Dr Mohamed Kirat
By Dr Mohamed Kirat
Since the early days of humankind, not everyone could participate and engage in communication, because it was unidirectional and dominated by those who enjoyed power, authority and influence. Although mass media offered new and effective ways to communicate across space and time, the emergence of text and printing, photography, and broadcasting all introduced alienating forms of communications that separated those expressing information and ideas from those who received them. Mass media made interaction between those sending and those receiving communication impossible. It stole individual voices from the majority of people and gave voice to only a handful who enjoy power and influence be it at the international level between countries or within the same country.
The operation of mass media required the creation of institutions with structures and processes. It created conditions in which individuals could be directed, manipulated, and exploited by those with a voice. It became a means of elite empowerment. It enslaved people and objectified humans, transforming them into audiences that could be commoditised and traded in markets, namely advertising. All of these factors created artificiality and alienation, distance and separation, estrangement and detachment, isolation and loneliness. Communication became brutalising, debasing, and dehumanising.
Mass media made this dehumanisation worse because of its ubiquity and its growth to encompass a large portion of communication behaviour and time. Business and ideology became along the years the driving force behind the media industry. The mass media through the years and decades have fabricated reality instead of presenting it to the audience locally and internationally.
The emergence of the Internet and the development of social media have been seen as fundamentally altering communication, restoring voice to the public, and introducing elements that rehumanise communication. Social media has been lauded for its ability to support exchange of ideas and information and to promote citizen journalism and responsible communication. It has reintroduced multi-directional communication. Communication experienced a new era from the old one: one to many to many to many.
The social networks and new media allow audiences, people from all walks of life to discuss and debate, to share information from storehouses of knowledge, and to debate taboos, and self-censored topics and issues that they didn’t even dream of thinking about. Social media has given voice to those wanting changes in society, voice for the voiceless. It became a source of information, allowing people to gossip and discuss all issues of importance and concerns. Social media is praised for its power to mark a breakthrough in the history of human communication. Digital and social media functionalities are humanising communication by displacing some of the artificiality and alienation of mass communication. This is forcing change on media companies and content providers of all types, altering the ways they address and interact with their users, and the types of content provided. The receiver becomes the sender and vice versa. Social media is setting the news agenda these days for the mainstream media. During the Arab Spring revolutions — 2011-2014, notorious and famous news organisations around the world used videos and feeds from ordinary people through social media. These changes are disturbing the elite and dominant social groups. They are changing the media power structure and the very convention of fabricating reality according to those who own and govern.
Media scholars must understand the nature of technology and the ideas of progress associated with it. Technologies are not neutral and have important social effects, because they were created for specific purposes. Although changes in technology are typically portrayed as progress, with attendant connotations of desirable development and improvement, they do not always produce beneficial social results. This is especially true of the contemporary technologies of communication, which have often been created for specific types of exploitation of social and commercial opportunities. Their structures produce and enforce power arrangements.
Although social media have moved mass communication away from an industrial content production process, making it more people-centric than legacy mass communication, this should not be construed as removing them from the influence of power and elites. Out of sheer naiveté and wishful thinking, many proponents of and commentators on social media — including many researchers and scholars in communication and media studies — have portrayed the Internet and its services as an empowering force, a democratising institution, and a space free from the constraints that hobbled legacy media. These observers exhibit inadequate critical thought and analysis, venerate technology, and tumble into the trap of technicism.
Technology is a value-laden activity from inception to use. It is culture-based activity designed as a means to some end. It changes and transforms interactions and transactions for the benefit of some at the expense of the majority. It transforms thinking. It becomes social practice. It extracts value. It constraints actions. It can be co-opted to reinforce existing elites and power. It can diminish existing power arrangements and create new elites and power. It is anything but benign and equalising.
Look at the communication within the family, we can assert that the new gadgets of communication — Internet, digital phones, social networks — have literally destroyed any kind of communication between the parents and children. Clearly, social media are a technical artifact worthy of deep consideration for their effects on individuals and society. But we must look at them with a critical perspective. Even with the most cursory consideration, we are all aware of the increasing commercialisation of social media and their growing use by business interests and political elites.
Advertisements are appearing between messages from friends and colleagues, and companies are tracking our behaviour and analysing our comments to improve marketing. Companies are “engaging” with consumers on social media for commercial benefits. Political elites are bypassing legacy media and promoting their interests without even the pretence of constraints of truth and accuracy. Anyone and everyone — individuals, organisations, political entities…etc, on a micro and macro level is using social media to set an agenda and reach, of course, a special goal.
Although it is true that individuals and civil society organisations are able to use this new means of communications more, and in more ways, than they were able to use mainstream media in the past, the structures and processes of the Internet and social media are being greatly influenced by those who control the infrastructure and systems necessary for its operation.
What’s happening these days in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia is a good example of the limitations of social media when it comes to change, democracy and good governance.
The writer is a professor of Public Relations and Mass Communication at the College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University. The Peninsula
By Dr Mohamed Kirat
Since the early days of humankind, not everyone could participate and engage in communication, because it was unidirectional and dominated by those who enjoyed power, authority and influence. Although mass media offered new and effective ways to communicate across space and time, the emergence of text and printing, photography, and broadcasting all introduced alienating forms of communications that separated those expressing information and ideas from those who received them. Mass media made interaction between those sending and those receiving communication impossible. It stole individual voices from the majority of people and gave voice to only a handful who enjoy power and influence be it at the international level between countries or within the same country.
The operation of mass media required the creation of institutions with structures and processes. It created conditions in which individuals could be directed, manipulated, and exploited by those with a voice. It became a means of elite empowerment. It enslaved people and objectified humans, transforming them into audiences that could be commoditised and traded in markets, namely advertising. All of these factors created artificiality and alienation, distance and separation, estrangement and detachment, isolation and loneliness. Communication became brutalising, debasing, and dehumanising.
Mass media made this dehumanisation worse because of its ubiquity and its growth to encompass a large portion of communication behaviour and time. Business and ideology became along the years the driving force behind the media industry. The mass media through the years and decades have fabricated reality instead of presenting it to the audience locally and internationally.
The emergence of the Internet and the development of social media have been seen as fundamentally altering communication, restoring voice to the public, and introducing elements that rehumanise communication. Social media has been lauded for its ability to support exchange of ideas and information and to promote citizen journalism and responsible communication. It has reintroduced multi-directional communication. Communication experienced a new era from the old one: one to many to many to many.
The social networks and new media allow audiences, people from all walks of life to discuss and debate, to share information from storehouses of knowledge, and to debate taboos, and self-censored topics and issues that they didn’t even dream of thinking about. Social media has given voice to those wanting changes in society, voice for the voiceless. It became a source of information, allowing people to gossip and discuss all issues of importance and concerns. Social media is praised for its power to mark a breakthrough in the history of human communication. Digital and social media functionalities are humanising communication by displacing some of the artificiality and alienation of mass communication. This is forcing change on media companies and content providers of all types, altering the ways they address and interact with their users, and the types of content provided. The receiver becomes the sender and vice versa. Social media is setting the news agenda these days for the mainstream media. During the Arab Spring revolutions — 2011-2014, notorious and famous news organisations around the world used videos and feeds from ordinary people through social media. These changes are disturbing the elite and dominant social groups. They are changing the media power structure and the very convention of fabricating reality according to those who own and govern.
Media scholars must understand the nature of technology and the ideas of progress associated with it. Technologies are not neutral and have important social effects, because they were created for specific purposes. Although changes in technology are typically portrayed as progress, with attendant connotations of desirable development and improvement, they do not always produce beneficial social results. This is especially true of the contemporary technologies of communication, which have often been created for specific types of exploitation of social and commercial opportunities. Their structures produce and enforce power arrangements.
Although social media have moved mass communication away from an industrial content production process, making it more people-centric than legacy mass communication, this should not be construed as removing them from the influence of power and elites. Out of sheer naiveté and wishful thinking, many proponents of and commentators on social media — including many researchers and scholars in communication and media studies — have portrayed the Internet and its services as an empowering force, a democratising institution, and a space free from the constraints that hobbled legacy media. These observers exhibit inadequate critical thought and analysis, venerate technology, and tumble into the trap of technicism.
Technology is a value-laden activity from inception to use. It is culture-based activity designed as a means to some end. It changes and transforms interactions and transactions for the benefit of some at the expense of the majority. It transforms thinking. It becomes social practice. It extracts value. It constraints actions. It can be co-opted to reinforce existing elites and power. It can diminish existing power arrangements and create new elites and power. It is anything but benign and equalising.
Look at the communication within the family, we can assert that the new gadgets of communication — Internet, digital phones, social networks — have literally destroyed any kind of communication between the parents and children. Clearly, social media are a technical artifact worthy of deep consideration for their effects on individuals and society. But we must look at them with a critical perspective. Even with the most cursory consideration, we are all aware of the increasing commercialisation of social media and their growing use by business interests and political elites.
Advertisements are appearing between messages from friends and colleagues, and companies are tracking our behaviour and analysing our comments to improve marketing. Companies are “engaging” with consumers on social media for commercial benefits. Political elites are bypassing legacy media and promoting their interests without even the pretence of constraints of truth and accuracy. Anyone and everyone — individuals, organisations, political entities…etc, on a micro and macro level is using social media to set an agenda and reach, of course, a special goal.
Although it is true that individuals and civil society organisations are able to use this new means of communications more, and in more ways, than they were able to use mainstream media in the past, the structures and processes of the Internet and social media are being greatly influenced by those who control the infrastructure and systems necessary for its operation.
What’s happening these days in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia is a good example of the limitations of social media when it comes to change, democracy and good governance.
The writer is a professor of Public Relations and Mass Communication at the College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University. The Peninsula
