The tyranny of social media

Relatively cheap, quick and easily accessible to those with access to communication gadgets such as computers, tablets and cellular phones, social media has not only turned large sections of populations into consumers but producers and distributors of content.

One of the many consequences is that traditional media has suffered a decline in revenues.

Such is the cumulative power of the new industry that major traditional media platforms now follow – in truth kowtow – and report on social media posts as news items.

This is arguably one of the many incentives that power social media users who, like journalists, not only get to experience the thrill of their breaking news capacity, but are also desirous of recognition, adulation and influence over sections of the cyber population who become audiences, fans, temporary and long-term constituencies of sorts.

Some are thus inclined to go on what could be described as “the tyranny of the posting overdrive.”

What is more is that these platforms can, and sometimes, serve as theatres in which all manner of narcissistic aggrandisement manifest without limit, catwalks where models confuse nudity for transparency, dungeons in which the injured wail for pains over which their audiences can do little if at all, sites of merriment and shrines where the brave and less filtered worship at what passes off as fact and knowledge.

For better or for worse, we have inherited the world of our parents and some of its values inasmuch as we have left it far behind.

We have thus entered an era whose mores are under construction and may probably remain so for a considerable period of time to come.

Supposing that this view has some merit, it may eventually come to alter the way in which human beings – the cyber population at least – perceive how and what to communicate about themselves, others and the world around them.

Sensible people doubtlessly agree that the plurality that social media offers to the so-called marketplace of ideas is, in principle, a positive and welcome development.

This is provided that the information that is its currency of trade is truthful and enhances recipients’ knowledge and understanding of the subject matter.

But what if the information falls short of these considerations, is injurious to the reputation of individuals and institutions, inciteful, distorted, bigoted or potentially harmful to groups of people as a matter of general tendency rather than specific incidents on which the law could be an easy resort?

What when the culprits are people of high standing – even if they may not necessarily be of overwhelming high repute – in society?

Additionally, the release into the public space of confidential private discussions is generally frowned upon even by recipient beneficiaries whose instincts warn of a similar fate befalling them in case the generous bug excites the interlocutor at their next happenstance encounter with a mere stranger.

On the governance of social media platforms themselves, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes recently argued for breaking up Facebook from Instagram and WhatsApp under the US antitrust laws.

He lamented his and the early Facebook team “for not thinking more about how the News Feed algorithm could change our culture, influence elections and empower nationalist leaders”.

Beneath this important debate is yet another minefield: the politics and economics of data collection and data analytics, the core business of social media platforms.

Developing countries cannot remain bystanders to the debate which is manifesting elsewhere in the world in the form of proxy trade wars.

All this begs the question: how do we envisage the public governance space were such a culture to mature and permeate through substantial parts of the nook and cranny of society?

This question exercises the minds of people from media practitioners, government officials, academics to social commentators and many others the world over.

Those who eschew the complexity of social intercourse would undoubtedly be prone to the supposed quick fixes of diktat in the erroneous belief that they secure a tranquil state of existence ever after.

But life is nevertheless too dynamic to lend itself easily to such imaginations.

While the law will continue to take care of transgressions and abuses in social media as it does traditional media, especially for those who can afford it, society’s long-term salvation lies in the capacity of the education system to develop learners’ critical thinking skills and capacity to examine and analyse information that is presented before them.

In view of the damage that apartheid education and socialisation continue to exert on the nation’s thinking processes, this should be a priority for all educators, which implies that the educator must assume greater prominence in public discourse.

And, as a society, it is time that we broke ranks with the tradition in which we focus our collective attention to education only during the release of matric results and the January school reopening period.

In the past, certainly before 1994, there existed a community of people who made it their business to cultivate the epistemological horizons of communities – especially young people.

Without necessarily being formal teachers, these activists made unsolicited interventions whenever they thought that certain courses of action were in need of greater theoretical infusion or vice versa.

Where are they now?

Additionally, just like formal learning, we must rekindle the pride of the place of lifelong learning in the consciousness of society.

More generally, in the era of the no-speed-limit streets of social media, government would be well advised to strengthen its capacity for development communication and position as a repository of credible information which ups the nation’s level of the gaze on matters social, economic, cultural, and political, the better to support society’s sustained efforts in coming to terms with its development.

This would not only lay the basis for informed and empowered citizenship but the potential tools to subordinate the trivial impulses of information merchants in the wider social space.

– Ratshitanga is a consultant, and a social and political commentator (mukoni@interlinked.co.za)

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