We Are All Victims: Questionable Content and Collective Victimisation in the Digital Age

Traditionally, the idea of being a victim is associated with a crime, accident, trickery or being duped. With the advent of globalisation and rapid growth in the information technology sector, the world has opened itself to numerous vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities range from individual-centric privacy issues to collective interests in the form of a nation’s political and economic interests. While we have victims who can identify themselves as victims, there are also victims who can barely identify themselves as victims, and there are those who do not realise that they have become victims. Misinformation, disinformation, fake news and other methods of spreading questionable content can be regarded as a new and increasingly widespread type of collective victimisation. This paper, drawing on recent examples from India, examines and analyses the rationale and modus operandi—both methods and types—that lead us to regard questionable content as a new form of collective victimisation.