Misinformation in India's 2019 National Election

Abstract

This study investigates the dynamics and dissemination of political misinformation in India's 2019 national election campaign, drawing on cases identified by internationally verified fact-checkers. Many political parties and their affiliates or supporters deployed both positive (pro-party) and negative (anti-party) misinformation claims. The distribution of measures of engagement with misinformation claims on Facebook (N=4,478) show BJP, INC and CPIM were most often deploying positive or pro-party misinformation, whereas more parties were targeted with negative or anti-party misinformation. The incumbent BJP was the target of the largest number of negative misinformation claims that came from challenger parties and the INC in particular, confirming extant research from Western contexts that challengers go negative and attack incumbents while the latter tend to focus more on accomplishments. Negative or anti-party misinformation was deployed more than twice as often as pro-party misinformation and diffused farther than positive or pro-party claims.