How social media subverting the electoral politics!

 

How social media subverting the electoral politics!

The internet has created channels of communication that play a key role in circulating news, empowering the social media to change not just the message, but the very dynamics of political and social narration. The social network that encompasses websites such as Facebook, You Tube, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp and the like are excising unbridled power over the minds of people, without any regulation and control. The use of social platforms in election processes, global conflicts, right and left wing politics and diplomacy has become less private and more susceptible to the public perception, with online media  banking on passive consumers, while the content creation is dominated by a small group of aggressive users.

The social media has become a powerful instrument in the hands of people. During the peak of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, the internet and social media played a huge role in facilitating information. The Egyptians used Facebook, Twitter and You Tube as a means to communicate and organize demonstrations and rallies against President Hosni Mubarak who ruled Egypt for 30 years and ultimately they succeeded in overthrowing him.

Though the social media has become an effective tool of communication, it has far negative effect depending on who uses and how it is used.   These days people heavily rely on social platforms for news and information and then form opinions, based on incorrect and distorted narratives.  A 2016 Pew Research study found that 62% of adults in America get news on social media.

The Social media has become detrimental to freedom and democracy due to abuse by its users. According to Prof. Ronald Deibert," the world of social media is more conducive to extreme, emotionally charged, and divisive types of content than it is to calm, principled considerations of competing or complex narratives." Though fake news may generate some utility for consumers, the spread of disinformation makes it harder for them to seek out the truth.

The US Presidential Election 2016 was an example of how the social media was used by Russia to influence public opinion.  The tactics such as propaganda, trolling, and bots were adopted to leak fake news like "Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump.” The pro-Trump news was four-times more than that of his rival Hillary Clinton; and a third of the pro-Trump tweets were generated by bots. The Russians interfered in the election with the objective of harming the campaign of Clinton, boosting the candidacy of Trump and increasing political and social discord in American Society. The Internet Research Agency, based in St. Petersburg, described as a troll farm, created thousands of social media accounts that purported to be Americans supporting radical political groups, and promoted events in support of Trump, reaching millions of social media users, with fabricated articles and disinformation, originating from the Russian government-controlled media.

Today, there is a trend in India of people not reading newspapers, nor listening to TV news channels and not interested in truth, hugely relying on unverified posts and disinformation dished out on social network platforms. The social media played a very important role in Narendra Modi’s spectacular victory in 2014 general election. It emerged as a game-changer. Soon after he became the Prime Minister, Modi was rated by Facebook as the world’s second most popular leader.  And in 2019, he emerged as the most liked leader on Facebook, with more than 43.5 million likes on his personal page and 13.7 million on his official page.  By October 2019, he became the most-followed elected leader in the world on Instagram, with 30 million followers.

How the social network could manipulate and influence public opinion, its users  not having access to true information and hard facts, is evident from a  recent survey conducted by India Today over smart phones ; 77%  satisfied with Modi handling the corona virus crisis, despite the fact the positive cases  (the highest spike per day in the world) and the deaths, as on August 22,2020, crossed 3 million and  56,000  respectively; 69%  saying India gave befitting reply to  the Chinese aggression in Ladakh, in spite of 20 soldiers , including Col Santosh  Babu, being killed  in Galwan Valley and China not vacating the occupied territory;2/3 rating the Modi government's performance on economic front satisfactory , when the economy has totally collapsed and the nation is facing the ‘greatest crisis since independence’ due to the  unprecedented  and the most severe lockdown of a massive country of 1.3 billion people, with crores  of jobs lost and the millions of migrant workers left high and dry.  The truth and the perception are polls apart. This is how the perception of Modi’s persona of larger than life is created and sustained through a concerted propaganda on the social media.

All this has dented the image of social media, resulting in its deep fallout on ethical quotient. The Indian general election 2019 stands out for the new low in public discourse, with the pervasiveness of fake news and misinformation, flouting the ethical norms relating to political campaign. The communal polarization and divisive contents on the social media were a shameful history of the run-up to the general election.

On August 14, 2020, the Wall Street Journal carried a report “Facebook’s hate speech rules collide with Indian politic”, accusing the world’s largest social media company, which owns WhatsApp, having a mammoth following of 400 million in India, of violating its policy of banning hate speeches and of allowing the communally sensitive contents by BJP leaders for commercial consideration in the largest democracy that has its largest market.  The Facebook India Executive Ankhi Das warning that any action against the ruling party leaders for hate speeches would hamper its business interests in India. The “Facebook executives, particularly Das, cited business imperatives while choosing not to apply banning hate speech rules  to individuals and groups linked to the BJP, despite them being internally flogged for promoting or participating in violence.”And  Raghav Chedda of Aam Admi Party, even suggesting  the Delhi Assembly’s Peace and Harmony Committee “will investigate whether Facebook executives were complicit in the orchestration of  the February (2020) riots in North East Delhi  that left 534  people dead and  nearly 400 injured.”

K.C. Venugopal, General Secretary of the Congress, wrote a letter to the Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding “a high level inquiry into the company’s India Head favorable treatment accorded to the ruling party leaders, disregarding abuses, hatred and lies" and completing the probe in a month or two and making its findings public, including the hate speech posts since 2014 that were allowed. The letter accuses the Facebook of “willing to participant in thwarting the rights and values India’s founding leaders had sacrificed their lives for.” Rahul Gandhi reacted, "We cannot allow any manipulation of our hard-earned democracy thorough bias, fake news and hate speeches.” Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union IT Minister, asserted that “everybody regardless of their ideology got the right to air their views.”  That is true, but a social media company cannot be biased towards the ruling party, discarding the professional ethics. How can there be free and fair elections when the social media platforms allow communal content to polarize the people and flare up communal riots?

Shashi Tharoor,Chairman, Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT, has summoned the Facebook CEO on September 2, to explain the charge of his company acting in a politically partisan manner to benefit the ruling party of Modi. For similar allegations of social media giants - Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google - abusing their platforms, the US Congress last month summoned the CEOs of these companies.  In the meantime, some 11 employees of the Facebook wrote to the Company denouncing the ‘anti-Muslim bigotry.’

The social network platforms are unable to check the users abusing them to spread fake news, hate speeches and disinformation to influence public opinion in a partisan manner. The digital media companies must not be allowed to pass off as platforms and allow them to be turned into tools to distort history and defame leaders, resort to false narrative, spread patently inflammatory content instigating violence against a particular community, endangering constitutional democracy. The social media should not be allowed to subvert the electoral politics.