Shaping minds
Sanjana Hattotuwa-March 2, 2019, 7:28 pm
Two consecutive presentations on Saturday and today, Sunday, provided an opportunity to talk about the implications of social media on two significant and inter-related issues – electoral processes and constitutional reform. With nearly 700,000 voting for the first time at the local government election held just over a year ago, and just under a million at the presidential election held in January 2015, statistics from the Elections Commission reveals a young demographic is around 15% of the electorate. Every survey, poll and study and all the existing research flag the fact that this demographic gets their news and information through social media, which is just media to them.
The words ‘social’ or ‘new’ prefacing media is already outmoded and outdated – used the most by a much older generation who consume, conceive of and occasionally produce content for media in a way distinct to and different from their children or grandchildren. Columns in the past have looked at some of these dynamics and resulting socio-political implications. The research for the two presentations over the weekend provided more insights in this regard.
Sporadic bursts of life mark Sri Lanka’s constitutional reform process, and that too, mostly through negative publicity, misinformation, fear mongering and oppositional framing. In other words, the entire discourse around a new constitution, the substantive nature of the proposals, the need for one, the process by which a new constitution will be brought about and the consultations around what should go into it and why is marked by fear, anxiety, ignorance and apathy. The growing vacuum that exists around informed debate on this score alone is the result of a government unable and unwilling to embrace the potential of media to capture the imagination, inform opinion, shape input and address opposition.
In 2016, the PM noted that "for the first time ever, social media will have a role in drafting a new constitution". He was right, but not in the way he intended and many of us expected. The role reach and relevance of social or new media in constitutional reform is indubitable, important and influential. What the PM indicated, and what frankly was expected as basic commonsense if not as political acumen, strategic design and desirable outcome, was a government that would tap into well-springs of public support and rivers of debate through the adroit management of media, in order to push through a reform agenda. But no. Nothing of the sort happened. There is no indication whatsoever that anything of the sort will happen.
For the presentation on constitutional reform and its discontents, I looked at the prevalence of ‘constitution’ and separately, ‘nawa (new)’ as well as ‘vyavasthawa (constitution)’ in Sinhala, across around 1,000 pages on Facebook I monitor, from 2015 to 2018.Facebook was chosen for its influence in framing politics amongst a demographic that overlaps with the young vote base. Ascertaining the contours of public debate around any topic or issue is an imperfect science, with much that is not captured and cannot be captured. For example, I have no way of knowing how much content is shared on constitutional reform – whether for or against it – over instant messaging apps like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.
These caveats aside, the search terms used were both loose enough to capture supportive and oppositional frames, and strict enough to exclude extraneous topics and issues. The resulting data is revealing. There were around 73,000 posts in Sinhala compared to just around 4,000 in English. The posts in Sinhala generated around 706,000 comments, compared to around 40,000 in English. Content in English was shared around 45,000 times and generated about 185,000 likes. In Sinhala, the posts generated nearly four million shares. Just over 14 million liked the posts. With nearly 76 times more likes and 88 times more shares, the Sinhala framing and foci on constitutional reform overwhelm what is produced and published in English.
In 2015 and early 2016, the President and pages aligned to him or the government, in English, produce the most amount of content. By late last year, both in terms of volume and frequency, it is the SLPP producing the most amount of content. In Sinhala, extremist Sinhala-Buddhist groups feature as prominent producers of content. Leading private mainstream media institutions and content they upload to Facebook in Sinhala dominate engagement, along with gossip sites. The qualitative study of a fraction of this content (with numbers ranging in the millions, it isn’t possible to study every post, photo or production) very clearly indicates that the framing and projection of the reform process, or specific aspects of the proposed constitution, are reviled, rejected or risibly ridiculed. There is not a single pro-government or progressive account in the top five most loved photos anchored to the search words in Sinhala. Ditto with the shares of Facebook status messages. The top two producers of the most viewed videos around the search terms are private media stations deeply and openly opposed to the PM and UNP.
The dynamics of how media shapes public opinion formed the basis of my second presentation, delivered at a workshop on reforming campaign finance. Two years ago, a confidential memo drafted for and presented in person to the Elections Commission warned against what at the time were embryonic measures at manipulation and misinformation, ranging from human-produced digital propaganda to algorithmic output (through automated accounts on social media, and at scale). The challenges have increased, with early trends that have not just endured but are now entrenched. At a macro-level, both the complexity of the risks and the inter-related nature of challenges requires a new language to describe them, particularly for officials who are not aware of research and policymaking published in English.
At a more granular or local level, social media is still seen as entirely distinct from traditional or mainstream media, with attendant challenges only impacting a minor or marginal percentage of the total electorate. India is ahead of us in this regard. Given Lok Sabha elections in about a month or two, India’s Elections Commission (ECI) has issued strict guidelines around political campaigning and advertising on social media. It is also working with Google, Facebook and Twitter to maintain oversight on, regulate and control campaign expenditure on digital propaganda, ensuring transparency and accountability to the extent possible. A document released last week by ECI looks at issues around authenticity, manipulation, expenditure declarations and the need to embrace social media campaigns in policies and regulations that already govern traditional media during electoral processes.
Tellingly, Sri Lanka’s Elections Commission, around the local government election last year and for the first time, also noted that social media fell under the guidelines issued for traditional media, and by extension, all propaganda online also needed to stop 48 hours before the election. Unsurprisingly, with little to no capacity for oversight and the lack of any punitive measures, campaigns on Facebook and Twitter continued up until and even on the day of the election.
The central issue over the longer-term is not so much one election, but the nature of elections. Research from around the world, which now concern governments, suggests the manipulation of public mood, sentiment and opinions over the longer-term can result in or are increasingly aimed towards skewed electoral outcomes. Whereas in the past, electoral fraud took place on the day of the election, at the ballot box or when counting votes, today, the impressionable minds of a key demographic, suffering from poor media literacy, are hacked. This means that even if the election itself is free of incident, violence or malpractice, the manipulation of voters for a much longer time undermines the trust in democratic institutions and electoral processes.
The conversations around all this need to take place at the level of government and civil society. Nothing less than our ability to reclaim and retain Sri Lanka’s liberal, democratic potential is at stake.
