Social media a pied piper leading users to latest cause célèbre
The ultimate weakness of every authoritarian state is that its leaders have no exit strategy, writes
It is the perverse genius of democracy to be the turkey that can vote for Christmas. That is the lesson taken in China, Russia, and Turkey. Applying that lesson is the underlying impulse of governments now in Poland and Hungary. The essential urge behind Brexit and Trump is to cancel Christmas, to avoid the final stuffing of its dispossessed supporters. If you are angry, like those donning the ‘gilet jaune’, or yellow vest, in France, your anger can be unleashed, made visible, to stop the state in its tracks.
History is always changed by events. It is the essential choice between being a statistic and becoming an event that the synergy of social media and the ballot box now allows for. It is the paramilitarism of the Information Age.
Authoritarianism is a temporarily effective counter-measure. How long such regimes last is an open question. Doing away with the rule of law, dumbing down on free expression, and dampening creativity have huge costs. The ultimate weakness of every authoritarian state is that its leaders have no exit strategy. Societies beneath them wither, and people suffer. The fruition of revolt in France spread like electronic semaphore on social media, and coincides with a piece of slow, thoughtful research published last week by Dublin City University academics led by Eugenia Siapera. Their paper, ‘Refugees and Network Publics on Twitter: Networked Framing, Affect, and Capture’, points out that while mainstream media in general “tells the story of the powerful”, it was thought that social media was the place for wider participation. However, this research finds this is not the case.
Do you remember being selected as Time Magazine’s person of the year in 2006? Perhaps you have the cover framed in the lavatory? Maybe not. But ‘You’ did receive the accolade. The strapline on
Time’s front cover read “Yes, you control the Information Age. Welcome to your world.”
Democratisation online hasn’t materialised, however.
Time journalist Lev Grossman said: “It’s about the many wrestling power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.”
Editors, like bishops, government ministers, and Garda commissioners, would be humbled and displaced. That certainly happened. The difference is that now, there is a new few.
What Siapera et al found is that there is a “power law” on Twitter. Most users play only a marginal role. From Twitter, which is the object of this study, I apply the essential findings across all social media. The refugee issue on Twitter they found to be subsumed and instrumentalised by political interests. The voice and role of extreme US-based right-wing groups appear to be prominent on Twitter in the aftermath of the November 2015 terrorist attack on Paris, as shown by the many far-right users. It reflected a growing prominence of right-wing politicians. Political commentators and general accounts that indicate the rising influence of the right-wing political agenda were to the fore. Given what we already know about Facebook, none of this should surprise.
A key part of the anti-refugee narrative online is Islamophobia. From refugees, we can apply the same findings to women, to gay people , and to Jewish people. Highly sexualised misogyny and more covert marginalisation of women is endemic. So, too, is homophobia. If the far-right demonstrates particular levels of Islamophobia, the rest are staples in their diet as well.
Then there is the particular strain of anti-Semitism endemic on the left where Israel has become an all-purpose cover for the resurgence of an old but still venomous virus of anti-Semitism. Look online, and look at Ireland online, and see the tone of the commentary and too much of the antecedents of those promoting ‘BDS’ or ‘Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions’ of Israel. It is a phenomenon that there are openings in the sewer from which different strains of bile course together to poison society.
After the 2015 Paris attacks, Siapera et al found that Twitter was dominated by political and event-related hashtags and humanitarian tags. The refugee issue was politicised in a purposeful way by tags popular with certain political groups and showed strong links between far-right groups and Donald Trump.
There was a similar pattern on Twitter in relation to coverage of sexual attacks on women in Cologne over New Year 2015/2016 and again in relation to the coverage of refugees in Macedonia when that country closed its borders.
There was precious little democracy when a few editors and producers, overseen by fewer owners, owned or controlled traditional media. There was no golden age. At its petty worst, I remember the puffed-up conceit and readily dispensed umbrage of one specialist correspondent — there were such then — who, lording it over his area of reportage, expected to be treated as the emperor’s consul which, in effect, he was. I don’t shed any tears for him. But I do recognise that what has come since is worse. There were and are reporters who, within the limits of their resources and organisations, seek to be meticulous with the truth and have a vocation to share it. Some of that vocation is now online.
But online is not a democratic space. There is no community except as parody. There is no law except that of the jungle. In this newspaper, and on this page, for all its obvious shortcomings, are the names of real people, who actually write the content ascribed to them and who can really be held to account. That accountability does not extend into the ether.
There is a permanent shade between light and darkness. Forces we can perceive if we are vigilant, but seldom see clearly enough to call out by name, construct narratives, enforce views as fact, and then deploy those ‘facts’ to change history. We were here before in the 1930s.
Before Adolf Hitler waged war, he was elected. Before he was elected, he bent the truth to his will.
The moment of truth was when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg told the US Congress that his company made money by selling ads. Well, so does the Irish Examiner. In that one respect, the model is similar. But the divergence is greater.
Traditional media takes editorial responsibility. By any meaningful measure, social media does not. It is as close to a free-for-all as can be imagined. Hence, the othering of refugees, women, gay people, and Jewish people. The free-for-all has another catch, as seen this week on the streets in France and on the floor of the House of Commons in London.
Social media is a pied piper summoning crowds to every latest, untested cause. But having no measure of success except ‘followers’ produced like battery hens for its leaders, and nothing to produce expect more time online to attract more advertising.
It has nothing at all to offer the crowds which converge on the street or the ballot box. Citizenship in this myopia becomes a waste product.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
