Social Media and Its Effect on Global Politics
This post is inspired by Ioanna Tantanasi and Paul Reilly’s “The Conversation” article titled “Social media’s not all bad-it’s saving lives in disaster zones.” The article discusses the early warning software, Hala Systems, which is believed to have reduced the number of air strike fatalities in the Syrian civil war. When sensors spot or identify an aircraft, the system sends alerts on Facebook and Whatsapp to civilians, warning them of potential danger while simultaneously notifying aid workers nearby. Tantansai and Reilly write, “Since its launch in 2016, the system has reportedly reduced the number of casualties in the region caused by air strikes by as much as 27%.” This technology motivates the question, to what extent is war-zone politics affected by social media and modern day technology?
Our relationship with social media…
The past two decades have seen a revolution in the development of platforms that enable convenient communication between people all over the world. Facebook launched in 2004, Youtube in 2005, Twitter in 2006, Tumblr in 2007, Instagram and Pinterest in 2010 and Snapchat in 2011. With time, these apps only got better and more popular. Now, their uses extend farther than merely image sharing, following, liking and private messaging. They have additionally become avenues of political self expression, not only used by the individual citizen but also government officials. It seems now more than ever, those without access to these social media apps stand at a disadvantage, as more things around the globe go digital. Softwares such as Hala seem to exclusively benefit those with access to the Internet, and this exclusivity reinforces a pre-existing divide between the rich and the not-so-rich, the privileged and the disadvantaged.
Moreover, bolstered with first amendment, many social media users share what is called “hate speech” on their accounts. Due to the globalization of the Internet, these opinions that typically attack a person or group based on religion, sexual orientation, race and gender identity tend to spread like wildfire. In extreme cases, users may get arrested. This was evident after the El Paso, TX and Dayton, OH shootings, when arrests were especially high: posts that incited, promoted or threatened violence surged, and police took action. See selected examples of cases down below:
In most of these cases, the posts were removed by the social media apps themselves. Police and app pro-activity when it comes to threatening or inciting posts is critical, for if action isn’t taken or taken too late, there can be severe consequences as was seen in Germany, Gaza and Myanmar.
Germany
Anti-immigrant rhetoric and vile misinformation has been spreading on German Facebook for years. In his article titled “Can Facebook Really Drive Violence?,” Simon Cottee outlines research that presents a correlation between Facebook rumors and real-life physical violence. Researchers Karsten Muller and Carlo Schwarz show that “in municipalities where internet users are active on the Facebook page of Alternative for Germany (AfD), the largest far-right party in Germany, hate crimes against immigrants are disproportionately high.” Moreover, “whenever Internet access went down in an area with high Facebook use, attacks on refugees dropped significantly.” It seems apps like Facebook give users an essentially unmonitored space to spread hateful agenda and misinformation, all the while strengthened with the perks of anonymity.
Gaza
Unlike most other social media exacerbated interpersonal conflicts, this one was incited by the political movements’ leaders themselves. In “Gaza becomes social media warzone ahead of Palestinian elections,” Peter Beaumont shows the 2016 social media war started by most powerful Palestinian parties, Hamas, the Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist militant party and Fatah, a nationalist social democratic party. This war began with the release of Hamas’s campaign videos. Captioned with the hashtags “Thank you, Hamas” and “Gaza is more beautiful,” these videos “feature drone shots, pop music and stylised production” that first show the reality of torn down buildings, ruins of bombed buildings and war-caused destitution of citizens to another pop music ornamented scene of brand new universities, amusement parks, hospitals and more. Opposing political party, Fatah, then released an edited version of the video claiming to build an even better Gaza with an ironic use of the same hashtags. Moreover, Fatah’s version shows Hamas police “beating women on the street or fighting Salafists in a Rafah mosque…and shots of dead Palestinian children from recent conflict.” These videos consequently stirred massive polarisation within supporters of both parties. They led to even harsher comments on social media sites and spread of misinformation directed towards both parties in the hopes of painting one as worse than the other.
Myanmar
This Southeast Asian nation has been on news headlines for several years over severe human rights issues some have classified as a genocide. Foremost in most of these reports, including my personal favorite report by John Oliver, is how the genocide was exacerbated by Facebook and its apathy or sluggishness in taking down hateful and inaccurate information spread about the Rohingya Muslim minorities. Paul Mozur’s investigation shows that the misinformation was spread by military officials. Moreover, according to Mozur’s article, “One said Islam was a global threat to Buddhism. Another shared a false story about the rape of a Buddhist woman by a Muslim man.”
Because of Facebook’s immense popularity in the country, military officials saw it as a way to spread propaganda and draw massive hate towards Islam in a relatively short amount of time. Moreover, the accounts tied to the military were often masked as entertainment or beauty pages. Upon questioning and heavy criticism, Facebook took down those accounts, most of which had over 500,000 followers. In August of 2018, the company acknowledged that it had been “too slow to act in Myanmar,” however, by then thousands of Rohingya had died or fled the country.
Although extreme examples, these cases do show the effects the systematic use of social media can have in influencing society on a large scale. With features that enable anonymity and widespread reach of people, these sites can have lasting and horrible effects on interpersonal relationships. While monitoring can be arguably invasive, in cases like these, it seems justified and wholly necessary.
However, it is also important to recognize the positives to modern-day advancements in technology. Softwares like Hala provide people [those with access to the Internet] with vital information that can help them escape life and death situations safely. On a smaller scale, technology and social media allow image sharing, following, liking and private messaging, making our lives that much easier and day-to-day interaction that much effortless. As we become more dependent on technology, we must be sure to use it responsibly, considerately, and keep in mind that we must exist collaboratively, with love and light!
Works Cited
Al Jazeera. (2019, December 9). Timeline: How the crackdown on Myanmar’s Rohingya unfolded. Retrieved December 11, 2019, from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/timeline-crackdown-myanmar-rohingya-unfolded-191208031237118.html.