Report of the FACT AND FIT Webinar

The Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, IIS (deemed to be University), Jaipur organized a webinar on the topic of "FACT AND FIT- Combating Medical misinformation in India: Identifying and Debunking medical misinformation" on September 16th, 2020. Mr. Nimish Kapoor, Principal Scientist, Head, Publications Division, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India was the resource person for the webinar.

Mr. Kapoor is also a Google certified trainer for fact checking and data verification. The webinar was followed by the Welcome note from Dr. Ruchi Goswami, Associate Professor, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, IIS (deemed to be University). The session was attended by the students and faculty members of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, IIS (deemed to be University).

Mr. Kapoor commenced the session by sharing incidences of various fake pictures and news getting viral on the internet. He shared a PPT with the attendees all through the session which contained various examples of fake news and pictures getting viral on the internet, and ways to check its authenticity. He also talked about various fake news related to COVID-19, doing rounds on the internet during the pandemic. He also discussed about the repercussions of such information resulting into mob lynching and various other unethical practices. 

During the session, Mr. Kapoor thoroughly described about the various manipulations done with real content just to mislead or manipulate the viewer or citizens in general. He also shared some much needed debunking tools to curb fake news from all walks of information sources. Some of the debunking tools/sites as told by him are First Draft, Data Leads, Maldita.es and various others.

He demonstrated the procedure of checking any suspected image or video and asked the students to do the same to practice the procedure and learn it practically. Through such an insightful session he requested and made an appeal to the budding journalist's and media personnel to keep a keen check while drafting news.

The content and presentation of the webinar was very insightful for the students. The session concluded with the vote of thanks presented by Dr. Shipra Mathur, Advisor, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, IIS (deemed to be University) and a promise of more fruitful collaborations in future.