While police is battling to control protesters who took to the streets of Ranchi against the riot that broke some 45km from away from the capital, they underestimated the power of android powered social networking applications in destroying the fragile social harmony that often falls victim to hate messages spread through popular networking applications available on smartphones.
On July 30, a day after the riot that rocked Shilagin under Chanho block in Ranchi, messages seeking support for bandh called on Thursday to express solidarity with the social group at the receiving end started doing rounds. By evening of July 30 members of bandh enforcing organisations started contacting people in their friends list to support the bandh and make it a success.
Social networking applications such as WhatsApp have been used very extensively to gather support for bandh. Prevalence of mobiles and use of mass media applications to mislead a community to make them clash with each other is not a new phenomena but a lesson is yet to be learned given the devastating power of social media.
“It is very difficult to control these things. Yet there is always a scope for it,” said IG (Provision) and Spokesperson of Jharkhand police, Anurag Gupta.
The messages kept on propagating in the absence of any effective mechanism to either filter out the contents of a particular connotation of grave consequences to communal harmony or a total black out of internet and SMS services to prevent the rumour taking dangerous proportions.
“Right now the State Police is not equipped with anything that can block messages of a particular type. A couple of days back State police was working on the behavioural aspect of messages spread through mass media but its pace is too slow to ascertain its completion,” said a cyber expert associated with Jharkhand police.
According to sources, few months back the State police was making an attempt to learn the art of decoding motive behind a particular message circulated during riots and when social harmony faces direct threat from people inclined to pitch one community against other. However, the exercise has been put on back burner due to manpower crunch in the Cyber Cell of State police.
“Efforts were made to analyse sentiments and behaviour of the person behind a particular type of message so that such people can be identified and their messages blocked before they can cause a serious damage to the society,” said another official engaged in curbing cyber crime in Jharkhand.