Correcting Misperceptions on Indian Whatsapp with Experimental Adaptation: Building an Experimentation Platform on Whatsapp

This paper explores the challenges associated with India's digital transformation, with a specific focus on the surge of misinformation via WhatsApp in rural regions. As the world's second-largest internet user base, India faces unique issues with misinformation, especially due to user-led fact-checking on encrypted platforms and influential religious rhetoric. To address these concerns, a WhatsApp-based surveying tool was developed to directly access rural users' perspectives and collect a corpus of circulating media. This study aims to understand varying user interactions and sharing tendencies with thematic messages and identify effective misinformation deterrents. The research's pivotal contribution lies in the newly developed experimen- tation platform, enabling effective data gathering and testing of popular interventions against misinformation using adaptive experimentation.