One of the benefits of SM is the ways in which it enables people, companies and governments to be exposed as corrupt by those labelled “citizen journalists”. SM gives us alternative representations/re-presentations of events, and is used to highlight events which receive no coverage whatsoever from “mainstream media”. At least, this was the case in the early days of SM, but things have changed.
Ownership of mainstream media has been consolidated into the hands of a few ‘business’ men who control content and coverage (most news sources are privately-owned), Murdoch being the most obvious of these. We should also note that the BBC once, arguably, a beacon of unbiased coverage, has been, and remains, politicised by successive UK governments. SM, too, always privately-owned, has become increasingly censorious and censored in terms of what is allowed to be referenced, and how those references must be phrased or represented.
I’ll leave to one side the Israeli government who have deliberately prevented coverage of their genocide in Gaza, invested millions in SM propagandising, target journalists as a matter of policy, and have long engaged in a scheme to conflate anti-zionism with anti-semitism. Their practices are so blatantly obvious that, to me, no analysis is required. All that is required is an explanation from those who continue to support Israel and the murderous ‘policies’ of its extreme right-wing government.
What is striking is that as SM emerges, so does 24 hour “rolling news”, which has a distinctly negative effect on news coverage. The spectator is deluged by news items which are apparently worthy of their attention, yet as the number of items increases, the importance of these falls, and coverage becomes more sensational. What we can call “tabloid mentality” takes hold: the content of items is reduced to a competition between ‘personalities’; issues become secondary to the person discussing or raising them; serious news items lose traction; the serious and the frivolous command equal airtime as broadcasters struggle to fill their schedules; the cult of personality is capitalised on by those who “know how to play the game”; the duration of the spectator’s memory become shorter; the language of news broadcasts changes as more adjectives creep into apparently ‘neutral’ reports; the tone used in reports becomes more pronounced; reporters’ facial expressions and hand gestures become more common. We could go on and on, listing these shifts. However, the last three are the most revealing: as spectators, we are being told (subliminally at times) what position we should take on X, what reaction we should have to X.
This has not happened overnight. The process has been gradual, but it is a process that has been, and is, ‘supported’ by the ubiquity of SM. The concept of ‘balance’, of presenting information in a way that enables the spectator to arrive at a conclusion for themselves has been displaced in visual culture by using techniques borrowed from film, whether this is a result of considered application or simple imitation of what has gone before.
What this continuous “news cycle” has achieved is to make the period of time spent on news items shorter, in that they remain ‘newsworthy’ for shorter and shorter durations. This has – if we want to be charitable, we can say ‘unknowingly’ – had the effect of making those involved in X, Y or Z less culpable, in the spectator expecting that actions to have consequences. Politicians no longer resign; they merely wait for the news cycle to move on. Companies employ “PR consultants” or “crisis mangers” to mitigate their wrongdoing, governments release detrimental reports under cover of natural disasters (or refuse to release them at all). Politicians can make promises one day, safe in the knowledge that these will be been forgotten by tomorrow. PR and government handouts become news items. Most strikingly of all, the emotional is now “news currency”: items promote outrage because (a) outrage sells and, (b), outrage is now something that spectators actively seek out because it gives ‘pleasure’. Spectator outrage, whether it takes the form of phone-ins or posted comments, has come to form part of the news cycle and, most importantly, this outrage can be aired anonymously – another part of the ‘pleasure’ taken: being able to express the most appalling views without fear of exposure.
SM gives us a parade of different kinds of ‘exposure’. The exposure of immorality which, in virtue of the increase in volume of the number of cases, the sensationalist reporting and the 24 hour news cycle in which one set of exposures are constantly displaced by another set, has shortened the ‘outrage’ we feel. In fact, ‘outrage’ has become another item of consumerism: one opens FaceBook, Tik Tok or Reddit not to be informed or made aware of the latest news, but for the day’s/hour’s latest dose of outrage. By using SM, we satiate a desire that was created in us by SM. Running in the background here, is a notion that we ‘know’ morality, that each of us ‘possesses’ this. However, the central question here becomes “Why do we think that we ‘know’ morality, and where does that ‘knowing’ come from?”
Of course, given the increase in volume of exposures, this has enabled those who are exposed. Whereas in the past resignations, withdrawal from public life, blanket coverage by all media and general opprobrium would be the result of exposure, politicians, business people, companies and public figures will “wait it out”, wait for the news cycle to move on. This does not means that gravity of their offences and crimes are any the less, for example, Grenfell, the Epstein files, misogyny, it seems to indicate that concepts of guilt and responsibility have been rewritten by SM. Indeed, SM seems to have made seeing oneself as a victim far easier. The concept of integrity has been reformulated, enabling perpetrators to ‘excuse’ themselves. This is connected to the (im)morality of capitalism: a veneer of morality is permissible until it interferes with profit AND the wealthy can buy their way out of morality, or simply ignore it althogether.
This leads into another kind of exposure. The expression of our views under the cover of anonymity or usernames, without fear of exposure. Thus, we feel able to express views that are unpleasant, repugnant and, most important of all, ill-thought out because SM invites the instantaneous response, one that tends to based on initial, emotional reaction, a reaction that can be expressed whilst hiding behind anonymity. SM, by providing and normalising the instantaneous response has also normalised the expression of sexism, racism, homo- and transphobia, and general hatred of those who do not share the views of what we can call the “in-group” – something which is ‘weaponised’ (awful word though that is) by those controlling populist political movements: Trump; Robinson; Farage; Le Pen for example. Anonymity allows them to cite “the silent majority”, without evidence, in much the same way that Nixon did during the Vietnam War (another example of the manipulation of language, in that it was not, ‘officially’, referred to as a war). Expression of these hatreds is then represented as being ‘natural’, as being “the way most people feel”. But SM also adds another aspect to this: the constant threat of violence. Those who take issue with populist views live with the constant threat that their personal details may be published on SM. This threat is enough to actually discourage people from dissent. What we also see here then is the capitalist concept of ‘individuality’: express yourself if, and only if, you agree with us. The exposure of personal details – addresses, family members etc. – is a standard right-wing ploy.
Of necessity, this last idea is connected to “freedom of speech”, a clarion call of the right, but one which continually illustrates their hypocrisy – although hypocrisy only works if one is prepared to acknowledge it. Freedom of speech, if we take the right-wing ‘definition’, should permit people to express their hatred of “the other”, whether that other be female, transsexual, ‘immigrant’ etc. etc. Essentially, someone who does not accord with their world view. However, when those on the left object to the expression of these views as incitement to racial or gender hatred, these objections are no longer “freedom of speech”, but “cancel culture”. There is another ‘dimension’ to this: when, say, a speaker is invited to a university campus to express right-wing views, resulting in students protesting, the speaker is seen as merely representing the “other side” of the argument. Thus, hatred of the other (however this may be expressed) is given a legitimacy that is does not, when subject to rational scrutiny, possess.
There is also another kind of exposure to consider, and this is the way that SM exposes those who cannot/will not think, yet still consider their views to be valid. This is a result of SM which, in virtue of providing a platform, appears to them to validate their views. To put it in bluntly, “I am saying this because I can say it, and because I can say it, it is valid”. This indicates a lack of thought, an inability to reflect on one’s views. SM though has managed to persuade us that this form of critique is elitist, that we should ‘believe’ (in some sense or other) that everyone’s opinions are valid, regardless of the non-thought or hatred that motivates those views. As I’ve said before, SM has belittled the concept of knowledge, to the extent that this has made inroads into our everyday lives. Whether it’s a courier delivery, the service we receive in a shop or restaurant, or our experience as a university student, our opinions ‘matter’. This is ‘transparency’ and ‘accountability’ in action we’re told. However, consider those examples that I’ve just used: do we know what the traffic was like for the courier? Have we ever worked a shift in, say, a supermarket or a restaurant? How can a student assess their own knowledge of a subject against that of a lecturer, which is why they’re there in the first place? We can also say, in each and every case, what kind of day was this person having? What was happening in their lives outwith work? Were they in pain? Were they suffering from stress? Were they overworked? And then, Did we act with empathy? Did we put our own concerns to one side and consider theirs? Or…Did we treat them as a cog in a machine designed to serve us? In short, did we behave as we’ve been conditioned to, as a self-interested consumer? Often I think, in our responses to these types of “satisfaction survey” we expose ourselves, yet in most cases our concerns are treated as legitimate because of the prime motivator in capitalist society ‘profit’.
There is a certain irony here, in regard to the university example. The current fashion is to call students ‘learners’ (although, dreadful thought though it is, it’s only a matter of time before this term is replaced by ‘customer’), and, therefore, if someone is a ‘learner’ in an academic environment, why does their opinion count? Actually, it doesn’t count, and it doesn’t count in two ways: firstly, the lecturer (in my experience) takes little to no account of ‘feedback’ (for example, I recall someone complaining that I used “too many big words”. Another asked for “One paragraph summaries of books and articles because its too much reading”) and, secondly, university management use this seeming-‘accountability’ so that they can claim to be “learner-centred”, knowing full well that “learner feedback” will only be said to have been acted on if it accords with what management have already decided.
Thus, when we encounter these examples of ‘transparency’ and ‘accountability’ we should remember that they, as with every other ‘element’ of the capitalist system, are motivated by profit. As we should remember that the SM that is integrated into our daily lives is motivated by profit, and each ‘exposure’ of whatever kind, increases that profit.