Social media was being predicted to be an end to the champagne baths of the press barons that was going to set loose a new era of a truth unfettered by corporate and political interests.
As things have played out, only half of that prophecy seems to have come true. The financial health of news institutions has taken a severe beating, with one oak tree of a solid regional paper after another falling down, closing shop for good. Even the behemoths, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, are in a tough space, constantly laying off employees and restructuring. And even amongst these, the Journal has been kept afloat only due to an acquisition by Rupert Murdoch, who is holding on to the publication because of sentimental value, not really clear about the road ahead. The Post also has a benefactor in Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who has acquired it, seemingly as a vanity project, presumably to set it up for the future, though not much has happened on that front.
It would have been all well and good if these financial tectonic shifts were limited to the print medium. Leading television channels like the CNN have had to cut back on investigative journalists because the numbers weren’t adding up, with fewer and fewer millennials consuming the news the way it was being delivered.
Even sports journalism giants, like ESPN, are struggling. The network lost more than a million subscribers in the last two months alone.
Well, tough luck, you say; that it was good for them while it lasted but now, citizen journalism is going to inform the public directly?
Well, not really. All over the world, we see social media leading to a retribalisation where people belonging to different parts of the same country, or to the same parts but from different ethnicities or religious denominations, or belonging to the same part of a country, having the same sect and ethnicity but belonging to different economic classes, will have completely different views of what is going on around them.
The ongoing situation in Aleppo is being interpreted completely differently depending on whom one asks.
You would have seen the videos of last messages by the residents of East Aleppo. It’s gruelling stuff; and the residents are speaking to global audiences directly, without their opinions having to be moderated by any editorial judgment by the mainstream media, so good, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM5RBV9Wy_w
But by now, you would have also seen the backlash. Specially in the form of pro-Assad, pro-Iran and pro-Russia groups. See this video below (online readers only) of Eva Bartlett, a Canadian journalist who has earned her stripes in Gaza, fighting the Zionist regime in matters of media.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUhe87r5bEE
And now, see this other one, by another media concern called In The Now.
The first video, in which Ms Bartlett questioned the sources of the news that we are consuming about the crisis in Aleppo, has gone viral. When she says, for instance, that one of the oft-cited concerns is a one-man-shop based out of Coventry in the UK, our apprehensions about the post-truth era are stoked. Are we being played here?
It is easy to criticise both these videos. In the second one, the lady is calling into question how these videos have started appearing all of a sudden and that it was a carefully coordinated exercise. That’s not exactly an argument-against. Most of the successful rights’ movements in the world were efforts that were remarkably well-coordinated. The Gandhian Salt March and subsequent non-violent movement, which inspired the entire colonised world, was a well-thought-out hearts-and-minds exercise which was engineered to react with the sensibilities of the people back in the UK.
It is the first video, however, that makes me see things a little more clearly. Despite my deep concerns about how fake news is altering political realities, I really can’t agree with someone who says an autocrat has “the overwhelming support” of the people. The 2014 Syrian elections that she cited (88.7pc voted for Assad) were a bit of a sham.
Now the problem here is that one cannot say with complete confidence whether the videos of the other side were completely true either. Only speaking for myself, I am more inclined to believe them because I am opposed to autocrats and it happens to be an autocrat that they are opposed to. Confirmation bias; I am a walking, talking stereotype. If tomorrow, the Assad regime were to be toppled (though that ship seems to have sailed) and the rebels were to have a dictator of their own, I would be on the other side, believing most of what they would throw my way. At least I know my cognitive bounds. Our passionate keyboard warriors, men and women otherwise much smarter than I, don’t.
Though, in theory, power has been given to the people at large, what few realise is that it could actually be easier to manipulate social networks for moneyed concerns. The mathematical analysis of networks (any networks, not just social media) reveals that it is easier to manipulate networks that have, say, 700 nodes, as opposed to one where there are only five nodes. Taking the five-node example, one would have had to control, more or less, 100pc of the nodes to manipulate the network. If you could play your cards right, however, a control over even 15pc of the nodes of the 700-node network can get you a measure of control.
If you have 15pc of the “bots” on social media that are intelligently programmed, a lot is in your hands.
Some readers would remember the Kony 2012 video. It was a viral media campaign designed to ask the world leaders to take action against Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony. It was a viral sensation, a rarity for videos of a longer length. It had some pretty slick production values that somehow didn’t kill any of its earnestness.
But it also got its share of critics. Africa researcher Alex de Waal accused Invisible Children Inc, who had made the film, of “peddling dangerous and patronising falsehoods,” criticised the campaign as “naive” for “elevating Kony to a global celebrity, the embodiment of evil,” that might only help him as a terrorist and cult leader.
Not taking sides here. But the world is extremely complicated. All sides have their story, if not their own directors-of-photography, non-linear editors and writers.
Let’s move closer to home, to a local issue. A hyperlocal issue, in fact. Older visitors to Nathiagali would remember the Miranjani House. The heirs of the now deceased couple that had built the house have all allied with each other against the eldest brother of the brood, whom they accuse of trying to usurp the property.
The video itself, though not Kony 2012 material, is enchanting. It has a superb choice of soundtrack and a rare production value afforded by the melancholic nostalgia that only old photographs can elicit. It will have you baying for the other side’s blood. But let us not forget that they have their own side of the story as well.
If we are to fashion a survival guide to the post-truth era, we need to stick to a set of principles. Stick to what Noam Chomsky calls “Cartesian Common Sense.”
Opposition to dictators, regardless of how well-dressed and photogenic they might be. A regard for human rights that has a value higher than any other, even legitimately desirable end that somehow necessitate the suspension of those rights.
The problem of fake news might seem very modern. But it traces its origins from ancient meditations on the nature of the truth. It is set to engage the best minds of the present and coming era. We wish these truth-scientists as much luck as we do the lab-coat heroes working, say, on a cure for cancer or sustainable energy.
