#PauseBeforeYouForward: Instagram & WhatsApp Misinformation-Literacy Campaign for Meerut Parents

#PauseBeforeYouForward is a BJMC Semester 6 Media Project in which a team of three plans, produces, runs and evaluates a four-week Hindi-language misinformation-literacy campaign aimed at parents (35–60 years) in Meerut who receive most of their news through WhatsApp family groups and Instagram reels.

The campaign teaches three simple habits: pause before forwarding, check the source (who made this, where was it first published), and verify using a reverse image search or a fact-check site. Content is built as a mix of 12 vertical reels (30–60 seconds, edited in Premiere Pro with voice-over cleaned in Audition), 16 static creatives and carousels (designed in Photoshop and CorelDraw), 4 WhatsApp-friendly explainer cards per week and one live Q&A session with a local journalist.

Effectiveness is measured with a pre/post audience survey of about 150 parents recruited through three schools' parent WhatsApp groups (Google Forms, analysed in SPSS or Excel) plus platform insights — reach, saves, shares and completion rate — from the Instagram professional dashboard, used as an industry-standard extra.

The bundle gives you the campaign brief, audience research plan, content calendar logic, production pipeline, survey design, analysis plan, a report chapter scheme for 30 CCA + 70 ESE evaluation, a 12-slide presentation and a viva bank. It is built for a team, with clearly separated roles so each member can defend their own part.

Abstract

Misleading forwards — doctored images, fake government schemes, miracle cures and communal rumours — circulate quickly through family WhatsApp groups in north Indian towns. Parents are frequent forwarders and often the least exposed to media-literacy teaching, which in India has mostly targeted school and college students. This project designs and runs a four-week Hindi digital campaign, #PauseBeforeYouForward, on Instagram and WhatsApp for parents in Meerut, and evaluates it through a pre/post survey measuring awareness of verification tools, self-reported forwarding behaviour and confidence in identifying false content. The deliverables are the campaign content, the platform analytics and a written project report with viva.

Introduction

WhatsApp is the default news channel for many households, and reels have become the fastest way for short messages to spread. Misinformation succeeds because it is emotional, urgent and shared by people we trust. A campaign that works for parents must therefore speak their language (Hindi, local examples, respectful tone), sit where they already are (WhatsApp and Instagram), and ask for a small behaviour change rather than a lecture.

Literature and practice gap

Fact-checking organisations publish debunks, but debunks reach people after the rumour has spread. Research on "prebunking" and inoculation suggests that teaching people common manipulation techniques in advance can make them more resistant. Most Indian media-literacy programmes, however, are delivered in classrooms or in English. Very few student campaigns measure change with a pre/post design; they report likes. This project fills that small gap by combining a real campaign with a simple, honest evaluation.

Objectives in brief

Plan a campaign from audience research; produce platform-native Hindi content; run it for four weeks on a fixed calendar; and measure changes in awareness, confidence and intended behaviour.

Feasibility

• Technical: Premiere Pro, Audition, Photoshop and CorelDraw are available in the department lab; phones with stabilisers are enough for vertical video.
• Operational: three partner schools agree to share the survey link in parent groups; a local journalist volunteers for one live session.
• Economic: organic reach only; optional boost budget capped at ₹1,500 from the team, declared in the report.
• Time: 14 weeks — research and planning (4), production (3), campaign run (4), evaluation and report (3).

Parents in tier-2 cities such as Meerut receive a steady stream of forwarded messages about health cures, government schemes, exam rumours and communal incidents, and many forward them within minutes because the sender is a relative or a known group admin. Existing responses — fact-check articles in English, occasional police advisories, school-level digital-literacy sessions — rarely reach this audience in a format they watch or in the language they speak.

There is a need for a short, Hindi, platform-native campaign that teaches parents three concrete verification habits and for an evaluation that shows whether the campaign changed anything. This project designs, produces, runs and evaluates such a campaign, and documents the full production and research process for the BJ-651 Media Project.

In scope

• Parents (35–60 years) of students in three Meerut schools who agree to take part through school WhatsApp groups.
• Hindi content on Instagram (reels, carousels, stories) and a WhatsApp Channel with weekly explainer cards.
• A pre/post self-report survey and platform insights as the evaluation.
• Production pipeline, content calendar and a written report.

Out of scope

• Fact-checking individual viral claims or naming individuals who spread them.
• Paid advertising beyond a small declared boost.
• Measuring real forwarding behaviour inside private WhatsApp chats — only self-reported behaviour is studied.
• Political or communal content: examples are drawn from health, finance scams and fake scheme messages to keep the campaign neutral.

Design

A campaign-production project with a one-group pre-test/post-test evaluation. The team follows a standard campaign cycle — research, planning, production, execution, evaluation — and the evaluation uses the same questionnaire before and after the four-week run.

Audience research (weeks 1–2)

• Baseline survey (Google Form, Hindi, 18 items): news sources, WhatsApp group count, forwarding frequency, awareness of reverse image search and fact-check sites, a 5-item confidence scale (1–5), and 4 sample messages rated "true / false / not sure".
• Two small focus groups (6–8 parents each) at a partner school's PTM to test tone and examples.

Campaign plan (weeks 3–4)

• Message pillars: Pause (emotion is a warning sign), Source (who made this?), Verify (tools that take one minute).
• Content calendar: 3 reels + 4 creatives per week on Instagram; 1 explainer card + 1 poll per week on the WhatsApp Channel; one live Q&A in week 3.

Production (weeks 5–7)

Research → script (Hindi, 60–110 words per reel) → storyboard → shoot on phone (vertical, 1080×1920, 30 fps) → edit in Premiere Pro (captions burned in, brand lower-thirds) → voice-over cleaned in Audition (noise reduction, loudness around −14 LUFS for social) → creatives in Photoshop/CorelDraw using one colour palette and one Hindi typeface.

Run (weeks 8–11)

Posts go out on a fixed schedule (7:30–8:30 pm, when parents are online, based on the baseline survey). Insights are exported every Sunday.

Evaluation (weeks 12–14)

• Post-survey to the same groups, matched by a self-chosen code (last 4 digits of a school roll number of their child + birth month).
• SPSS/Excel: descriptives; paired t-test (or Wilcoxon signed-rank) on confidence scores; McNemar test on correct identification of each sample message; content-level insight comparison (completion rate by reel format).