Review: Forwarded as Received by Saadia Azim
On any given day, a hundred billion or 10,000 crore WhatsApp messages are sent and delivered throughout the world. That number, Sam Knight reported in a recent article in The New Yorker, roughly equals the number of stars in the Milky Way. WhatsApp’s origin is traced to 2009 when Californian computer programmer Jan Koum experimented with the idea of an app that showed what a caller’s contacts were doing before they were called or messaged. He toyed with alternate names such as Status app, Smartphone status and iPhone status before settling on WhatsApp. In 2014, WhatsApp was sold to Facebook. Today, roughly half of the world’s adult population, minus China, is using WhatsApp. India, of course, is WhatsApp’s largest user country-wise, with almost 90 crore Indians using it.
Forwarded as Received assiduously traces the process through which social media, which initially held out the promise of giving voice to the voiceless, turned into cacophony. (Shutterstock)494pp; ₹599; Simon & SchusterKoum, a native of Ukraine with memories of authoritarianism, was inspired by the ideals of freedom – from surveillance and advertising – and simplicity. Till recently, no ads ran on WhatsApp. End-to-end encryption means that only those for whom the message is sent can see it. There are no fees charged for its use, at least since 2016. Yet, as the platform grows in popularity and complexity, poison is seeping in. Today, it is the primary channel through which misinformation and fake news are purveyed and amplified. This is the subject of Saadia Azim’s erudite work, Forwarded as Received: How Misinformation Turns Viral, Violent and True. Unlike open platforms like Facebook or X, WhatsApp and Telegram are closed platforms. That closed nature engenders an intimate feel, making people less suspecting, and therefore more susceptible to deception.
The book covers not just WhatsApp, but the entire social media universe – Youtube, X, Telegram, Instagram, Facebook. The author, media researcher and journalist Sadia Azim, details the aftermath of social media gone berserk in India. Today, we have to reckon not just with misinformation – which is mistaken or misleading information but done with no ill intent – but also disinformation, which is a deliberate and calculated act of spreading falsehood with the aim to deceive. This often arrives in the form of a forwarded message from the neighbourhood WhatsApp uncle or a concerned auntie who genuinely believe they are helping. On the other hand, disinformation that aims to mislead and inflame is launched stealthily from well-organised bot or troll farms. The book lays bare just how unprepared and complacent we remain – institutionally and individually – as this digital storm tears our social fabric. Then, it suggests practical and commonsensical suggestions on how to put on guardrails before it is too late.
Of course, it is already too late for many people. Think of Mohammad Akhlaq, Raju Bhosale, Pehlu Khan and hundreds of others who were all victims of baseless WhatsApp-forwarded rumours. Most of us also became aware of these lynchings through – what else? – WhatsApp and social media. Our dependence on social media for news and information has accelerated since the Covid 19 pandemic when many newspapers stopped publishing their print editions. Since that time, for example, the town of Lamka in Manipur where I live, has not received any printed national-level newspapers. People are reluctant to buy even local vernacular newspapers, as they believe they have all the information they need on their phones.
The thing about newspapers, however, is that they present the whole spectrum of news, not just what the individual reader is interested in. Contrary to that, social media algorithms present to us only news that appeals to our emotions, that feed us what we like and click on. In time, our perspectives become narrower, our views more extreme and our language more coarse. We become increasingly susceptible to confirmation bias, paranoia and fake news tailored to confirm our prejudices. The result shows up in the form of irrational hatred of others, a siege mentality, riots and lynchings and the general poisoning of the public square.
Disinformation campaigns – unanimous forwards and posts of manipulated audio clips, texts and deep-faked visuals and videos – don’t necessary aim to win arguments. They rather aim to spark our primal emotions of fear, rage, pride and humiliation. They are designed to provoke. Social media algorithms treat duration of engagements as devotion. They are banking on the power of repetition and counting on unconscious absorption of outrageous narratives. They aim to drain our emotional reserves and numb us into helpless cynicism.
Forwarded as Received assiduously traces the process through which social media, which initially held out the promise of giving voice to the voiceless, turned into cacophony. It also provides a road map to rebuilding “the information commons” by drawing on expert writings and also on the author’s own experiences.
The book shows how broken the existing mechanisms to check fake news and disinformation are. The Press Information Bureau – Fact Check Unit (PIB-FCU) is presently India’s official body tasked with countering fake news. Set up in 2019, it is attached to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The author believes this is problematic. Indeed, in 2024, the Supreme Court stayed the Government order operationalizing PIB-FCU due to fears of state-led censorship.
While India’s institutional response remains reactive, the European Union is forging ahead. In August, 2024, the EU AI Act came into operation as the world’s first AI-specific legal regulatory framework. It classifies AI systems by risk, and demands transparency and bans manipulative apps. The EU’s Digital Services Act, effective since 2022, puts the onus on digital platforms to assess and mitigate disinformation risk, set up scrutiny teams, and impose penalties for failure to curb deep-fake circulation. The focus is on pre-emption and transparency. Finland has, since 2016, incorporated disinformation literacy into its school curriculum.
In terms of institutional reforms, some of the author’s suggestions are worthy of serious consideration. Firstly, an authenticity infrastructure needs to be set up with records of origin and alternations being embedded with the digital contents. Platforms must be held accountable for what they are processing. The idea of algorithmic friction must be considered to slow down virality by design. Secondly, disinformation literacy should form a part of the school syllabus. Thirdly, any takedown of online content by the government should be done transparently, with reasons and appeal mechanisms specified. Fourthly, there needs to be cross-agency coordination amongst the relevant institutions, viz. Election Commission, Police, cybercrime cells, etc. in fighting deep-fakes. The present situation of the left hand not knowing what the right hand does, should end. Lastly, digital governance and access should stop being the preserve of the technocrats, and community representatives should also have a say in it. The “first originator” clause, introduced to identify the originator of a fake or dangerous message, may serve as a deterrent, if applied judiciously and fairly.
As for the public, the instinct to wait and verify needs to be cultivated in place of the rush to push the forward button. People should inculcate a pause-before-post mental discipline. Awareness is crucial, and this book is an excellent place to start. It ought to be essential reading for media and communication professionals and students. This reviewer’s only grudge is the book’s length. There’s something unseemly about a volume targeted at the phone-scrolling, WhatsApp-addicted population, running beyond 500 pages.
Still, this is a well-researched, deeply felt book, arriving not a moment too soon.
Thangkhanlal Ngaihte is assistant professor of Political Science at Churachandpur College, Manipur and PhD candidate at Mizoram University, Aizawl.
