Twitter is a powerful platform through which a bottom-up spread of hate is generated, shaped, and reified by millions of users who tweet every day. DFRAC has always been watchful on hate mongering and hashtags, where such campaigns on social media have seen a string of successes recently, painting an entire community as the “enemy”.
One such user, Sudhir Mishra, with the preferred topic of interest of Anti Muslim hate and mockery, has come under our watchful eyes.
What made Us Analyse his Account?
DFRAC has already carried out numerous fact checks on his tweets regarding false information. But the habit still prevails. This pattern has drawn our attention to his biased narratives against the Muslim community and leaders of the Opposition.
This report unfolds the hateful mindset and narratives pushed in the social media by the user.
1.Who is Sudhir Mishra?
- Opinion or hate debater
2.Targetting Muslims
- Fake news mongering against Muslims
3.Targetting Opposition Party
- Fake news mongering against opposition leaders
- Mockery and Staunch criticism of opposition
4. Analysis of the Influence of his Fake News
1. Who is Sudhir Mishra?
His bio reads : Journalist, Nationalist and Urging his audience that his tweets are personal. But under the guise of personal opinion and nationalism, the hate patterns of his tweets unfolds a different story. They affects the viewership in targeting to incite hateful debates and a string of Anti-Muslim commentary in his comment section.
We analysed his engangement on twitter of past 2 months.We found Mishra to possesses a substantial following and demonstrated high levels of engagement. His account exhibits consistent activity, having posted a total of 370 tweets within a two-month period, specifically from June 28 – Aug 26, 2023.
Within this 2- month collection of tweets, he has gained a significant engagement from his audience, amassing a huge number of 813,000 likes, 274,000 retweets, and 31,400 comments.
- Opinion or Hate debater
A journalist would definetly ask its audience the intriguing questions to start an unbiased debate. But Sudhir Mishra’s tweets calls for only communalism and anti muslim debates.
Here a tweet posted on august 22,2023 calls out for a question ,” Guess who ? When I went to Kashmir, I did not see any terrorists ,, And went to “Arunachal” ,, then saw the Chinese army??”
The tweet was followed by abusive and mockery comments on the recent statement of Rahul Gandhi on China and Arunachal Pradesh.
2.Targetting Muslims
His string of fake news lead us to analysis of his account. DFRAC has conducted multiple fact checks on the fake news shared by Sudhir Mishra. Here are instances of fake news spread by him.
- Fake news mongering against Muslims
- A claim was made that Central government will take back 123 important properties including Jama Masjid which was given to the “Waqf Board” during the Congress government. The fact check made it evident that the mosque that has been included in this list was not Jama Masjid near Lal Quila but was a separate mosque which is located in Central Delhi.
2. An old video was shared again by him with the claim that an act of brutality is conducted by a man where he can be seen pulling hair and beard of an elderly monk . Further stating that the incident was carried out by people of some ‘special community’.
When investigated, we found in DFRAC’s archive that a fact check was conducted before on this video by our team on May 31,2022. The video was from Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh , dated 24 May, 2022.
3.He claimed that a blast occurred in Shafique’s house, who lived near a mosque in Bulandshahr. Chemical-filled drums were found in the house and the body parts of the deceased were scattered far and wide. But the factcheck shows that false claims were made.
(a) The blast did not happen near the mosque, but in a house located in the fields, far from the crowd.
(b) The owner of the house was Satish, not Shafique, and he rented it out to Rajkumar who ran the chemical factory and was the one who died along with four others in the blast.
4.He claimed that Mohammad Ghaffar’s body was cut into “5 pieces” and thrown into a drain who was the accused in the rape case of hindu girl. But Deoriya police released the statement that no such incident had happened in Deoria district and the news was false.
Not only the fake news, but a video was also posted by him where a man can be seen performing namaz. He claimed that his action was performed by stopping a moving bus and it was a misuse of government resources. When we analysed the video, no sitting passengers were found inside the bus or any obstruction of the traffic by the bus.
This calculated approach aims to establish an anti-Muslim narrative. Examining this pattern, we observed how the identity of an individual named Rajkumar transforms into Shafique in relation to a bomb blast incident or fabricated reports falsely implicate a fictional character named Gaffar as an assailant, despite no such occurrence ever taking place. Furthermore , an illusory state of urgency prompts the call for the closure of the Muslim Minority Ministry, solely to sow seeds of division and discord.
3. Targeting Opposition Party
- Fake news mongering against Opposition leaders
Mishra’s preferred modus operandi involves the deliberate manipulation of video content, often employing cropping techniques or mis-linking videos to falsely implicate the opposition party.
- He shared an old video of Arvind Kejriwal , Chief Minister of Delhi with the claim that he threatened Gujaratis by saying , “If you protest against me, I will crush you and people of Gujarat, whatever you can do, if you can spoil me, then spoil me.” But the fact check revealed that the video was from 6 years ago and he did not make any threats towards Gujaratis rather he was actually referring to Amit Shah.
2. During the a budget session in Feb 2023, in UP,Sudhir Mishra shared a video of Samajwadi Party (SP) members allegedly creating a ruckus in the session, with an absolutely false claim that Party members disrepected their own leader tributes and felt threatened with the actions of the present government. But after the fact check it was found that it was an address by governor Anandiben Patel . The tributes were paid On December 5, 2022, to former CM Mulayam Singh Yadav ,in the UP Assembly.
3. Mamta Banerjee’s cropped speech at their Party’s Inaugural day was used to target her and new alliance of opposition party. Her statement was cropped at such time interval where her last word was ‘mahabharat‘ and the next immediate words were , ‘written by Kazi Nazrul Islam’. This cropped video gained immense traction and trollings for Mamta Banerjee. Sudhir Mishra was no behind in using this video to compare the opposition alliance to Shariat alliance. But the fact check revealed that she didn’t mention Islam as the author of Mahabharat as it was a cropped video.
4. A video was shared by Mishra with a claim that Rahul Gandhi met a girl involved in anti-India activities, but fact-checking revealed the girl in the picture was Mia Enrelio, a Congress Seva Dal leader, not Amulya Leona, the girl who raised the slogan of Pakistan Zindabad. The claim was debunked as false by DFRAC.
- Mockery and Staunch criticism of opposition
In his tweets, there is a significant level of ridicule directed towards the opposition leaders. Here, particularly Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. He is consistently depicted as solely supporting the Muslim community. Not stopping there, his Italian lineage from his mother’s family becomes a source of mockery for Mishra.
He also engaged in a collective mockery of the opposition party by sharing a satirical illustration depicting the central government’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan as a means to eliminate all other political leaders.
A cooking video featuring Rahul Gandhi, which was uploaded on his official YouTube channel on Sept 2nd, was used to raise doubts about his religious beliefs and faith. In the video, Rahul can be seen cooking chicken alongside Lalu Prasad Yadav. Seizing this opportunity, Mishra shared the video and accused Rahul of cooking it during the sacred month of Shravan. However, the month of Shravan concluded on Aug 30th, while the video was posted on Sept 2nd.
One can acquire the skill of infusing a communal perspective into any post by studying his tweets. For instance, a simple congratulatory message from the leader of the Samajwadi party for the successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 was ridiculed for using the term ‘mubarak’ instead of ‘Badhai ho’ or any other Hindi term for congratulations.
Furthermore, he steers his statement towards the contributors of the mission, selectively acknowledging only the role of saree-wearing women and disregarding hijab-wearing women in the Chandrayaan mission. Thus, what could have been a mere congratulatory tweet turned into a Hindu-Muslim divide.
4. Analysis of the Influence of his Fake News
His multiple fake news tweets made us to examine the analytics of the same. It was suprising to see that the reach and impact of his misleading content are evident in the staggering numbers : over 850,000 Twitter accounts have been exposed to his disinformation, with nearly 10,000 expressing approval and over 5,600 accounts sharing or retweeting it.
This analysis sheds light on Sudhir Mishra’s role as an ‘Influencer of Fake News’, whose misleading and inflammatory tweets have the swayed public opinion, particularly in matters concerning the Muslim community and the opposition party.
The wordcloud provided showcases the prominent terms used in Sudhir Mishra’s tweets. It is evident that his tweets predominantly revolve around topics such as “Government”, “UP”, “Yogi”, “Congress”, “Yadav”, “Mandir-Masjid”.
Conclusion
The analysis of Sudhir Mishra’s Twitter activities paints a disturbing picture of a user who has leveraged the power of social media to spread hate, misinformation, and divisive narratives.
Sudhir Mishra’s role as an ‘Influencer of Fake News’ cannot be underestimated. His tweets have not only sown seeds of division and discord but have also swayed public opinion, particularly in matters concerning the Muslim community and the opposition party. This report serves as a stark reminder of the responsibility that comes with the freedom to express oneself on social media.
