The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
It would be a truism to say that social media have revolutionized the contemporary world. And even if it is a truism, it is also true, in addition to which it is patently obvious, which is why it is a truism.
Every day many billions of communications are hurled out into cyberspace on social media. That is billions with a “b.” There are seven-plus billion people in the world. Does that mean every single earthling is using social media to reach every other earthling? Obviously not, thankfully. Perhaps a mere two or three billion are hooked up to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and the like. But many millions of those billions are “booking” and “tweeting” and “gramming” and “snapping” many times each day to other millions. In a day it all adds up to billions.
However, social media are different from other cyber-media. One can pay to subscribe to or click onto free websites which provide vetted journalism from reputable sources. But social media, by their very nature, allow anyone to write or speak nearly anything about anything. There is no one out there in cyberspace in an authoritative position to determine the truth of what is stated or videoed on social media.
However, the same observation can be made about blogs. Anyone can blog whatever she/he wants. But those who read blogs know about the blogs, and presumably they either agree with the blogger or are curious about what the blogger blogged in the most recent blog. Is there a cog in the blog, or not? Blog fans like to know that.
Some bloggers have a few readers, some have thousands, and some may have millions. But potentially the social media may have billions of readers or viewers. Therefore the influence of social media is incalculably immense.
Most newspapers have lost a sizeable percentage of their print subscribers. That sad fact is no longer news. It has morphed into a social, political, and cultural tragedy. The loss of revenue, and the consequent loss of advertising revenue, has virtually hamstrung many newspapers. Some of them have gone out of business. Others are on life support.
But the digital new opeartion of some major newspapers has increased as dramatically as their print business has declined. Late last spring The New York Times reported that in the first quarter of 2017, print advertising revenue dropped by 18%. But in the same quarter, its digital advertising revenue rose by 19%, to $50 million. It added 308,000 new digital subscribers in the first quarter of 2017 alone, helping to create an 11% increase in total circulation revenue.
The Times has almost two million digital subscribers for its news services. In the first quarter, they reported total revenues of $399 million, with a new income of $13 million. That compares to a net loss in the first quarter of 2016 of $19 million.
The Importance of “Vetted” News
When any piece of journalism is “vetted,” it means that its accuracy is carefully checked for accuracy within the news organization that is presenting it as news. The best journalists all go to great pains to verify their stories.
That is not necessarily true in social media “journalism.” In fact, to repeat, anyone saying anything on any medium in the social media can say whatever the writer pleases. There is no internal watchdog to prevent falsehoods from being flung cavalierly into cyberspace. The conscience of the social media initiator is the only brake in the system.
Are the consciences of social media writers and readers more pliable than those of professional journalists? Only God knows the answer to that, and He is highly unlikely to render a widely discernible verdict. You, on the other hand, may have some thoughts on that matter.
It is only since the advent of social media that the term “fake news” has come into wide usage in America and elsewhere. “Real news” was not formerly a broadly-utilized concept either. It did not need to be.
Why have “fake news” and “real news” become such common terms in contemporary vocabulary? It is primarily because of social media, not because of the traditional news media. The distinction between what is real and what is fake seems to have become entirely lost in social media.
In April of 2017, a man in Cleveland named Steve Stephens filmed his murder of a 74-year-old stranger on Facebook. He chose the man at random. Later Stephens was identified by an alert employee at a McDonald’s restaurant in Erie, PA. As police closed in on Steve Stephens, he shot himself, again on Facebook.
Was that real news, or was it fake news? Would it have been “news” at all if thetre had been no social media? Are we now living in a Brave New World, or at least a very different world? Is Big Brother watching us? And if so, is he doing a very good job of it?
In a column coincidentally published a few days before the Steve Stephens murder and suicide, Washington Post writer Kathleen Parker said this about social media: “What is true today is that social media has become the church lady and the party-line operator rolled into one. If somebody misbehaves, not just two people know about it. Within hours or minutes, millions do. Like a single organization endowed with the accumulated moral fortitude of human society, Twitter demanded justice.”
There Ms. Parker was referring to how the social media were positively used to chip away at Bill O’Reilley, who ultimately was fired, finally, by Fox News. Too many women posted too many tweets for the imperious newscaster, who thought himself impervious, to survive. Social media can and do have many positive features.
But days later, shortly after the Steve Stephens incident, Kathleen Parker wrote another column. This one elucidated a particularly negative aspect of social media. “The banality of the act – random, ruthless and meaningless – underscored the truly hideous purpose of Stephens’ brief moment on the world stage. Not 15 minutes of fame, but eternity in the viral universe. Murdering a stranger was simply the worst thing he could do to ensure that everyone would know his name.”
Is there anyone reading this essay who does not remember that incomprehensible incident? But did any of you remember the murder’s name? I was astonished to re-discover that the insane episode occurred so recently. I would have guessed it happened at the latest in early 2016, or maybe even before. But how can anyone be expected to recall the chronology or the killer’s name when so many other equally bizarre things have happened between April of 2017 and August of 2017, many of which have been recorded on social media as well as in the traditional and vetted news media?
The Influence of the Internet
When the social media came under fire for being the vehicle by which certain kinds of chaos are broadcast through the land and the world, Steve Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, declared that his company was hot on the case. He began by stating, pretty crazily, that it was “pretty crazy” for anyone to imagine that fake news on Facebook had influenced the 2016 presidential election.
However, Zuckerberg had commissioned a Facebook report regarding potential problems caused by social media. He said, “(We) have to expand our security focus from traditional abusive behavior, such as account hacking, malware, spam and financial scams, to include more subtle and insidious forms of misuse.”
Did such “traditional abusive behavior” as “account hacking, malware, and spam” exist before the internet and the social media? Have the recent innovations of the Silicon Valley innovators become so permanently etched into our society that they are already “traditional”?
The Facebook finding in its report admitted that it uncovered “several situations” where Facebook subscribers used social media “to share information stolen from other sources, such as email accounts, with the intention of harming the reputation of specific political targets.” Shades of Assange and Snowden and Manning!
Twenty-seven hundred years ago there was a man living in Jerusalem. His name was Isaiah. He was a member of upper crust Judean society, but he was an equal-opportunity prophet, excoriating people both high and low for their bad behavior.
“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20) Was it right to use social media to reveal reams of secret government documents? Is it right for terrorists to use social media to encourage other also psychologically or mentally immature or unhinged people to become suicide bombers? Is that an illustration of calling evil good, or darkness light? Or does it instead illustrate calling good evil, or light darkness? What is real, and what is fake? And does the medium used to make such judgments affect the judgments themselves?
“Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!” (Isaiah 5:21). Do those who communicate by means of or who read social media an hour or more every day feel superior to those who do not? Have social media created a new kind of intelligentsia, those who book and tweet and gram and snap, while the rest of the world resorts to the old, dated media --- the vetted newspapers, magazines, and books, the vetted radio and television?
Speaking of books, more and more books are being published about some of the issues addressed herein. Among them are The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr, Christian Ethics in a Technological Age, by Brian Brock, On the Internet, by Hubert Dreyfus, and Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life, by Albert Borgmann. These and many other such tomes explore the wonderful advances and the potential and actual pitfalls of cybernetic technology.
The debate over real and fake news shall continue for many years to come. But it will be especially central to our culture survival while the current primary resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is still in office.
- July 27, 2017
John Miller is a writer, author, lecturer, and preacher-for-over-fifty-years who is pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC.