31st? ” Refers to the day of the collision.
“Let me tell you this: wherever Hindus are the majority and Muslims are the minority, we Hindus will do everything to make them happy.” [Muslims] “Feel like a king,” she continued. “Why are you blackmailing and intimidating Hindus? Why are you bothering them so much?” The video has been widely spread on social media platforms, with around 780,000 views on YouTube alone. obtained.
On March 13, NMF News published a video titled “Parts of the country where Hindu women are giving birth to Muslim children.” In it, anchor Namrata Chaudhary claimed that “Muslim infiltrators” were luring tribal women into marriages in eastern Jharkhand's Dumka region and then “occupying tribal lands”.
“There is also a lot of talk about love jihad…” she said, quoting a news report about a case in which a Muslim man in Jharkhand murdered his second wife following marital discord. “What is happening in Jharkhand?” she asks.
NMF bureau chief Prasoon claims in the video that Muslims have upended the region's demographics.
“In 2011, only 10 to 11 percent were Muslims, while 35 percent were tribal. By 2022, however, the roles have reversed, with Muslims now 35 percent and only 10, 11 percent tribal. %,” he said, repeating an unproven conspiracy theory that Muslims are plotting to outnumber Hindus in India.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Prasoon could not provide any basis for this claim that Muslims outnumber tribes. When pointed out that India has not conducted a census since 2011, Prasoon said that the 2022 data he provided was based on “estimates”, adding that such demographic changes are controversial. “It is possible,'' he said, citing a claim by Bharatiya Janata Party MP Nishikant Dubey, who has been stirring up controversy. Last December, Mr. Dubey blamed “illegal Bangladeshi immigrants” for causing this demographic shift in Jharkhand, without providing evidence for his claim.
In another video, Prasoon said ISIL (SIS) had established a “colonization” in the Wayanad region of India's southern state of Kerala, where “not even patriotic Muslims” were allowed to enter. Ta. Wayanad police refuted such claims and even booked another web portal for spreading such “misinformation” about the area.
Prasoon claimed in the video that up to 80% of Wayanad's population is Muslim and Christian, with a minority Hindu population, but government data shows 49.5% of the region's population is Hindu. This is despite the fact that 28% are Muslims.
In response to a question, Prasoon said NMF uses local news for reporting.
“I don't remember exactly that video, and I don't remember where I got those numbers from. They could have reported the latest population data from sources other than the census,” he said, adding that the source Although he did not mention it, he maintained that his channel's reporting was always true. “NMF stands for News Means Facts, so we always make sure to prove our claims with documentation,” he added.
Madhav, a journalist who has reported on these YouTube channels, said such content is being used by right-wing groups to reinforce and reiterate Hindu majoritarian agendas.
“These channels often feature stereotypical characters, such as Muslims who hate other Muslims but love Prime Minister Modi, or Muslim women who talk about atrocities against other Muslim women. A lot,” Madhav said.
The Narrative Research Lab analysis also found that the number of videos produced by these channels spiked during events like March 11, when the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act rules were announced. The rules facilitate the acquisition of Indian citizenship for Hindus, Parsis, Buddhists and Jains. Christians from neighboring Islamic countries are also accepted, but Muslims are excluded from the territory.
“The content trends observed here suggest that all channels have a similar viewer base and may be trying to impose and repeat a certain unified narrative on this issue,” the institute's Narwani said. It means that there is a gender.”
