Google introduces ‘About this result’ feature in 9 Indian languages to fight misinformation

Google has partnered with media literacy experts to develop training to help participants get a better understanding of how to spot misinformation

New Delhi: As search trends for online misinformation in India reach an all-time high in 2023, Google on Friday said that its “About this result” feature will be available globally, including in nine Indian languages, to help people all over the world evaluate information and understand where it’s coming from.

“Now, whether you’re searching in Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu or Punjabi, you’ll see the three dots next to most results on Google Search. Tapping those three dots gives you a way to learn more about where the information you’re seeing is coming from and how our systems determined that it might be useful for your query,” Google said in a blogpost.

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With this, users will be able to make a more informed decision about the sites they may want to visit and what results will be most helpful for them.

To combat misinformation, Google has partnered with media literacy experts to develop training to help participants get a better understanding of how to spot misinformation.

In India, the company partnered with FactShala, a collaborative and multi-stakeholder media literacy network led by over 250 journalists and other experts that run locally tailored workshops and programmes in 15 plus Indian languages.

This year, the company said that FactShala is launching an incubator programme to help media and community organisations experiment with new and innovative formats to aid media literacy and will run a campaign for youth and first-time voters in collaboration with 500 colleges.

Since 2016, through the GNI India Training Network and Google’s Teaching Fellows, they have trained over 60,000 journalists and media students on skills required to detect and debunk online misinformation in India.

More than 1,450 newsrooms and 1,200 universities have benefited from over 1,200 workshops offered in 15 plus languages.

Moreover, the tech giant mentioned that it also launched the GNI Fact Check Academy in 2022 to help newsrooms build capacity to verify misleading claims with data and also to tackle climate-related misinformation.

At the end of 2022, YouTube also launched “Hit Pause”, a programme to help viewers spot and evaluate misinformation in India.