Disinformation in the Indian Digital News Media Market

To register, please visit this link: https://forms.gle/VDCFpzDyjCbRdP559

India’s news consumption is increasingly dominated by the internet. In 2021, it is estimated that 284 million online users in India will consume their news digitally in the country’s eight top languages, a figure which has nearly doubled since 2016. Yet, greater reliance on online news does not equate to greater trust. A greater share of Indians trust news from newspapers and magazines (55 percent) than do online sources (34 percent).

The harms of disinformation are proliferating around the globe—threatening our elections, our health, and our shared sense of facts. The infodemic laid bare by COVID-19 conspiracy theories clearly shows that disinformation costs peoples’ lives. Websites masquerading as news outlets are driving and profiting financially from the situation.

One effective means of combating disinformation is to target its funding sources. In this report, we analysed 56 websites based on the GDI risk rating, which provides advertisers, ad tech companies and platforms with greater information about a range of disinformation flags related to a site’s content (reliability of content), operations (operational and editorial integrity) and context (perceptions of brand trust).

We invite you to the launch event of the report Media Market Risk Ratings: India, and a panel discussion focused on online misinformation and disinformation in India, the role of  digital news publishers, and effective strategies to combat disinformation.

See more details and an agenda here.