In 2018, Dr. Tamilselvi Natarajan came across a video depicting a child kidnapping, which spread widely on WhatsApp in India. It triggered various child abduction rumors across the country and led to horrific violence, including lynchings and mob attacks.
In reality, however, the video wasn’t of an actual kidnapping, nor was it filmed in India; it was a public service announcement, created in Pakistan, that demonstrated a child abduction to raise awareness about child safety.
“This incident deeply impacted me,” said Natarajan, who at the time was an assistant media professor in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. “I felt a strong sense of responsibility to address this issue, and I made it a point to discuss it regularly in my classes with students.”
A media educator for nearly 15 years already, the episode marked the beginning of Natarajan’s journey to expand her knowledge about how to identify and debunk misinformation.
She applied for specialized training in fact-checking through a news and information literacy program run by DataLeads. Then COVID-19 hit. During the height of the pandemic, she came across a piece of suspicious information, which led her to put her training to practice.
"One viral post claimed to provide the contact numbers of more than 100 doctors who could be reached for emergency assistance," she recalled. She reached out to each of them, only to find that none of the numbers were correct — they were either wrong numbers or not in service at all. “I decided to fight this by debunking misinformation along with like-minded people.”
In 2021, together with Induja Ragunathan, editor of Tamil YourStory, Natarajan launched MeiFactory, initially as a Facebook page dedicated to debunking health mis- and disinformation. MeiFactory evolved to become a full-blown fact-checking website, and remains active today through contributions from Natarajan and volunteers. A year later, Natarajan moved to Oman to pursue an opportunity as a media professor at Bayan College.
It wasn’t long before she came across ICFJ’s media literacy training of trainers, run in collaboration with MediaWise. The initiative was designed to deepen participants’ understanding of mis- and disinformation networks, equip them with skills to reach new audiences, and build their knowledge of novel technologies such as artificial intelligence that can further blur the line between reality and manipulated content — all so they could then train others. “The program introduced me to a range of advanced fact-checking tools that have truly empowered me in my efforts,” she said.
As a professor, Natarajan found it easy to reach the target audience of students and the university staff for the media literacy workshops she proceeded to run. Contacting them was easy; convincing them that disinformation existed in Oman was the hard part. “Initially, the participants were not very interested in the workshops,” she said. “Once I introduced real-life examples, particularly those relevant to their country, their attitudes shifted.”
Natarajan highlighted false news reports alleging that locusts swarmed a mosque in Mecca, and disinformation about climate change and the prevalence of financial scams and their impact on the victims.
These examples grabbed the students’ attention and helped them open up about dubious information they came across online themselves. “A participant mentioned encountering news on social media that falsely claimed (that a) mutated strain of the coronavirus caused infertility in women,” Natarajan said. “In reality, this information was debunked as false.”
Natarajan has navigated a language barrier during her trainings, which she conducts in English for primarily Arabic-speaking cohort participants. “I had a co-trainer with me to translate a few concepts into Arabic,” she said. “I also created a short video in Arabic to enhance the training's impact.”
She made her training interactive, having students discuss the challenges they have faced convincing others — especially their parents — that certain news is incorrect. After the workshops, the participants suggested offering the training exclusively in Arabic to parents and older family members to help them understand the impact disinformation can have on their lives. “This collective commitment to combating fake news underscores the importance of fostering an informed and critically engaged community,” she said.
To sustain the momentum that resulted from her training, Natarajan, with support from Bayan College, set up a media literacy club in the university, where students now host discussions, organize fact-checking workshops, run digital media literacy campaigns and design outreach programs to form partnerships with media literacy organizations.
“Through this initiative, we’re creating a long-term impact by engaging more students and faculty in the conversation. This broader reach ensures that media literacy becomes an integral part of the college culture,” she said.
Going forward, Natarajan plans to include sign language in her trainings to make them accessible to a larger audience. “By collaborating with sign language professionals, I hope to create an inclusive learning environment for those with hearing impairments,” she said.
Her work demonstrates that combating misinformation is more than just fact-checking — it demands a community-wide effort to build digital resilience. At the center of these efforts is a critical-thinking mindset. “Critical thinking enables individuals to analyze and evaluate the information they encounter, [and] encourages questioning the validity of claims,” she said. “This skill is essential not only for personal empowerment but also for fostering a more informed and responsible society.”
Renata Salvini and Brittani Kollar contributed to this article.
Image courtesy of Bayan College.
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