3 years earlier, one night something really unfortunate happened. A girl committed suicide. I do not know her personally, not have I seen her. Students all over were discussing this topic. All about Why and How this happened.
Like everyone else, I was in my room with couple of great friends discussing the same topic as soon as we heard about it. There were two reactions we had,
Like everyone else, I was in my room with couple of great friends discussing the same topic as soon as we heard about it. There were two reactions we had,
- There is nothing much we can do about it. We felt sorry.
- There has to be something we can maybe do. Again, what can a 3rd engineering student group can do?
This became larger than we thought. One of the popular Instagram celebrities shared this news as,
A first year engineering student had committed suicide because lecturer harassment.
And with in no time other social media pages came up with,
A engineering student committed suicide because she was caught doing drugs.
The discussion became serious. We began noticing social media playing 'hot news' game even before actual media channels did for greedy impressions, likes and comments.
The problem was that story did not have facts. So those content publishers cook up the way they wanted.
I could collect facts with the same group I was at that time.
- Fortunately we had great network and integration within University. We would find ourselves calling at-least 40 students that night to hear all the stories.
- We would manage to get on a call with witness who took girl out of suicide area and rushed victim to hospital.
- We collate out time stamps, facts and imagine all those 40 stories with them. Our group will end up arguing to put all those together.
- We clearly know parts of the story those are impossible to learn because no fact/witness happen to part of the situation. We recognised our bias and kept those parts of the story admittedly unknown to us during investigation.
- The group took the decision to remain anonymous. We chose to create Facebook pages to put all of this in place.
- We got in photo designers in place to picture important parts to be easily consumable and sharable.
Within in 2 hours, our anonymous story went viral like wild fire; because everyone who knew the situation would accept it. Who did not would trust as they knew the behaviours of both lecturer and student.
Same night, chaos in the college hostels grew. It appeared like a revolt. Students began putting all the infrastructure to fire, throwing stones, breaking stuff. But no one know why.
Next day morning, our Facebook page received messages from journalists asking to get on a call to cover this story. I had to be anonymous. It was my request for those national and local media journalists who messaged me. With little hesitation I sent a video recording on the condition my face and voice to be masked. I strived hard to be neutral addressing fake news.
Fact parts of the Story
This girl was writing her semester exam. She was found guilty of copying and had exam cancelled. The other thing her younger brother knew is a message saying a heartfelt good bye. Eventually, she was discovered in an unknown suicidal situation in her room. People I knew rushed her to hospital only to find her deceased few hours later.
Outcomes
- Social Media pages posting the right story in no means faking story up. I assume in the shortest time when this news came out we used our network to spread larger fact oriented story making it widespread enough to be trusted.
- The concerned department officials were eventually removed. It did not matter how loyal or dedicated they were to the institution of students. Unfortunate things happen to everyone.
- Every student part of the riot that day never really talked about the suicide. They talked about bad facilities that university had. The timing to invoke was so perfect to connect suicide situation into a student revenge activity.
- Three weeks from that day, no one actually remembered how things turned out. Everything was so normal. Maybe management loosened some of the rules. But was that the time those 500+ students need to react? This is why Democracy is not always the right way forward.
- Over 50 police squad were guarding the entire situation. Which by 6 AM they had entire campus to cleared to go homes immediate next day with holidays announced for several weeks to come, leading to campus recruiters take U turn.
If you closely look at it, there were all organising, strategising, anonymity, PR stunt and team execution in one shot. All the parties involved in this story had some or no activities done from the ones I listed above.
Social Media and News Channels did PR stunt.
Management had an organisation.
Police had a strategy.
Students had execution.
But each one of them had a different purpose. One to save reputation, other to maintain law and order, Media to gain impressions, so on.
That night, that group of friends discussing situation and taking action had the same purpose. Avoid fake news for the good of girl's and university's reputation one at a time! What a moment to realise the power of purpose beyond a lot of motivational videos on the internet.