Lamakaan is thrilled to host Pratik Sinha on the day after the Independence Day (August 16th). At a time when it is a given that our inboxes are flooded each day with multiple forwards spreading fake news, from the seemingly benign UNESCO awards and World Bank rankings to completely doctored videos aimed at inciting communal violence, Pratik Sinha and his team at AltNews are leading the crusade against manufactured “news”, with the aim of eliminating “deliberate underground political propaganda". Pratik, a former techie was compelled to start this venture since he believes, "It is extremely dangerous and no political party is working to stop it”. AltNews describes itself as a website for the “post-truth world”; one that aims to “act as an antidote to the right-wing propagandists that have established themselves in the mainstream media”. In the five months since its launch Alt News has amassed over 43,000 followers on Facebook and 21,000 on Twitter. This, without either advertisements or external funding. Sinha is also involved with Jan Sangharsh Manch, a civil liberties organisation. Since 2013 he has also been running the “Truth of Gujarat” page, a site focused on news about the Gujarat carnage. Tracing the origins of a widely circulated hoax can often be complicated. An image or video may not have been manipulated: rather, an entirely authentic piece of footage may be circulated under false contexts. The techniques involved in deconstructing them involve, slowing it down, scraping the internet to find where it has previously been posted, analysing visible signage in the background, looking at streetscapes and trying to catch the language being spoken. Lamakaan is proud to host Pratik for the following two workshops: • Exposing fake news: Aimed at journalists to help separate the wheat from the chaff (2pm to 4pm) Link to register: https://goo.gl/forms/gze6MRgQihGrmj233 • Breaking down fake news: Workshop on the techniques to breakdown fake-news for techies and the socially concerned (7:30pm to 9:30pm) Link to register: https://goo.gl/forms/cbCgqChB04PaXWal2

Prior Registration required.