Forwards in social media messaging have an extraordinary power to distort and manufacture news. They have become a ubiquitous feature of mail and social media communications — and it’s all happened so rapidly.

Irving Wallace was blinded during his time to this transformation when he created Edward Armstead in The Almighty (1982), who spent his time and effort manufacturing news to be a New York media baron.

Today, thousands of such Edward Armsteads could be masked behind the social media forwards, creating information aligned to their intentions with no accountability for such forwards. A widely used and popular social media platform processes more than 42 billion messages a day with over 1.2 billion in picture forwards. It is akin to saying six messages for every person on earth being sent everyday, with only 3 per cent of the world population being daily active on that single platform. The statistics are overwhelming and mind-boggling to say the least. We are seeing a nuclear explosion in social media messaging.

This boom in connectivity is not necessarily a great thing, as it is potentially marred by the veracity of information being forwarded. The good old print media boasted a circulation of few hundred thousand to a few million every day, depending on countries and their population. The US, China and India boast larger circulation trends. The heyday of the newspaper industry was the 1940s, but the percentage of population reading newspapers began to decline with increased competition from radio, television and, more recently, the internet.

Defined role

However, in all these forms of media, the role of agencies governing what is printed, published, broadcast is fairly well defined in a bid to ensure credibility and accountability of the information published. (The extent of state control on media is another issue.) There is an editor, publisher and owner of that institution (be it state or private) who finally owns what is printed or broadcast.

Social media messaging forwards are, however, an open-ended platform. Everyone is a writer, editor, critic and even a historian sharing facts (references be damned), spiritual advisor, health advisor and retirement planner! “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” said the punchline to a cartoon in The New Yorker in 1993. The visionary cartoon is more relevant to the present times when groups in social media messaging are flooded with blank forwards.

Photoshops, political sarcasm, security tips, health advisory notices, quotable quotes, references from holy books, puzzles and sometimes even Harvard interview questions flood messaging platforms. Who is the author or editor for them is a million dollar question. Who cares for the veracity of such forwards when people forward blindly to other messaging groups. Many a time, the same message is repeated in multiple groups, giving guilt pangs to those not playing the forwarding game! There are accusations of paid set-ups being around to generate such data. What is surprising is the wide spectrum of topics covered in such forwards.

Individual responsibility

Unfortunately, many believe that social media messaging depicts the truth. William James, the father of modern psychology said, “There’s nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.” Repeat a forward to multiple groups and it becomes the solution one is looking for. If messages come from a trusted relative or friend, they are believed and forwarded without a thought.

Most people will not ask who wrote it, or what the basis for an opinion is. A few will decide it is nonsensical and not forward it. But they will not challenge whoever sends it, because they may not want to offend friends and humiliate them in a group.

It is our responsibility not to become blind forwarders. The ease of communication in social media is its greatest undoing. Compare this with the print media that publishes news. It has a writer, an editor and even provides mail ids along with an article, blog or post. Social messaging platform forwards with no named writer, reference or publication are best treated as junk. Before you forward another post, think about whether you’re helping the situation or making it worse.

The writer is a Singapore-based banker

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