Amid the political powers constantly seeking to broaden their vote banks, the media channels relentlessly running the TRP race and the extremist groups unceasingly trying to prove their supremacy over others, there exists a large chunk of people in India who are still at peace with themselves as well as with their surroundings. These people are neither ignorant nor indifferent to the events that are happening around them. They too live in the age of information and social media. Then why is it that they find the political and social environment around them to be conducive, while some of their peers are often found complaining about how intolerable and insecure the world has all of a sudden become? In this post, I wish to advocate for this chunk of people.
India has long been known to assimilate different cultures, faiths, religions and ethnicities. For centuries, they all have co-existed and co-prospered. Undeniably, there have been some tensions and conflicts of interests between such diverse groups due to the differences in their belief systems. However, the overall environment has been amiable. The advent of social media and evolution of traditional media from a fact based reporting to the opinion based reporting has had numerous consequences – both positive and negative. On the positive side, they have led to the dissemination of any news or event at a lightning speed all around the world. The common man, who used to be the receiver of any news a few years ago, is now empowered to create the content or express his views upon any news event and share them further across various social media platforms. However, this empowerment has a flip side to it as well – and that is the credibility of the user generated content, which is extremely difficult to judge. In this age of information, it is not possible to control the proliferation of the user generated content. No matter how much factual or fabricated the content it, the individuals with vested interests will create it and try to make it in available in the reach of as many people as possible. It is now at the discretion of the people to accept the content or to reject it. And this is where a lot of common people like us err at. At times, we either tend to reject the factual content or to accept the fabricated content. In technical terms, the former is referred to us the type 1 error and the latter is referred to as the type 2 error. Very recently, I personally got to experience both the types of errors.
Then first incident was of a video of a known public figure which surfaced on social media initially and then became a big hit as more and more people shared it. Some news channels also telecasted the video by borrowing it directly from the social media without any verification. And what did it result in? Well, it did malign the image of the person as it intended to, because the video was a trending one for quite a few days. It later turned out that the creator of the video had tampered with the original video and had produced a new video which contained only a certain parts of the original one. This new video had given an entirely new dimension and meaning to the message that the public figure wanted to deliver to the people. In yet another incident, murder of a man belonging to a lower caste in a small town sparked a huge row in the country. The incident was telecasted as a breaking news on a lot of TV channels, citing it as an act of atrocity by the upper caste on the lower caste. The issue soon turned into a political debate, as more and more politicians from the opposition party visited the family of the victim. The blame game began as all the political parties wanted to gain advantage out of the situation. The student unions across various parts of the country carried out rallies and protests. Eventually, it turned out that the murder was committed due to a land dispute between two families, one of which belonged to the upper caste and the other to the lower caste. However, there was no evidence to show that the caste difference between the families had anything to do with the crime. Both these incidents belong to the type 2 error category.
I now proceed to cite an example of the type 1 error. A friend of mine shared with me a link of a news article that appeared on one of the social media platforms. This article mentioned about a wrongful act committed by a handful of members of a national level group. This group was otherwise deeply respected by the people for all the good that it had done for the country and it indeed deserved all the respect. As I scrolled down the article, there were dozens of comments from the people who had completely rejected the news. They went on to the extent of abusing the content provider for attempting to defame such a highly respected group. However, I decided to probe further into the news before forming any opinion. And on searching for just a few minutes, I could find certain facts which backed the incident that was reported in the article.
If we try to drill down to the root cause of any of the judgemental errors mentioned in above sections, we can easily identify it to be the lack of complete information. 'A little knowledge is a dangerous thing' - I had read this phrase a long ago in my school days. And it was now that I could really understand the essence of it!
Who is to be blamed for the lack of information? The content creators that include the political powers, the media channels or some extremist groups? Or the content receivers that include us - the common people? Well, in the information age, it is nearly impossible to suppress any content creator, no matter what his or her intentions are. Suppressing one today will lead to the emergence of many tomorrow. The onus is on us - the content receivers. We need to be on guard so that we don't fall into the carefully, but maliciously laid traps by the content creators with vested interests. And the best way of doing this is by being informed, not just partially, but substantially. No generation before us had such an easy access to information. Now, it's our responsibility to be sufficiently aware of any situation before forming any opinion based on whatever primiliminary information we are presented with. This becomes even more critical when we decide to share our opinions with others on the social media, because the malformed opinion is just like a snowball - it gathers mass as it rolls over from one person to the other until, eventually, a truth becomes a lie and a lie becomes a truth.
Let's not be misguided by the biased and prejudiced opinions shared on various media platforms. Let's be prudent enough to research thoroughly before forming our own opinions.
Let's not promote any piece of information which speaks ill of any particular community or faith. Let's observe utmost care while sharing any such information on a social media platform.
Let's not be victimized by the 'divide and rule' policy of self-centric forces operating in the country. Let's foster harmony and subdue hatred. Let's be united!
