Since the boom of connectivity due to the internet, the world is no longer a heterogeneous place. We had already discussed deeply the social media advent and its few concerns in ‘Issue 02’ of this journal; in this one we will not reiterate those points but will discuss a new kind of space that has been created, or we could say that a new way of activism has been introduced to society, which can be referred to as ‘social media activism’ or ‘activism from home’ in line with ‘work from home.’ We would make a comment on this new phenomenon through the analysis of its authenticity, significance, and role in the social and political sphere.
The general elections of 2024 in India were the very first democratic dance after the disruption of AI and heavy generalization of social media even at the grassroots levels. And we saw an unprecedented way of appealing and advertising different political fronts to the public; AI-generated videos surfaced in bulk. In a nutshell, every player tried their best in shaping the narrative in their favour. Obviously, it was not possible to generate a natural flow of such narratives, so they required a lot of social media experts and created a team, popularly known as the IT cell, to curate this paradigm shift. Earlier people were sceptical about the disruptive role that could be played by the IT cells, but subsequently, after the elections, everyone accepted this as reality. To extrapolate an issue that might go unnoticed in a general setup or to create an unnatural wave in favour of an organization to influence others to be part of it, these methods are now one of the major arsenals of any social and political front.
Many people also connected it to the term ‘Gen Z,’ meaning that the current generation (known as Gen Z) is all the time on social media, and a major part of their opinions is shaped in that space, so the shift in the air is very obvious. However, looking into the real picture, we can generally agree on the middle path that yes, there are certain sections of the society that get influenced by the social media surfacing, but one thing that can’t be ignored is still a major chunk of the Indian population belongs to the grassroots section, and they play a game-changing role.
When certain organizations or people saw the opportunity to really create an influence through social media, they started capitalizing on it. In the last two years, we have witnessed many such attempts both in India and globally. Radical change of regime in Bangladesh and Nepal proved this idea to be really disruptive, where it all started with such movements and ultimately changed the whole structure of governance in the nations. Many people agitated for such attempts in the Indian setup; a few even tried it, but so far it is unforeseeable. They really believe that they can bring a revolution through social media; perhaps it might be true for nations that we already mentioned, but specifically for India, it is like pulling a rabbit out of the hat.
Moreover, if we really see the nations where it happened, there was real scarcity and an open space for such a revolution to take place; undoubtedly, social media was a catalyst, but it was not the core element. In India as of now there is not any real scope of revolution; nevertheless, a few people always try to create one out of nowhere. But there is scope for activism, genuine and authentic activism, not with any power-seeking or malicious intent to defame or destabilize the working of the constitutional machinery. Even a few social media pages or creators are doing a commendable job to put the real picture in front of the people and work as a public whistleblower. They are not backed by any political party or organization and also often face consequences for that, but they stick to their motto and do not get involved in the agenda of any section. We really need such attempts at activism. Unfortunately, many people who get into social media activism are either planted by an organization to peddle a certain agenda or are so hypothetically optimistic that they think they can really make regime change and apparently lose their way.
India as a nation has survived so far with such complex diversity only because of the political maturity of the people and trust in the constitutional machinery of the state, and no social media or technology can change it easily unless the situation itself demands it. It’s not that the movements, protests, or revolutions have not happened in this nation; if you go back to the 70s, the JP Movement was a kind of revolutionary movement in that time, and the latest such attempt was the Anna Movement in 2013, but those were organic attempts of the people, not a deliberately created or pushover movement. This nation is mature enough to mobilize as per the need, and whatever that can happen in this nation must always come from the grassroots in a bottom-up manner.
— Saurabh Srivastava