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News narratives and news distortions: A case study of Dokmoka lynching in Assam

2023; Elsevier BV; Volume: 8; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.ssaho.2023.100641

2590-2911

Hoimawati Talukdar, Ankuran Dutta,

Social Media and Politics

The extensive accessibility to a wide range of content in online social media has facilitated the congregation of people around common interests, worldviews, and narratives. The internet has led to the free flow of information but at the same time also allowed for rapid dissemination of unsubstantiated rumours and conspiracy theories eliciting swift, large, but naive social responses such as the Dokmoka mob lynching in Assam. The lynching was attributed by the mainstream media largely to fake news and misinformation but that was not the sole cause as this study finds out. Using discourse theory as the method of research technique, the study focusses how news narratives frame events and underpins those aspects that lead to social protests and knowledge submersion in news media narratives.