‘Social media help mobilise communities, voice concerns’

Social media help mobilise communities, organise protests and collectively voice concerns, said broadcast journalist Najia Ashar on Wednesday during a dialogue titled ‘The Power of #Hashtags: Navigating the Social Media Landscape’.

The aim of the fifth instalment of the Ziauddin University’s interactive ‘ZU Dialogues’ was to get opinions and analyses of experts on how strong a hashtag is, how much influence social media have on their users, the right and positive use of social media, and how we can bring an optimistic change in our society by using social media.

Answering a question about social media trends, Najia, who is also the president of Global Neighbourhood for Media Innovation, said: “They create a community of voices to talk about specific topics. The great thing about hashtags is that they bring communities together during natural disasters, tragedies and sufferings.

“The biggest hashtag of 2015 was #BlackLivesMatter. It was used over nine million times by social media users. The madrasa rape case, the MeToo movement, the Shahzaib murder case, the Aurat March, the motorway rape case — they wouldn’t have gotten that much attention if there were no social media.

“No doubt social media help mobilise communities, organise protests and raise their collective voices against the unquestioned authorities, as big media houses are influenced by the power corridors and they can’t go against their financial interests.”

She disclosed that there is still a deadlock on the amended rules for social media use. The third version was published by the Ministry of Information Technology & Telecommunication earlier this month, but the most problematic provision about the removal of unlawful online content remains unchanged, and digital rights activists and social media companies are against it.

She advised social media users to be mindful of the General Data Protection Regulation, as many social media apps ask people to allow data tracking, so whenever you are downloading an app, you can turn it off from the settings to avoid being tracked. “Educate yourself about cookies, location; read the terms and conditions; don’t give companies the privilege to decide what they can do with our data.”

Cyber bullying

Tehmina Lodhi, associate professor and principal of the Ziauddin College of Media Sciences, said: “Cyber bullying can be very devastating for a person psychologically as well as physically. According to a research, around 13 per cent of teens report being cyber bullied at least once in their life, and that’s quite a high percentage.

“There’s so much access to viral content, pornography; so much racist content, homophobic, religious content; so we should keep people informed about their rights, how they can handle them because it’s quite difficult for a person to handle it individually.”

To a question about social media’s effect on a person’s mental health, she said multiple studies have found that there is a heavy link with depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-harm and even suicidal thoughts; it also promotes negative experiences.

“You get a biological high when someone clicks the ‘like’ button on your picture on social media, and people get obsessed about it so much. It’s just like playing with your mind, and you have absolutely no idea how much long-term damage it’s doing to us.

“People are getting influenced by what’s happening on social media. It’s replacing our family time. We really need to keep it in check because this is going to be the biggest pandemic that we’ll have to go through in the coming years.”

Independent media

Kamal Siddiqi, director of IBA’s Centre for Excellence in Journalism, said: “Social media are much more independent compared to mainstream media. We can observe from the past few years that the mainstream media is heavily censored.

“If a person wants to look for some news or something happening, people will go to Twitter rather than some major news publication; that shows the importance and power of social media.

“In our country people are using social media for highlighting their problems, grievances, and sharing their stories; the government is also using social media for making announcements regarding different issues. So, it becomes the prime source of information, and we have noticed the government takes quick action against issues that become viral through social media.

“Through social media we’re having discussions that we’ve never had before. Once there was a time when state media used to control everything; newspapers were censored. There was no way to communicate with each other.

“People are talking about issues that we’ve never talked about, and they were considered taboo topics; now youngsters are talking about sexuality, drugs, alcohol, child abuse, violence against women — all these issues are being debated, and because of social media we get to know all sides of stories.”

Talking about the government’s use of social media, he said: “Today’s government takes social media very seriously compared to the previous governments. This government is very sensitive about its image on social media; possibly that’s why they have invested so much on social media.

“If you look at the armed forces, the ISPR, they also take social media very seriously. Most importantly, what we’re seeing is that most of our ministers, politicians, stakeholders, opinion leaders are now using social media, especially Twitter, to issue statements. The government’s not only using social media but also taking action against the highlighted wrongdoings in the country.”

A billion users

Guest speaker Brittney Stewart, who is the spokesperson for the US Consulate General in Karachi, said that according to data, the number of social media users has doubled since January 2016, which means one billion social media users have been added to the global total in the past three years.

“The growth of social media penetration has increased year to year. We’ve seen this growth increasing since, and during the outbreak of Covid-19. During this pandemic the UN had already warned the world about the upcoming fear, uncertainty and negative impact of social media on people’s mental health.

“As we saw the growth and rise of social media in 2020, this level of social media activism has been taken to a whole new level. Activists use social media, and create hashtags and Facebook events to better organise their protests; and all these global protests we’re observing are occurring because of social media.

“From a marketing perspective, businesses and brands are adopting e-commerce strategies. Also, in the past we’ve observed leaks of customers’ data privacy. Negative sides of social media like data privacy, security, ethics, cyber bullying, fake news, misinformation and disinformation are the topics of discussion in the whole wide world.

“It’s totally up to us as individuals, influencers, change makers, communities, businesses, civil society to identify what and how we wish to change anything, and ultimately come up with the solution to make social media a tool which is beneficial for all the users around the world.”