In yet another example of how the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has benefited from Facebook’s allegedly biased approach to checking the spread of fake news, it has emerged that the social media platform allowed a Reliance-backed company to run ads disguised as new reports to further the political party’s agenda during elections. The shocking revelation was made by Al Jazeera on March 14, in a report titled How a Reliance-funded firm boosts BJP’s campaigns on Facebook.
The report reveals how NEWJ helped in Malegaon blast-accused Sadhvi Pragya Thakur’s virtual image makeover by claiming in one of its video ads that she had been acquitted, when in reality, she is only out on bail. What was more dangerous is that this video was made to look like a news report, giving credibility to fake news that was clearly aimed at improving the electoral prospects of a particular political party’s candidate.
BJP had fielded Thakur from Madhya Pradesh. According to the Al Jazeera report, the NEWJ video got over 3,00,000 views in one day, and Thakur went on to win the election and is currently the Member of Parliament (MP) from Bhopal.
What is NEWJ, and who owns it?
NEWJ stands for New Emerging World of Journalism Ltd., the name itself suggesting it is a news media platform. According to the Al Jazeera report, “NEWJ positions itself as a start-up catering “news content” to people in villages and small towns exclusively through social media. In reality, the company buys advertisement space on Facebook and Instagram to publish videos, many of which are actually political promotions but are dressed as news stories. The advertisements have one underlying theme – to promote the BJP, including by fuelling misinformation, inciting anti-Muslim sentiments and denigrating opposition parties.”
It was set up in January 2018 by Shalabh Upadhyay and his sister Deeksha as a private limited company with a paid-up capital of Rs 1 lakh. In November 2018, Reliance Group company Reliance Industrial Investment and Holdings Limited (RIIHL) took over NEWJ with a 75 percent equity stake. In the first year Reliance pumped in Rs 8,40,00,000, and in the second year it increased this figure to Rs 12,50,00,000! NEWJ made a series of videos that promoted the BJP’s agenda and often targeted its opponents. These videos were run as paid ads. The timing is of course important, given how General Elections were held in India in 2019. In 2020, the RIIHL stake was taken over by Jio Platforms Ltd.
According to Al Jazeera, “Six days before Jio took it over, NEWJ amended its “Articles of Association” to give its “investor”, in this case Jio, control over what content NEWJ produces, aggregates or disseminates.” Jio pumped in a further Rs 8,49,60,000.
It is interesting to note that in 2020, Facebook purchased an almost 10 percent stake in Jio Platforms in a much-publicised deal worth $ 5.7 billion. It is also noteworthy that Shalabh Upadhyay’s father Umesh is the “president and media director at Reliance Industries Ltd and previously worked as president of news at Reliance-owned Network-18 group” according to the All Jazeera report. Also, Shalabh’s uncle Satish Upadhyay “is a BJP leader and former president of the party’s Delhi unit.”
However, NEWJ has not formally declared any formal link to the BJP. Moreover, there is no public record of the party paying NEWJ for creating and publishing political ads.
What kind of ads did NEWJ run?
According to Al Jazeera, “The (Facebook) Ad Library shows that the NEWJ page published roughly 170 political advertisements over the three months leading up to the parliamentary elections. Most either glorified BJP leaders, projected voters’ support for Modi, stoked nationalistic and religious sentiments — the poll planks of the BJP – or mocked opposition leaders and the rallies they held.”
Apart from the aforementioned ad about Pragya Thakur, NEWJ also ran ads that twisted out of context words of leaders such as People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Mehbooba Mufti and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
How did it get past ECI scrutiny?
When it comes to electoral malpractices, the Election Commission of India has detailed, but dated, guidelines about promotional activities and advertisements. Now, in a bid to hold political parties accountable for what information they put out, the ECI has strict guidelines against surrogate or ghost advertisements, i.e ads that favour a particular party or candidate, but are not funded or authorized by them.
Here is what the ECI’s Model Code of Conduct (MCC) say about advertising:
“Issue of advertisement at the cost of public exchequer in the newspapers and other media and the misuse of official mass media during the election period for partisan coverage of political news and publicity regarding achievements with a view to furthering the prospects of the party in power shall be scrupulously avoided.”
However, this does not specifically mention digital platforms and the term “other media” is ambiguous enough to manipulate the system and yet dodge the bullet when it comes to adhering to rules. Clearly, the ECI needs to update the MCC with more specific guidelines pertaining to the use of digital platforms and social media.
Did Facebook’s system of checks and balances fail again?
Facebook, now rebranded as Meta, is already facing multiple allegations of allowing its platform to be used for spreading Fake news and Hate speech. What’s worse, it appears, all of its much-publicised checks and balances, not only failed to check the spread of pro-BJP surrogate advertising disguised as news reports, there was also a marked absence of balance in corrective measures.
According to the Al Jazeera report, “In a much-publicised crackdown on what it called “Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour”, an action it took on its platform in several countries, it removed 687 pages and accounts that it said promoted the Congress party but concealed their association with it. Only one page and 14 accounts that promoted the BJP were removed. Those were owned and operated by an IT firm called Silver Touch which had not formally declared its link with the BJP.” This again shows how Facebook/Meta was targeting BJP’s opponents more.
But Meta denied the allegation and told The Reporters Collective (TRC), “We apply our policies uniformly without regard to anyone’s political positions or party affiliations. The decisions around integrity work or content escalations cannot and are not made unilaterally by just one person; rather, they are inclusive of different views from around the company, a process that is critical to making sure we consider, understand and account for both local and global contexts.”
Facebook enabled further surrogate advertising for BJP
In a follow up report published by Al Jazeera on March 15, it was revealed that “Facebook allowed a large number of ghost and surrogate advertisers to secretly fund the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) election campaigns in India and boost the governing party’s visibility, according to an analysis of advertisements placed on the social media platform across 22 months and 10 elections.”
The Reporters Collective and Ad.Watch mapped out all the advertisers who had spent more than Rs 5 lakh on Facebook for political advertisements between February 2019 and November 2020. They discovered that “BJP and its candidates officially placed 26,291 advertisements by spending at least 104 million rupees ($1.36m), for which they got more than 1.36 billion views on Facebook. That apart, at least 23 ghost and surrogate advertisers also placed 34,884 advertisements for which they paid Facebook more than 58.3 million rupees ($761,246), mostly to promote the BJP or denigrate its opposition, without disclosing their real identities or their affiliation with the party. These advertisements got more than a whopping 1.31 billion views.”
When it comes to BJP’s opponents, the team discovered, “Congress and its candidates officially placed 30,374 advertisements by paying at least 64.4 million rupees ($840,897), which got them more than 1.1 billion views. Only two surrogate advertisers (among those who spent more than 500,000 rupees – $6,529 – on advertisements) spent 2.3 million rupees ($30,032) on 3,130 advertisements on pro-Congress pages without disclosing affiliation with the party. Those advertisements got more than 73.8 million views. Another page spent 4.95 million rupees ($64,634) on 1,364 advertisements in campaigns against Modi, mostly in West Bengal elections last year in April, which got more than 62.4 million views.” These numbers are not even a patch on the corresponding figures of the BJP.
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India’s Ecosystem of Hate: Is Facebook both, a Beneficiary and an Offender?