Now, it has become a very powerful tool in this age of New Media. Experts are looking to quantify the impact it had on US President Donald Trump's election to the White House in 2016. And in India, it's influencing public opinion so much, that even the mainstream media are becoming complicit. CGTN's Ravinder Bawa spoke to a couple of experts in the Indian capital, New Delhi about the rise of "fake news".

During the ongoing protests against the movie 'Padmavat', a school bus was attacked on 24 January this year in Gurugram, neighboring Delhi. A video of the bus being pelted with stones went viral. Gurugram police arrested 18 people but immediately after the arrest a message splashed on social media claiming that five of the accused were Muslims. The police later tweeted saying it was wrong information but by then the damage was done.

PAMELA PHILIPOSE SENIOR JOURNALIST "It's warring that is why in India today we see a lot of attacks for various reasons including their choice of what they eat and people get influenced by information which is skewed and spiked and they are driven to kill people and you create a mob who think alike and kill people. We are unleashing forces which we cannot even control."

In India Fake news has become a reality as the society becomes more and more mediatized. With the accessibility of phones the number of social media users is also rising. Divides are being created for both political and commercial benefits and it is a challenge to fight the phenomenon.

JASKIRAT SINGH SENIOR NEWS EDITOR, THE QUINT "It's the flavor of the season and hot topic in town specially in journalism and almost everywhere everyone who is on social media is privy to the concept of fake news. Newsy content online which has been structured to look believable and has a bias or a tilt which is the foundation of the article itself and it caters to people with a bias and it knows that there are people out there who want to believe in this news and instead of giving them facts there are players who have cropped up who are creating content with news kind of a look catering to the people who would like to believe in that."

It is increasingly becoming difficult to differentiate between factual information and false information. To counter the misinformation many fact-checking sites have come up.

JASKIRAT SINGH SENIOR NEWS EDITOR, THE QUINT "We were repulsed by what was happening in front of us. It is horrific for a journalist that a fake story or a fake tweet. Fake information is getting 10-20 times of engagement than what the real news. The engagement was less. We needed peace to amplify and push back. We wanted to be aggressive and pushing these stories on the public domain and what you are sharing is not true."

Experts believe that along with the service that these sites are providing we have to work on building the capacity of people to ask questions. People have to ask the basic question. Could this be true?

Ravinder Bawa, Delhi.