22 per cent Indians believe there is less lying in politics: Survey

A large number of Indians, more than double of the global average, believe there is less lying in politics than in the past, according to a new survey released here on Thursday.

In contrast with the global trend across 27 countries polled by Ipsos MORI for its 'Fake news, filter bubbles, post-truth, and trust' study, India emerged at a robust 22 percent believing that the average person can expect politicians to tell the truth more, compared to a global average of just 10 percent.

Britain at 4 percent was the least trusting of its politicians, alongside Sweden, Hungary and Spain.

Over 19,000 people in 27 countries participated in the survey.

"And 57 percent think there is more lying in politics and the media than there was 30 years ago, up to 71 percent in South Africa, 69 percent in the US and 68 percent in Sweden. This is not the view of everyone, with 11 percent thinking there is less lying, up to 22 percent in India," Ipsos Mori said in a statement.

Among its overall findings around fake news, the survey found that Indians were fairly confident, at 77 percent, that they can distinguish between real and fake news.

Brazil had the highest level of susceptibility to fake news, with 62 percent of respondents from the country saying they had believed a fake news story, with Saudi Arabia not far behind.

India came in at 55 percent on the fake news gullibility charts, with Britain scoring high at just 33 percent of respondents admitting to having fallen prey to fake news.

The survey, released to mark the launch of Ipsos MORI managing director Bobby Duffy's book 'The Perils of Perception', also found that a large number of Indians (74 percent) believe that people tend to live in their own filter bubbles online, interacting with only like-minded people.

The survey notes: "Around 65 percent of people across 27 countries believe that the average person in the country lives in a bubble on the internet, only connecting with people like themselves and looking for opinions they already agree with.

"This varies significantly between countries. The US has the highest level of agreement: 77 percent of Americans believe that others live in a bubble; 74 percent in India; 72 percent in Malaysia; and 71 percent in Sweden. At another end of the scale, only 44 percent agree with this in Japan."

Indian respondents (75 percent) also emerged as particularly confident that they are better informed than their average citizen, in line with Turkey at 76 percent.

"The challenges to our reality-based view of the world are real and pressing, as some of the findings from our study show, with the majority of people saying they've seen fake news, and half saying they've believed it at least for a while," said Duffy.

"There is, however, some hope from the survey. Many have spotted that fake news is being used as a term to attack real facts. And more importantly, we recognize that it's not all downhill on political knowledge, with more thinking the public's knowledge is increasing than decreasing in most countries," he said.