The
recent expose about Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot allegedly buying
‘Likes’ for his official Facebook page in Istanbul, the ‘Twitter’ war between
the ruling Congress and the main Opposition BJP and an outrageous tweet by
Congress leader Shakeel Ahmed virtually defending the terrorist outfit ‘Indian
Mujahideen’ have once again brought the spotlight back on the role of social
media.
The
events also saw the social media directly or indirectly setting the agenda for
the mainstream media and thereby reviving the debate on the relationship
between the two, particularly in a developing country like India.
According
to a joint study by market research firm IMRB International and the Internet
and Mobile Association of India, India currently has nearly 20 million Twitter
users. Facebook has also reported that its Monthly Active Users in the country
doubled to 78 million in Q1 2013.
With
a burgeoning number of users joining the online community world wide, the
importance of social media is significant - not only for the purpose of
connecting with the people we know and befriending strangers but also for the
purpose of disseminating information thereby informing, influencing, moulding
and building mass opinions.
The
Anna Movement against corruption in India exemplified the power of social
media. While critics claim that the anti-graft crusade was a television
generated movement, the fact remains that a large number of youth who joined
the campaign across the country were deeply influenced by the social media,
although aided and abetted by the visual media.
We
have witnessed the use of social media technology during the widespread unrest
in the Middle East – Libya, Syria, Egypt and Bahrain.
In
fact, the experiences in Egypt and Tunisia have prompted the Syrian Government
to maintain a strong surveillance on the use of new media technologies. The
Chinese and Pakistanis have often restricted access to social media on
political and cultural grounds.
In
India too, the Central Government has made futile attempts to censor social
media but have backtracked following huge hue and cry.
In
neighbouring Nepal, the importance of these informal channels was recognised
after the February 2005 takeover by the then King Gyanendra, when almost all
the formal channels of information were blocked and only a few online media and
blogs remained to share information with the public.
It
is not only during unrest and rebellions that the social media has come handy.
They have proved to be immensely invaluable during natural catastrophes and
even emergency situations like the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai.
However,
what’s more interesting is the emergence of social media not only as a crucial
source of information for the mainstream media but also as a key competitor in
the race for breaking news.
It
is said that Twitter users posted the message about the death of singer Whitney
Houston twenty-seven minutes before the mainstream media broke the news.
According
to the Telegraph, tweets were posted at a rate of around 70 tweets every five
seconds during the Mumbai terror attacks. Blogs and social networking sites
were abuzz with news, photo, audio-visual and eyewitness accounts as the events
unfolded.
Back
home, in India, we have had former UN Under Secretary General and Minister of
State for External Affairs, Shashi Tharoor, who lost his first job in the
council of Ministers following a series of tweets revealing juicy information
about the goings on in the highly lucrative Indian Premier League. The young,
media savvy author and columnist was not the only loser in the episode. His
friend and now wife Sunanda Pushkar lost her stakes (sweat equity) in the Kochi
team, IPL wizard Lalit Modi lost his job and Kerala lost its only IPL team.
The
episode provided lot of masala to the mainstream media. So did the tweets of
actor director Farah Khan on the SRK-Sirish Kunder spat. The tweets of film
stars and starlets often grab media headlines.
Instead
of calling the media to air their enlightened views, on subjects ranging from
tooth aches to child births, the celebrities, including the Big B and SRK, have
taken to the social media to reach out to their fans, hit out at their rivals
and remain in news.
The
politicos have also joined the bandwagon, with the BJP leaders taking the lead.
If Gujarat Chief Minister and Leader of BJP’s Poll Campaign Committee Narendra
Modi is among the celebs with huge twitter following, Leader of Opposition
Sushma Swaraj’s tweets keep the party beat correspondents updated with the
latest in the party and parliament while veteran leader L K Advani has shocked
and surprised many within and outside the party with his blogs on issues
ranging from media to Modi and films to foreign policy. Digvijay Singh and
ManishTiwari lead the Congress offensive on the social media.
Lauding
the role of social media, particularly in cornering senior journalists Barkha
Dutt and Vir Sanghvi in the wake of the Nira Radia tapes, even as mainstream
media remained a mute spectator, columnist Sachin Kalbag wrote in the Mail
Today, “ Online media in India rarely, if ever, gets its due. But it is social
media, with its ability to become, as a senior journalist put it, a lynch mob
that is something that media professionals would do well to remember. It is
debatable whether a "lynch mob" or a "mass movement" would
describe the phenomenon. It does not matter, really, because social media has
well and truly arrived in India.
A
series of projects funded by the Australian Research Council, UNESCO, UNDP and other
international non-government organisations have been undertaken to enlist new
media to help poverty alleviation in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
Although
each initiative is adapted to local circumstances, the common objective is to
give local communities the skills to set up their own independent and
community-based media resources to address issues that are important to these
communities. Such issues might include health, education or politics, and the
media used range from local radio stations to new media forms such as websites.
Finding
a Voice: Making technological change socially effective and culturally
empowering is one of the leading projects in the programme.. Taking a
participatory approach to research, aiming to empower people through finding
their own voice, the project looks at using old and new media technologies to
reduce poverty in poor communities in terms of people's participation. This is
achieved by assessing people's capacity to participate in various activities
such as self expression and freedom of speech.
Of
late, Government departments in India too have taken to the social media to
reach out to the new generations. One of the success stories in this regard has
been Census 2011.
According
to Zee Research Group (ZRG), Census 2011, a service from the Census Commission
of India under the Union Home Ministry, has been one of the best offering of
the Government on the social networking media. Census 2011 was logged on 24x7
on Facebook with live updates, comments and responses from the department.
The
office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India thought of the
Facebook idea soon after it released the momentous Census 2011 findings. The
result has been more than satisfying.
According
to Registrar General and Commissioner of Census 2011, Dr C Chandramouli, “This
initiative really helped to connect with the people. The responses of the
people have been overwhelming. People have been very inquisitive and thoughtful
throughout and have been actively participating and commenting on our regular
updates.” He is not averse to criticism and looks forward to some constructive
suggestions to engage the public better.
Several
other Ministries and departments including the Ministry of External Affairs too
have joined the bandwagon.
With
India emerging as a leading Facebook market, the anxiety of the Government to
reach out to GenX is understandable. A Tata Consultancy ‘GenY Survey 2011-2012’
of nearly 12,300 high school students across 12 Indian cities found that 85
percent of the students use Facebook.
Interestingly,
Socialogue, a survey on social media trends and behaviour, revealed that 56
percent of Indians would prefer giving up television than giving up social
networking sites. It revealed that nearly 37 per cent of people prefer a large
network of friends as compared to close friends.
A
study earlier this year by Mumbai's Iris Knowledge Foundation and the Internet
and Mobile Association of India claimed that 78 million Facebook users will
"wield a tremendous influence" over 160 Lok Sabha seats in the
upcoming general elections. In these so-called "high impact"
constituencies, Facebook users constitute either 10% of the total vote, or
command greater numbers than the margin of victory in the 2009 election.
However,
there are also equally significant statistics that do not support such findings
and are also worrisome as far as social media is concerned. Although India
ranked third this year in the number of active users next only to China and US,
yet the overall Internet penetration in the country is a mere 11 per cent.
India
on last count had 120 million active Internet users, up from 81 million users
in 2010. Of the 10 top countries on active number of users, India is at the
bottom in regard to levels of penetration achieved as against China with a
penetration rate of 40 per cent and an active user base of 511 Million. China
is followed by United States with 240 million users.
The
social media has also become a platform for propagating separatism, communal
hatred and vulgarity. Morphed photos of the Muslim-Buddhist violence in Myanmar
were extensively used to force hundreds of people belonging to the North East
to flee the southern metropolis of Bangalore.
Unsubstantiated
reports and gossip are often passed on as genuine information and unlike
mainstream media, which has stringent filtration mechanisms in place, many of
these fly by the night websites post fiction as facts, throwing to winds
journalistic norms such as accuracy and objectivity. Blackmailing has become a
norm in the absence of any monitoring or regulatory system. Sensationalism is
the only criterion and page hits the only yardstick.
Kashmiri
and Sikh separatists are aggressively exploiting the platform to provoke and
lure the youth to their ranks whereas the so-called Internet Hindus are hitting
back with vengeance. The depth to which the discourse have fallen is appalling.
Nicknames such as ‘feku’ and ‘pappu’ have been given to leaders of national
political parties by their ideological opponents taking the political debate to
an all time low.
The
negative impact of the growing influence of social media is also causing
concern to sociologists and educationists.
According
to ‘Global Youth Online Behaviour Survey’ conducted by Microsoft, India ranked
third in the list of 25 countries where 53 percent of the surveyed children
aged between eight and 17 admitted that they were victims of cyber bullying.
Even
as they are increasingly coming to terms with social media or citizen
journalism as a major source of information, leading mainstream media
journalists feel that the impact of social media has been overestimated.
Asserting
that mere information is not journalism, Richard Sambrook, the former director
of the BBC Global News Division, says one gets a lot of things, when one opens
up Twitter in the morning, but not journalism.
“Journalism
needs discipline, analysis, explanation and context. It is still a profession”,
says Sambrook. According to him, the value that gets added with journalism is
judgment, analysis and explanation - and that makes the difference.
While
the impact of social media should not be underestimated and rather harnessed
effectively for nation building, it is important to ensure that anti-social and
anti-national elements don’t get away scot-free under the garb of freedom of
speech and expression.
Social
media will have to be made accountable to the society and the nation at large.
It is too powerful a tool to be allowed to flourish and demolish societal and
national interests in splendid isolation.
