TIME OF SOCIAL COMMUNICATION CHALLENGE: LET'S SAVE OURSELVES
By Chuka Nnabuife
Social Communication is a very dicey thing. It can finish a
thriving society or revive a dying one in one swoop. The most worrisome factor
is that any of this can happen without the key operator(s) in the communication
foreseeing the outcome of their action(s) when they originated or escalated the
message.
This is why the anchors and contributors to 'sincere' but
emotional radio broadcasts in Rwanda in 1994 did not know that they were
actually beckoning a genocide, a damning war and digging their graves by the
messages they sent out.
They or at least, most of them, thought they were
communicating their disgust with their society as they felt it.
When hordes of arsonists, blood-thirsty bandits and
disgruntled machete-brandishing thugs found a space to exploit the expressed
angst, everyone turned out looser and victim, more than the country as an
entity. Between mid April and mid July
1994, over 1.1 million persons were killed in the resulting Hutu-Tutsi
killings. For over two decades thereafter, the country never returned to. But
the cause was just people's so called frank communication of their frustration
with their country's political situation. Radio stations (mostly) and other
vehicles of social communication allowed free reign of unedited hatred. Churches,
community leaders and social influencers acquiesced. It was so bad that in some
instances during the genocide, unarmed people ran into churches to seek refuge,
the clergy men in charge locked them out and attackers slaughtered them there.
Studies later showed that the angst were caused by unsubstantiated rumours that people acted
upon without verification.
A similar manipulation of social sentiment through public
communication caused the Nazis bid for extermination of Jews in the 1930s
through 1940s.
In the Balkans we saw the same trend in the 1990s.
Currently, with law
enforcement and security agents' mishandling, if bungling of the ongoing
#EndSARS protests across country which began in Lagos and Federal Capital
Territory, Abuja on October 6, 2020 we have a dicey social communication
situation on our hands.
In the aftermath of Lekki Toll Plaza, Lagos Shooting of
protesters, a rash of sensational social communication items -- social media
feeds, short films, audio clips, print media articles and public (pub) meetings
have been swooning the Nigerian space. Rumours are flying everywhere and
everyone is 'sharing' without verification.
Part of the immediate result of the 'flying' information
items, news and falsehood, is the huge wave of arson and vandalism now ongoing.
This is very worrisome, and could be prelude to a more nasty
situation. More so, given the fact that law enforcement and security operatives
are now clearly overwhelmed.
This is danger which social communicators should take as
urgent assignment to solve or at least, soothe. Else, we all, in Nigeria may
head in terrible harm's way.
From the setting now, we need to hold our tongues, guard our
sharing tools and be more circumspect about what we feed our publics.
We may claim that media technology has made all manner of
people part of the content providers in social communication but let's start
with ourselves as mainstream operators and strive a bit more to enlighten the
public of the dire need to be more careful with sharing information too.
Who knows? We may be actually saving our own heads for our necks, literally.
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