WhatsApp kicked off first-ever TV campaign in India to fight fake news

Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp launched its first-ever TV campaign on Monday in India to address the challenge of fake information and destructive rumours.

Earlier, WhatsApp had launched two phases of a radio campaign to established awareness among the messaging platform users.

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In the first phase, the campaign was kicked off on August 29 with ads about awareness across 46 radio station of the All India Radio in the several states of India. In the second phase, the campaign was initiated on September 5 with radio-supported ads across 83 All India Radio stations in the other states of the country.

WhatsApp has announced that it worked with the Bollywood filmmaker Shirsha Guha for the TV campaign to develop three 60-seconds films that each convey the real context regarding the dangerous rumours that can spread among the users of the WhatsApp.

Several fake news and dangerous rumours spread on the WhatsApp which has more than 200 million users in India have been linked to the several incidents of lynching across the country, forcing the government of India to send a serious message and urge the company to take the actions.