Social media signals the end of neutrality as we know it

A key contributor to the much-lamented dumbing down of the media, perhaps one that hammered the last nail in its coffin, is social media. The media, especially broadcast, takes a lot of its cues from social media. And social media, to put it mildly, is wearying.

There was a time when we did not apply our minds to every bit of news we read or heard. Some news shocked us; some news delighted us; a majority of news stories, however, slipped through the large gaps of our disinterest. And it never felt wrong, let alone criminal.

And then, social media arrived to signal the end of neutrality as we know it.  All those feeds appearing on our pocket-sized screens have a simultaneous freezing and charging effect on our eyes and brains. All other activities are suspended forthwith; both organs shift into gear to process the information presented, and, in the time it takes for a housefly to dart from the phone to our nose, our fingers have scripted our take into the compelling fields on our screens.

There are two simple steps in the way social media pans out: There is a continuous flow of news and views. Every incident is somehow reduced to a tangible whipping boy – a person or a group of people — who is then mindlessly whipped or cheered till the next target presents itself.

That’s pretty much the story and history of social media since its inception. Its growth is measurable only in scale, not in depth. If anything, social media has mutinously shrunk public debate, and individual thought, into a binary space. In the process of making your presence felt, you are sucked this way or that, because opinions are flying fast and furious, and always in black and white. You think either for or against everything.

So, having an opinion is non-negotiable, and that opinion is decided not on an objective study of facts but on the compelling persuasiveness of a post. It’s easier to piggyback on someone’s post, get swayed by a comment or let your ideology decide the truth for you, sometimes even before the event has occurred.

So, you hear a protester was tied to the front of a jeep in riot-torn Kashmir by an army major and used as a human shield to protect his men from the protesters. You don’t quite read up but your indignation is promptly registered on a post or two in consonance with so many of your ideological brethren. And these days, ideological moorings are a must on social media. If you have none, just hop on to one of the two extreme bandwagons. There isn’t much else.

Just then, you read a seasoned left-of-centre political commentator saying the major did the right thing as this innovative method saved many lives. A little later, you read another Facebook friend commenting how doing this once was understandable but employing this ruse every time is condemnable. You haven’t been through all the facts of the incident, or the context of army action, for want of time and inclination. There could be complex layers in the situation, that tell you whether the major committed a breach of discipline or saved lives. But then, that is boring, time-consuming and irrelevant.

Research based on  Twitter feeds shows public opinion surges rapidly and gradually veers towards the opinion endorsed by large groups. Social media fosters polarisation, instead of facilitating multiple shades of opinion and ideas.

To be sure, it has its uses — access to varied information, larger community interaction, social comfort, etc. But in the hysterical pitch that is set as the gold standard for visibility, facts are drowned under the barrage of quarter-baked and fierce opinions. And the media makes its job easier by feeding off this high-pitched frenzy.

Long ago, they taught us in journalism schools that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Little did we know then that we will soon have a thriving industry dedicated to it.

The author is a freelance journalist. Views expressed are personal