
As many as 900 million people are expected to vote in India’s national elections in April and May. The elections come amid a recent increase in tensions between India and Pakistan, as well as allegations that mobile applications including WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter are fueling the spread of fake news in the world’s largest democracy.
Two surveys conducted by Pew Research Center in 2018 shed light on how adults in India see their elected officials and their democracy – as well as how they feel about the spread of misinformation via mobile technology. Here are five key findings from the surveys as Indians prepare to cast ballots:
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Meanwhile, 58% of adults in India say that no matter who wins an election, things do not change very much. This again includes a majority of both BJP and Congress supporters.
Despite these negative views, Indians think their country allows other democratic values to flourish. By more than two-to-one, for example, Indians say the rights of people to express their own views are protected and that most people have a good chance to improve their standard of living. A sizable share (47%) also believes the courts treat everyone fairly.
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3Indians largely view Pakistan as a threat and believe the situation in Kashmir warrants more military force. The recent escalation in tensions between India and Pakistan after the Pulwama attack has turned the long-running territorial dispute over Kashmir into a potent campaign issue for Modi. In the Center’s spring survey last year, 76% of Indians said Pakistan is a major threat to their country, including 63% who said it is a very serious threat. This view was shared by people in rural areas and urban centers, supporters of both the prime minister’s BJP and the Congress party, as well as Indians across age groups. Additionally, 65% said terrorism is a very big problem in India.

When asked specifically about Kashmir, a majority of Indians (55%) see the situation there as a very big problem. More than half (53%) say circumstances in Kashmir have gotten worse over the last five years, and a majority (58%) believes the Indian government should use more military force than it uses currently in dealing with tensions in the area.
In the aftermath of the violence in Pulwama, Indian social media platforms saw such an uptick in fictitious or purposely misleading stories related to the attack that the head of Facebook India’s Integrity Initiatives tweeted that he had “never seen anything like this before.”
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Partisanship plays a role in public opinion of the impact of mobile technology. Adults who support Modi’s BJP are more likely to say mobile phones have had a good influence on politics (49%) than those who support the Congress party (33%). Last September, the president of the BJP encouraged the party’s supporters to spread pro-BJP messages on WhatsApp and other social media platforms – whether those messages are “true or fake.”
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Of the seven social media and messaging apps included in the survey, WhatsApp and Facebook are the most widely used in India – although relatively modest shares of Indian adults (29% and 24%, respectively) report currently using them. While this means a majority of Indians do not use these apps, the 1.35 billion-person country still has the largest number of WhatsApp and Facebook users in the world. In the lead-up to this spring’s election, some mobile apps are taking steps to curb the spread of misinformation. WhatsApp, for example, says it is using artificial intelligence to help spot fabricated news; the company says these efforts have led it to suspend more than 6 million user accounts over the past three months.
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