The democratization of the Internet has led to several magnificent changes in society, and the most significant one out of those is the strongest ever connectivity. Nowadays, if you are a resident of the most cornered place in the world, you still have the very same access to all the information that is happening in any part of the world.
This disruption has been created by ‘Social Media.’ Media’s function has been the dissemination of any information in the society and inciting a discussion in the society on a mass scale. But, with the embark of the 21st century, the most revolutionary change that started in the world was the flooding of the information in the society with the help of the internet, and in this the role of catalyst is played by social media, which gave a mic in every hand and pulled a journalist out of every person.
There are multiple progressive changes that have been brought by social media in our society, but here our discussion is something different from this proposition of boon or curse. Here, our matter of scrutiny would not be how beneficial or harmful social media has been for society, but we will put our heed to a bit rare but still perceivable thought: ‘How organic are social media discussions?’
Every new month comes with a new matter for discussion on the social media platforms; in fact, now the topics even change with the week or days. This is called a ‘trend’ in the social media terminology. Here, you get to see a trending page that shows what the burning topics of discussion are so that you could also contribute to the fire with your opinion. Now, the question is, who decides what will be trending topics or the matters for the discussion? So as per the social media platforms, the algorithm picks the most discussed topics or issues and ranks them as per the number of people participating in that particular discussion. Fair enough?
Well, it is not as simple as it looks. Yes, the platforms are right in their methodology, but what is blind to them is there is no surety that every social media account posting their opinion has a person behind it. Nowadays, a social media account can be created faster and easier than cooking two-minute Maggie. There is no such verification before account creation, which can put up any barrier for the false or duplicate profiles; as the social media platforms are in a race to make their place as seamless as possible for their users, in that setup, how can someone even expect originality? When the source of the information or opinion itself is not credible enough to be real, then what could be said about the trending topics, which are only the result of such multiple sources of opinion?
Now, let’s address the major game that is going on behind the veil. All of the major organizations across the fields have a PR (public relations) team, which manages this system where they create a fake discussion around their agenda either with the help of such dedicated agencies or with their own team, which pushes their agenda through fake accounts, bot accounts, and also by funding popular social media pages. This is a very common phenomenon that can be seen across all the genres, whether celebrities, public figures, movies, or organizations (of all kinds). This phenomenon not only floods people’s timelines on social media but also creates a fake debate or discussion around them to shape people’s opinions. This is a new kind of power dynamic that can be seen in the realm of social media, and the deadliest thing about that is it works in such a subtle manner that it often looks genuine and organic.
Power, as has been defined by political philosophers, is the fundamental ability to influence or control the behaviour, actions, or beliefs of others, even against their will, to achieve desired outcomes, manifesting through coercion, persuasion, or institutional structures. Now the easiest method to shape public opinion is to control what they see or observe, as from what they observe, they make their opinion and then their decision from the same mindset, no matter if what they observed was organic or planted, as they can’t see any visible difference.
The most severe consequence of this phenomenon could be its impact upon elections. As people often vote on what they see, and the majority of their social observation is being done on social media, hence they vote for the issues, debates, or discussions they find to be most profound or, to be precise, which persuade them the most. If we truly scrutinize most of the debates around different social issues on social media in the last one or two years, we will get to know how starkly different the reality and what surfaced over social media were. However, they still played a very crucial role in shaping public opinion at that time.
Henceforth, the consequence of this is not as light as it looks. The potential impact of this phenomenon on the change of the mental state of the society is alarming. And the most concerning part of the story is the majority of the population who are falling prey to this trap is our youth, the future of any society or nation. This problem is not just limited to the domestic segment; in fact, it has all the potential to impact any nation even more severely than attacking their military posts. In this century, the military war on the border would be secondary, and the narrative or psychological war would be primary. As hacking into the mind of the youth of any nation and shaping their thoughts as you desire is all that an enemy nation would wish for. As this weapon would not create sound or chaos so that people wake up to it, it will do the deadliest attack in the most subtle and silent manner.
To tackle this as a challenge, firstly we need to acknowledge this as an issue; the government and all the stakeholders of the society need to align their thoughts in this aspect and focus on this as a matter of concern. Regulations or new laws to combat this and more social awareness among the people regarding the inorganic and simulated nature of the social media platforms might stabilize the situation.
— Saurabh Srivastava