More than 300 journalists from at least 50 newsrooms collaborated to tackle misinformation during India’s April to June election, the largest in history. The general election, conducted in seven phases, saw 642 million people vote over a six-week period.
Media executives in India put their rivalries aside to collaborate on Shakti, a joint project connecting fact-checkers and news publishers to combat election misinformation. The project, backed with funding from Google News Initiative, involved the translation and distribution of fact-check reports among roughly 50 newsrooms.
I interviewed Syed Nazakat, the founder and CEO of DataLEADS, who coordinated this collaborative initiative. DataLEADS, a media and tech company based in New Delhi, focuses on media literacy and fact-checking. Their health fact-checking project, First Check, is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network Code of Principles.
Here’s our conversation, edited for brevity and clarity.
Enock Nyariki: Can you describe the complexity and scale of misinformation during India’s recent elections?
Syed Nazakat: The Indian election is both massive and complex. According to the World Economic Report, India is highly vulnerable to misinformation, with one of the highest risks globally. This became especially clear just before the elections.
Misinformation wasn’t just in English or Hindi — about 60% of the fact-check stories were in regional languages. It circulated through political speeches, false internet claims, bogus poll surveys and even political campaign songs. Every party used songs to engage voters, with some spreading misinformation or dividing voters on key issues.
Internet access in India has grown, with more than 820 million users online. However, many lack the literacy to differentiate between true and false information. Misinformation spreads quickly on social media, becoming viral within minutes.
During the elections, 86% of the fact-checked content was visual (images or videos), and 2% was AI-generated, far less than we expected. Although AI-generated content was a small percentage, it included deepfakes of deceased politicians endorsing candidates, false endorsements by social media influencers and fake endorsements by Bollywood celebrities.
Nyariki: How does the misinformation landscape during this year’s election compare to past years?
Nazakat: This election campaign was different because there was a lot at stake. Political parties, across ideologies, engaged many influencers to create content. AI technology was used to promote different political leaders and mimic their voices in various campaigns.
There were persistent misinformation risks, such as bogus surveys, false claims about party investors and misinformation about electronic voting machines potentially favoring one party.
Because it was a strongly contested election, every party used social media, and some eventually fell for or created misinformation.
As Shakti, we produced over 6,600 fact checks in three months — almost 2,000 fact-check stories each month — distributed across the country in more than 10 languages.
For the first time, newspapers in India published fact-checking stories. Major organizations like Malayala Manorama, a 136-year-old newspaper with millions of readers, published dedicated fact checks. They received positive feedback from audiences and actively promoted fact checks on social media.
The fact-checking community involved in the Shakti alliance included IFCN signatories with clear editorial guidelines. During the election, 67 news organizations created pop-up fact-checking units across the country. They dedicated teams to fact-checking, translating, republishing and helping people make better decisions about the information they consume. This effort significantly changed the larger information ecosystem in the country.
Nyariki: What does Shakti mean?
Nazakat: Shakti means power. When we chose the name for this unique intervention, India’s biggest collaboration between publishers and fact-checkers, we wanted a word that embodies our mission. Shakti stands for the power of collaboration, working together and sharing resources.
Nyariki: What inspired you to create the Shakti Collective?
Nazakat: Democracy is the most valuable thing any community can have. We often take a free society and democracy for granted. We don’t realize how precious it is until we see the challenges facing free societies and democracy globally in the last four or five years. There was a growing understanding that we need to protect our information ecosystem and people from misinformation. Protecting democracy by ensuring free and fair elections is a huge responsibility for every government and country.
In India, the Election Commission did everything possible to ensure free and fair elections. But the media also had a fundamental responsibility to ensure people had access to accurate and timely information. From day one, we knew this would be a major challenge. It wasn’t just a challenge for one organization or fact-checkers alone; it was a challenge for everyone. We needed to build a mechanism to unite different stakeholders and create interventions to protect democracy and information integrity.
The spirit of protecting information integrity and ensuring people had accurate information to make informed decisions about their leaders and government was the backbone of Shakti. The key question was how to protect information integrity during elections. All the partners — fact-checkers, news publishers, technologists and other industry partners — saw value in pooling resources and working together.
Nyariki: How did you convince organizations that normally compete against each other to collaborate on this initiative?
Nazakat: It was tough. Collaboration means more work and more burden. During elections, organizations are stretched thin with reporters on the ground and limited resources.
Two things worked for us. First, we conveyed the critical message that this was a crucial moment for the media to rise above competition and play a larger role in protecting information integrity and democracy. Both the fact-checking community and news publishers understood the importance of this mission and agreed on the principle that we need to protect information and democracy.
Second, we simplified the process. We told fact-checkers to focus on a few key areas and upload stories daily to the repository, and we would provide alerts to keep them ahead. Publishers needed only to assign a couple of team members to access the repository, translate and publish the content. They didn’t need to conduct their own investigations or fact checks. This made the workflow manageable.
Transparency also played a critical role. We were clear about our goals, held daily meetings and engaged all stakeholders in discussions. This transparency helped build strong collaboration across a diverse country.
Nyariki: Can you share how you tackled electoral misinformation in local languages? Which strategy proved to be the most effective?
Nazakat: Misinformation thrives in local and regional languages. Many large language publishers lack dedicated teams to monitor online content regularly, while smaller fact-checkers often lack the resources to scale up language services beyond a few languages. Fact-checking is time-consuming and resource-intensive, limiting the number of stories a team can handle and contributing to a growing crisis in the information ecosystem.
One of the key successes of the Shakti Collective was uniting newsrooms and regional news publishers with fact-checkers. This collaboration allowed us to match the demand and supply of fact-checking content. Most fact-checkers were publishing in only one or two languages, usually Hindi or English. When we selected the 50 newsrooms for the project, we prioritized regional and language diversity. We included organizations that could handle almost 20 languages and publish in more than 10.
This diversity helped us cover more languages in the fact-checking ecosystem. Local news networks, with their better understanding of regional politics and information ecosystems, played a crucial role. For example, a newspaper in southern India would understand local politics better than someone based in New Delhi. These local newsrooms helped create local alerts, informing us about viral content, which we then shared with fact-checkers for verification.
By collaborating with local newspapers, we provided easy access to timely fact checks that followed the International Fact-Checking Network’s guidelines. What would take fact-checkers a few hours to debunk could be quickly published and translated by local newspapers. This process helped fact-checkers reach audiences they would never have reached otherwise.
Nyariki: What Shakti achievements are you most proud of?
Nazakat: One of the biggest achievements was proving to ourselves that we could do big things within the fact-checking community. Shakti gave us the confidence that large-scale collaborations are possible, not just among fact-checkers but with different stakeholders as well. It showed that we can improve our efforts, do bigger things and manage complex initiatives successfully.
A major takeaway was that audiences do appreciate fact-check content. They trust the media more when it helps them figure out truthful information. This project reaffirmed our belief that we can work together, even as competing organizations, to achieve something significant.
Shakti’s success was not just due to fact-checkers and publishers. People from diverse backgrounds — engineering, public policy, law and design thinking — came together to support the initiative. They created a well-oiled machine that functioned smoothly in a complex situation, delivering a blueprint for future projects.
This project has given us faith in the possibility of larger collaborations to improve the global fact-checking ecosystem, ensure information integrity and ultimately protect democratic institutions.
Nyariki: What surprised the coalition’s fact-checkers most about the information ecosystem during this election cycle?
Nazakat: Initially, there was skepticism about whether the collaboration would work. I remember a top editor expressing doubt about why publishers would join the effort. We showed publishers the incentives, such as not needing their own fact-checkers and the ability to scale and amplify good information. This collaboration generated significant social media engagement for publishers, which was a new experience for them. In the end, the collaboration worked smoothly without any legal issues or disputes. We all stayed together through a complex election, which was a pleasant surprise for everyone involved.
Nyariki: What was the biggest challenge you faced while running this project?
Nazakat: The biggest challenge was visualizing how the entire project would work and having a clear idea of how each stakeholder would engage with the initiative. We had to define their incentives, roles and responsibilities, and develop strategies for mitigation if any issues arose. This required a lot of brainstorming and discussion both internally and with other stakeholders.
Collaboration was another significant challenge. It consumes a lot of energy to keep everyone engaged and informed in a complex situation while also getting the work done. Ensuring that different stakeholders remained committed and their energy levels were sustained was difficult.
We also had to manage the volume of fact checks submitted to the repository. We conducted hygiene checks on each fact check before it could be amplified by publishers. This was crucial because once a publisher picked up a story, it could reach millions of people in minutes. Managing this daily influx of 60 stories and ensuring each one was vetted properly was a massive task.
To celebrate the success, we sent a cake to each newsroom, called the “Shakti cake,” as a token of appreciation. Seeing the pictures of newsrooms across India celebrating with their teams was a beautiful moment. Each team felt proud of their contribution to making a difference in the information ecosystem.
(Courtesy: Project Shakti)
We are also inviting all the publishers and fact-checkers to a meeting in New Delhi on August 6th to share their stories and experiences, marking the success of this collaborative effort.
Nyariki: What key lessons can fact-checkers from other countries take away from your experience with the Shakti?
Nazakat: I think there are a few key lessons. First, it’s crucial to have a clear structure for any collaboration. Everyone involved should understand their role from the very start. We documented roles with a two-page MOU for all partners, clearly outlining expectations. Structure and curation are fundamentally important.
Each country or region will have its own diversity – language, region, or community. The challenge is to be inclusive. Include different people in the team, not just editors, but also reporters, fact-checkers, photographers, and people with technology backgrounds. Inclusivity should extend to the communities being served.
Transparency builds trust. Be open and transparent, and if things go wrong, have a Plan B ready to mitigate challenges.
The fundamental lesson from Shakti is that if you want to do big things, make the process simple for everyone involved. Complexity will hinder progress. That’s my best learning from this process.
Nyariki: What are your future plans for Shakti?
Nazakat: Misinformation isn’t going to stop after the election. The challenge remains, and millions of people are still vulnerable. We’re reviewing the whole project right now, collecting data from stories, impact assessments, and feedback from participants. We’re conducting one-on-one interviews to collate all the feedback.
Google is committed to supporting the initiative, and both fact-checkers and publishers are keen to see this collaboration continue. While the initial focus was on the election, we see potential for Shakti to become a permanent intervention. It could address misinformation on financial matters, climate change, health, and daily misinformation challenges.
We envision Shakti as a long-term initiative that can scale, sustain, and share our learnings with partners worldwide. There’s potential for “Shakti Global,” where we can work across borders, as misinformation often crosses boundaries. The goal is to sustain the momentum and success we’ve achieved and to continue this collaboration with the same energy and passion in tackling misinformation beyond the Indian national election.
Correction, Aug. 6, 2024, 8:29 p.m. Eastern: The Shakti Collective selected the 50 newsrooms for the project, not 15.
