ABSTRACT
Social media is the main driver to circulate misinformation as it features user-generated contents. Also, it facilitates sharing of thoughts, opinions and information through virtual communities and networks. Nevertheless, social media can itself act as an enabler to combat and interfere in the movement of misinformation. This chapter presents a three-stage novel approach to prevent spread of misinformation on social media in the internet age. The first stage is to identify the misinformation by humans, machines or their combinations. In the next stage, an active participation of different roles is presented which can combat misinformation (i.e. authors, publishers and platforms). In the last stage, consumption of misinformation can be stopped by educating social media users which is the best line of defense. The chapter also presents different examples of rumours and deliberate misinformation on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic, which were prevalent mostly in India.
