An Analysis of - Information Pollution & its Destructive Potential

Rumors are a species under the genus of False Information, and by virtue of them being an element under the shade of false information, they do tend to have certain common characteristics, elements, notions etc. which are shared among all. Our primary intention here is to analyze the role of information pollution and how it greatly facilitates the perpetuation of rumors and how it tends to clad rumors (false information) with a veil which covers up the elements of inherent falsehood thereby deluding the reader to construe false information as true information.

Information Pollution is a term which was coined somewhere in the 1900's but only gained its true fame after the publication of an article which was written by Jackob Nielsen in 2003. The term - “information pollution”, in itself is very wide and can not reasonably be narrowed down or complete explained in this article, but what we are determined to do is to make aware the reader of the far reaching consequences of the information pollution in connection with rumors, and how information pollution in itself is a tool or a equipment which has made it unreasonably easy for anyone to circulate any information without any need to worry about its acceptance. 

This term information pollution like any other pollution reflects on the presence of the contaminating elements or the pollutants whose inclusion or introduction into the pure information causes the pure information to get contaminated, thereby, eventually it  ends up communicating false information which seems to be true. 

Further, many researches have indicated and had presented evidence and findings  that the spread of internet and information, open up more and more opportunities for those who intentionally being driven by certain underlying motives tend to corrupt information by introducing contamination for attainment of certain goals. 

This allows those with malicious and harmful intentions to access authentic information and make necessary alterations so as to introduce the elements of falsehood in a systematic and cunning manner. This renders the authentic information moot, and turns it into a sort of information consisting of quasi-truth and quasi-false elements which generally can not be pinpointed by the general public or the reader base. This renders the information on the internet vulnerable to the systematic, malicious attacks intended at contamination of information for a specific or non-specific purpose. 

Since we are primarily interested in the connection between the - ‘rumors’ and ‘information pollution’. As we have seen in the preceding paragraphs that ‘information pollution’ is a process by which the authentic information is manipulated in such a manner, that it does not at all seem to be false even though it surely contains the elements of falsehood.  Rumor themselves are the pieces of information which have the element of false hood and do in fact resemble true information in spite of being false.  This clearly indicates that the correlation between the information pollution and rumors is considerable, and both the former greatly consolidates the position of later and thereby causes it to become more concrete. Owing to this on concreteness the rumors tend to get accepted easily by the majority and thereby causes underlying malicious intentions of those responsible for such rumors to manifest in the most inappropriate and at times in harmful manner which would not have occurred in response to the truly authentic information. This just barely touches the far reaching destructive consequences which may emerge due to such happenings.

Authored By -

Al Farhaan Hasan