Feedback at two am

Whats holding social media back?

By Faisal Kapadia

A freelance columnist, Faisal Kapadia lives in Karachi, writes on everything and social media and misses the time when we could tell the good guys from the bad by the color of their light sabers. He tweets with the same name and sometimes answers emails at faiskap666@gmail.com

In the start there was Bulletin boards, they were truly an ingenious thing – electronic forums/message boards where one could connect with a network of people not restricted by time or space. Very few people had access to them as the internet had not even arrived properly here. Then came mirc and the age of the snap crackle pop 33.6 us robotics modem to Pakistan. I remember those heady days well as the world around us was completely asleep to what we could achieve through communication. Then several advances were made and the crackles and hisses turned to chimes as the 56.6k modem arrived on these shores. Mainstream isps geared up soon after and then the competition grew until broadband burst onto the scene here.

With broadband came social media in Pakistan and over the last three years it has been growing steadily, going from a novelty to a hobby to a force which it is now. It is quite literally a giant network or a digitally connected mesh of Pakistani’s who are educated opinionated and filling in spaces in the system they first found at fault and cribbed about but are now set to change like never before. There are 6 million of them on facebook three million on twitter  and aside from having your head buried under a rock somewhere it is very hard to miss them.

As a community social media here has been engaged in a many different spheres of progress, they were among the front runners when the recent floods took place in relief work. They have been representing Pakistanis home and abroad in many events and seminars. They also now double as op ed writers and journalists working for and producing content for many local and international media houses. In short they have gone from being regarded as a bunch of geeks who write on the internet to a major lobbying group which has ala “maya khan” shown what they can do if they focus on one issue.

However they are still not understood by the mainstream or masses. Some of the tools this community uses like facebook or other social networks are penetrating rapidly but the overall acceptance is still not there. The first barrier to this mainstream entry lies in language; we often speak of the revolutions that have taken place in the arab world via social media and wonder why it is not acting as a galvanizing force for 65% of this nation which are the youth. What we keep forgetting however is the fact that the revolutions we spoke off were twittered facebooked and blogged into a fury through the local language and not English. Therefore for starters social media in Pakistan needs “access” for most of the people in this country who would take it to the next level. This access will only come about through efficient translators on mobile phones which are affordable. The pak telecom market is stupendous in its sales and proportion but needs to develop local software to dissolve this barrier.

Secondly Sm in Pakistan needs credibility. Too much of it is people hiding behind anonymous avatars and slandering mainstream personalities. There is also no singular code of ethics like journalists have, there isn’t even a loose understanding of what is acceptable or not as in the cyber realm and without any laws tailored or implemented to hold it in check anything and everything is becoming kosher. Nobody is going to take this community seriously as long as it keeps operating like an unorganized hive, even if it is a super intelligent one. Obviously this is a double edged sword as the true beauty of an open public social network predominantly means it being uncontrollable. So where and how can we form a balance?

The only way to do so is for social media to not be policed by others but to indulge in self policing. After all when we are sharing something damaging or maligning someone’s personality we should be able to stop and distinguish right from wrong? We cannot keep on spreading things based on hearsay and without so much as five minutes of research? If we are to replace or augment mainstream media properly we must do it based on facts and not conjecture, as along the merry path of being the check and balance & the voice of civil society in Pakistan we are fast turning into what we abhor. Uncontrollable egoistical self proclaimed paragons of a false virtue.