India, Sept. 28 -- The Tricity's monsoon season brought with it the usual side effects-overflowing drains, traffic snarls, and umbrellas surrendering to the wind. But this year, another storm brewed online. A widely followed local social media page sensationalised a video claiming that a bridge in the Rose Garden had collapsed under the weight of the rains. By evening, the bridge remained exactly where it had always been: intact, steady and perhaps amused at its premature obituary.

That small episode revealed something much larger. The city today is experienced as much on screens as on its streets. Social media has become a parallel civic space-sometimes a tool for genuine problem-solving, sometimes a theatre for exaggeration and misinfo...