BJP IT Cell Head Misleads Again with Edited Clipping of Article

Amit Malviya quoted Siva Vaidyanathan, a Virginia university professor, out of context.

On more than one occasion, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s IT cell head Amit Malviya has been found guilty of spreading information that is misleading, to say the least.

Most recently, he ended up quoting Siva Vaidyanathan, a Virginia university professor, out of context.

CLAIM

On 23 December, Malviya tweeted a text snippet quoting Vaidyanathan. The snippet reads, “For five or six years, BJP has been the party that understands WhatsApp and Facebook. They have helped the party solidify its social and political networks and spread its agenda. Congress remains clueless". Some part of the snippet is blacked out.

TRUE OR FALSE

As said above, Malviya has quoted Vaidyanathan out of context. The text he has tweeted is a small part of Vaidyanathan’s interview to The Times of India.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

The part of the interview that Malviya tweeted is Vaidyanathan’s response to the question: In India, WhatsApp is a major source of misinformation. How do you see its role with the coming elections?

Vaidyanathan’s response in entirety is: “For five or six years, BJP has been the party that understands WhatsApp and Facebook. They have helped the party solidify its social and political networks and spread its agenda. Congress remains clueless. As for the question of what do you do when rumours get out of hand, well there’s not much anyone can do. WhatsApp has limited the number of people who can receive a forward. I would have preferred if they had simply turned off forwarding so that messages can’t cascade.”

Quite clearly, Vaidyanathan, in his response, is not praising the BJP for mastering the social media game, as Malviya’s tweet suggests. If anything, the Virginia University professor is concerned about the menace of WhatsApp forwards.

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