We’re barely into 2022 and we’ve already witnessed the third wave of the Coronavirus pandemic, elections in 5 Indian states, and a war in Europe. As each of the events played out (and in some cases, continue to play out), there was an unfortunate, yet predictable spike in misinformation. Even if we discount these outlier events, we continue to see misinformation in our daily lives. 

It’s not just politics and current affairs. We also witness misinformation around health, finance, government schemes, consumer products and even entertainment. They get shared on social media, and forwarded on messaging apps. It’s hard to come by a day when there’s no misinformation being spread. 

This has a profound impact, at both an individual and institutional level. While efforts are on to fight the scourge of misinformation and fake news, this isn’t the battle of any one party or organisation. It needs collective effort, coordination and will. It’s not just fact checkers or media organisations who have to confront or fight this problem - it is incumbent on everyone to do so. No person or organisation is immune to this problem. 

Keeping this in mind, we have formed the Misinformation Combat Alliance - a pan-industry, collaborative effort to tackle the challenges we face, through targeted interventions across media literacy, technology, community and advocacy. 

The MCA has 10 founding members. We laid the groundwork to build a strong foundation last year, and have since registered the MCA as a Section 8 Not-For-Profit company, collectively worked on a governance framework (which will remain flexible so it can be improved upon), conducted internal elections among the founding members for the posts, and defined our goals for 2022. 

And we’re just getting started. 

Membership is open to all, and free. We welcome any organisation that feels misinformation is a challenge, and would like to do their bit. This is an issue that impacts us all, and thus should be fought by all. We will be reaching out to many organisations over the course of the year to join, and if you’d like to be a part of this effort, do fill this form here. 

Let’s work together to make the world a better place. 

Bharat Gupta, 
President, 
Misinformation Combat Alliance