Abstract
PICTURED: A protester records the action during a Black Lives Matter rally in 2020
CREDIT: Freddy Kearney/Unsplash
It has been 25 years since the first recognised social media company was launched. Little known today, SixDegrees combined popular features such as profiles, lists of friends and university affiliations in one service and amassed millions of followers before it closed its doors in 2000.
Facebook, coming fast on its heels, changed the game and did what social media has been heralded for – creating connections in the millions, nay billions.
Today, according to the latest Facebook figures, the company has almost three billion registered active monthly users. TikTok meanwhile, which launched only in 2017, is thought to have reached one billion active users by the end of 2022.
The power of social media to give a voice to the unheard and ignite social change is undeniable. But of course there is the darker side, from bots to trolls. We’ve kept an eye on both sides of the story over the last quarter of a century.
Now we’ve asked four journalists, LILI RUTAI, MEHRAN BHAT, MUQEET SHAH and ANDREW MAMBONDIYANI, to explore social media in their countries.
In many ways they couldn’t be more different, and yet similar threads run through the fabric of their digital landscapes. Has social media been a help or a hindrance? We’ll let you decide.
HUNGARIAN PRIME MINISTER Viktor Orban has been called many things, including a “dictator” by European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and a “press freedom predator” by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
The latest media outlet to fall victim to the right-wing Fidesz party government is Klubradio, one of the last remaining independent radio stations, which ceased broadcasting in February after its licence was revoked. Streaming continues online, however, giving a platform to critics of Orban.
Perhaps the most visible event in the suppression of the free press was in July 2020. More than 10,000 people took to the streets of Budapest in a protest against the crackdown on Index, one of Hungary’s most-read newspapers. The majority of the editorial team left when government-friendly actors took ownership.
According to RSF, the government currently controls more than 80% of the media – including most local papers, public television and radio channels – and is expanding. At the same time that the government has taken hold of it, trust in the media has decreased. Reuters research suggests that the majority of Hungarians now get their news from the internet, including social media, where influencers and channels take over the power vacuum left by the lack of reliable media.
One such new medium is Partizan, a YouTube channel founded by activist and director Marton Gulyas in 2018. After interviewing the joint opposition’s prime ministerial candidate Peter Marki-Zay, as well as creating livestreams on current events, Partizan has almost 300,000 subscribers. Jakab Toth, a presenter at Partizan, told Index that many people viewed it as a new, independent medium.
“I think it says a lot about the press that an openly leftist channel, which by chance isn’t connected to a party, is seen as public broadcasting,” he said.
Partizán broadcasts on YouTube, but Hungary’s most populated social media platform is Facebook, with around 75% of the population registered and 60% getting their news there.
But Facebook isn’t a fair playground. Ahead of the 2022 election, when Orban held on to power, a government-friendly institute supporting Christian conservative voices – Megafon – spent more than a billion forints (around $2.5 million) on adverts with Facebook influencers repeating the government’s lines. They were presented in an accessible way for social media users: plastered with emojis.
“Previously, the traditional press held the role of a guardian,” Blanka Zoldi, the editor-in-chief of Lakmusz, a fact-checking website in Hungary, said.
“The editors and journalists judged which information that reached them was genuine, trustworthy, and these ended up in the magazines, so readers encountered them. On social media, there are no such guards.”
In relation to the war in Ukraine, she said: “The most prominent experts in Russia used their Facebook to inform, but the wildest conspiracy theorists… had the same platform.”
In Hungary, the risk of propaganda is the same.
“I think that if someone has the potential to reach masses, they must use it for building, not destroying,” Bettina Tóth, a supporter of the ruling right-wing Fidesz party and a social media influencer, told Index. Previously a participant in a talent show, she decided to get into politics when, due to an illness, she had to quit singing. She joined Fidesz’s youth organisation, Fidelitas, and has amassed a large following on both Facebook and TikTok.
Tóth posts viral trends and short explanations of current events, including the election, poking fun at Fidesz’s opposition. Her Facebook cover image is a montage of pictures of her with Fidesz politicians.
Despite her stance being clear, some users view her as part of the media. “It’s just like I’m watching the news programme,” one commenter said under her rendering of a case of revenge porn, complemented with two smiley emojis. In Hungary’s battle for truth those emojis might fool some people – but not all.
MEHRAN BHAT and MUQEET SHAH report on the intimidation from Kashmiri authorities that silences social media users
IN KASHMIR, SOME social media users have gone into virtual hiding. Others dare not write anything political.
Ever since the repeal of a law giving Jammu and Kashmir special status, the authorities in the conflict-torn region have tightened their grip on what is said online. The fear is palpable among those who use social media and now avoid criticising authorities or sharing their opinions online, fearing reprisal. Many people, including government employees who have to submit details of their accounts to the police, have deleted their social media accounts permanently to keep themselves safe.
“Four Kashmiri journalists are in jail, a journalist friend of mine was booked under a controversial law for his reportage and I have been detained twice for my journalism,” Qazi Shibli, editor-in-chief of local news portal The Kashmiriyat, told Index. “Journalists are being summoned for what they write to their social media. If this is not curbing of your democratic freedom, then nothing in the world is.”
In July 2020, Shibli was interrogated by the cyber police, before being detained for the second time. Frontline Defenders, an international human rights organisation founded in Dublin, reported that he was “being targeted for his documentation of the lives of those living in Kashmir”. In 2019, he was sentenced to nine months in prison for a tweet about troops in the region.
There are more examples of the silencing effect of social media censorship. In December 2021, a bank employee was suspended from her job in Kashmir for reacting with a laughing emoji to a Facebook post which announced the death of Indian defence chief Bipin Rawat. Her employers deemed the emoji a derogatory remark.
On 14 August 2020, news website The Kashmir Walla first reported the digital disappearance of social media users in Kashmir. Many young Twitter and other social media users in Kashmir were summoned by the cyber police, and although they were released after questioning, it added to the climate of fear.
“You have to understand there’s a proper mechanism in Kashmir and a team of authorities is constantly observing your social media presence,” claimed Asrar Syed, a 20-year-old man from Srinagar.
“If by chance something you’ve posted doesn’t favour [the government] or [criticism of] authorities comes under their scanner, you’ll be picked up in a night raid and booked.”
He said many people today were behind bars because they had criticised the regime. Their families are suffering and their careers are also at stake.
“My close ones have often told me to delete my Twitter handle and stop writing anything. I still cannot choose silence because that’s what this regime wants – to silence us with fear,” Syed said. He still wants to speak the truth, even though living under restrictions and surveillance in Kashmir has taken a mental toll.
According to a report in 2020 by news site Article 14, the then superintendent of police, Tahir Ashraf Bhatti, who was also the head of the cyber cell, said that the questioning “has nothing to do with politics and is not based on political lines”. He denied that the police were silencing dissent.
Men on their phones after internet was restored in Kashmir, 2019
CREDIT: Saqib Majeed /SOPA Images/Sipa USA/Alamy
“The way censorship has grown in the recent past is worrying,” Shibli said. “There is an intermittent investigation of what the state has called the ‘Ecosystem of Narrative Terrorism’.”
According to local news reports, the investigation he refers to involves raking through an individual’s body of work.
Shibli said journalists braving this age of extreme intimidation are profiled along with activists, lawyers, academics and others, with police labelling some content as anti-national. Then the process of scrutiny, summons, intimidation and jailing begins.
According to Shibli, the fear that gripped Kashmir after the targeting of social media users is gripping the land more firmly and its impact is now felt more than ever.
Mehran Bhat and Muqeet Shah are freelance journalists based in Kashmir
Opposition voices are at risk in Zimbabwe, but could social media offer a space for dissent? ANDREW MAMBONDIYANI speaks to activists in the country
THE RUN-UP TO Zimbabwe’s 2023 election has been marred by crackdowns on journalists, political opponents and human rights activists. Under president Emmerson Mnangagwa’s regime, dissenting voices are increasingly being silenced in print and broadcast media. Of the few remaining “independent” radio stations, most are owned or heavily controlled by Mnangagwa’s cronies. However, platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp are giving voices to activists banned from the country’s public media.
The ruling party Zanu PF, which has been in power for 42 years, faces a serious challenge from newly formed opposition party Citizens Coalition for Change, led by Nelson Chamisa. In the past months, members of the CCC, journalists, trade union leaders, human rights defenders and political activists have been arrested, with most cases still pending before the courts.
But with dissenting voices forced out of mainstream media, social media might offer a new hope. Between 2021 and 2022, the number of social media users in Zimbabwe increased by more than 19% to 1.55 million.
“Twitter has been an amazing networking tool for activists,” a human rights and political activist told Index. Out of fear of reprisal from the regime, she asked that her name be changed to Janet. “Because of Twitter, I have met a lot of people and work with them on various issues,” she said. “Lots of fundraising has been done using Twitter spaces for political campaigns, for families of activists who have gone missing, for respected figures who have passed away.”
But she said that even in the digital world, Zimbabwe remained unsafe for activists like her.
“[We’re] dealing with lots of anonymous [social media] accounts, so [you are] never sure who you are really dealing with. Still [there is] an underlying fear which you have to push through. There are those who are called Varakashi, so there is need for vigilance,” she said, referring to the army of pro-Mnangagwa social media users who target his critics online.
She hopes that in spite of this threat, social media can be used to track issues that Zimbabweans care about, and put pressure on the regime to change.
The CCC, Janet explained, is a citizens’ movement without any official structures.
“This is very frustrating for the ruling party as their tactic has always been to infiltrate and split the opposition from within. We are trying to use TikTok to target the youth, who are apathetic about registering to vote. They feel voting is hopeless,” she said.
Richard Mugobo is the founder of The BIG Conversation, a Zimbabwean digital media platform that amplifies issues surrounding open government, transparency and accountability. He said online activists could use social media platforms to raise awareness – debunking fake news, organising events and protests, and verifying statements.
“Politically, platforms such as Twitter, YouTube and WhatsApp could serve the purpose of reaching a broader and diverse audience,” he said.
Whatever the opportunities for free expression online, the Zimbabwean government is no stranger to internet shutdowns. In 2019, the digital world went dark amid citizen protests, preventing the spread of information. A similar story unfolded in July 2020, when internet speeds slowed down during protests and people reported being barely able to load tweets.
Social media might offer a platform for dissenting voices, but that platform can just as easily be removed during times of trouble.
Andrew Mambondiyani is a journalist based in Zimbabwe. He has written for publications including BBC and Al Jazeera X