Of late, news is being consumed digitally — from social media by 63 per cent, from YouTube by 53 per cent and from WhatsApp by 51 per cent.

While consuming news from YouTube, the audience comes across the news content through the recommendations of algorithms deployed by the platform. These algorithms could be privileged by certain kind of news over others and there could be editorial biases in recommendations more often for certain news over other news. Thus the algorithms make the process opaque.

In WhatsApp, there is peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing of news. It could make the news viral. There is no mechanism to assess the viral trend. It thus becomes difficult to spot the fake news and to counter disinformation. The source of such viral content is difficult to trace because of end-to-end encryption.

This is a regulatory challenge — how to regulate these social media intermediaries. These platforms could block globally the entire point of view on certain issues. There are several instances of arbitrary decisions.

At the same time, broadcast media’s reach is plateauing. Thus social media become more powerful as gatekeepers. They can enhance the reach of live broadcasts and could take it to the diverse audience. The audience is fast switching to internet streaming from the conventional TV/radio broadcasts. Thus Direct-to-Mobile (D2M) is an area that will merit attention of the regulators and policy makers.

Algorithm regulation capability must be developed not only for the media/social media, but across the sectors such as finance, sciences and chemicals.

Opacity favours certain kind of political speeches over others. There are issues of neutrality of the media. There should be algorithmic regulatory framework for India.