Why in News?

After the Delhi Assembly election results were announced, a fake controversial social media post sparked tensions in Udayagiri, in Mysuru.

What are the causes of riot?

Provocative social media posts – Organised or random provocative contents of hate speeches on social media incites violence.
Extreme communal polarisation – Division of society along religious or ethnic lines through social segregation and religious fundamentalism.
Exploitation of communal feelings - Riots are precipitated as a device to consolidate the support of ethnic, religious, or other culturally marked groups by emphasizing the need for solidarity in face of the rival communal group.
Majoritarianism - When minority community frequently comes under attack both online and offline, religious polarisation has intensified, and pent-up frustration is spilled on to the streets.
Backwardness – Socio economic backwardness of a region or community is potential ground for conflicts and riots.
Highly polarised polity - Competitive assertion of identities in a highly polarised polity offers varied forms of patronage to non-state actors.
Communalisation of state - Penetration of communal ideologies in various domains of state and state indifference or complicity.
Vicious cycle – All above factors feed each other in a vicious cycle online and in the real world.

Paul Brass’s Institutionalized riot systems

Institutionalized riot systems (IRS) is a term invented by professor Paul Brass in 2004 in his book The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India with regards to Indian politics.
This term describes the dramatic production of riots, which Brass has divided into three phases.
- Preparation, activation and explanation.
In the endemic riot prone regions , these three phases are continuous activities.

Preparation/ Rehearsal

This phase is a continuous activity.
The most important people in this phase are "fire tenders", who keep Hindu-Muslim tensions alive through various inflammatory and inciting acts.

Activation/Enactment

This phase is a phase of violence.
The activation takes place under particular circumstances, most notably in a context of intense political mobilization or electoral competition.
In this phase another group of people come forward, who lead and address mobs of potential rioters and give a signal to indicate if and when violence should start.
These leaders are called "conversion specialists".
They usually lead the mob of criminals from poor background, who were recruited and rewarded for practicing the violence.

Explanation/Interpretation

It follows after the violence in a broader struggle to control the explanation or interpretation of the causes of the violence.
In this phase, many other elements in society become involved, including journalists, politicians, social scientists, and public opinion generally.
Violence is presented as spontaneous, religious, mass-based, unpredictable and impossible to prevent.
Social scientists start the process of blame displacement to save those who are most responsible for the production of violence, and instead diffuses blame widely.
This contributes to the perpetuation of violent productions in future, as well as the order that sustains them.

Legal Framework - Sections 141 to 190 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) provides for preventive and punitive actions against unlawful assemblies.
Section 144 of the IPC - This section can be imposed to restrict public gatherings and prevent the spread of violence.
Disaster management – Riots and communal violence are included as part of state disaster management plans in Rajasthan and Meghalaya.
Social media monitoring cells – These cells have been formed by district administration to monitor the social media posts and potential persons media accounts.
Establishment of Peace Committees - In riot-hit areas, peace committees comprising respected individuals from different communities are formed to mediate and restore peace
Proactive actions - Police have filed numerous suo motu cases whenever they come across such “inflammatory and derogatory” content.
Development – Regional and community development is essential in addressing the communal riots.
Press Briefings - Frequent media briefings help prevent misinformation and keep the public informed about developments.
Fact check units – Various government and news media have created fact checking platforms to enable people verity news.

Viral contents prevention - Identifying such potentially provocative content before it goes viral is a major challenge.
Resource limitation - Limited software that the district cells have is not compatible with regional languages, does not read what is written on images and scans only posts.
Vast volumes of content – Social media is indefinitely vast with different open platforms such as Facebook and X and billions of users to check for objectionable content.
Monitoring private channels – Privacy settings in WhatsApp and Telegram makes the monitoring of circulation of provocative contents close to impossible.
Overreach - Social media monitoring by the police has also led to overreach, with many cases being booked against people for criticising the ruling party.
Technological evolution – Rise of artificial intelligence and deep fakes makes it difficult to separate the reality and fake audio, images , video.

Community outreach and trust between the local police, leadership, and the community can prevent escalation of situations.
Use of advanced technologies like Artificial intelligence , Big data to monitor social media platforms to prevent the circulation of provocative contents.
Coordination between different departments and levels of government is crucial for effective response and recovery.
Media education and awareness creation among people about the potential misuse of advanced technologies.