The media’s role in a democracy is far too crucial to ignore. We can agree, disagree, or keep a neutral stance, but we can’t look away from its far-reaching outcomes. There’s every reason to believe that the media acts as a fourth pillar of democracy, mirroring society, modern lives, and the incidents in between. Be it informing citizens about current regional and global affairs, offering entertainment, or sharing insights to facilitate learning, it takes on a larger role—that of bridging the geographical divide or working as a unifying force. Given the weight on its shoulders and the trust placed on it by most users, the question that arises next is whether it keeps its end of the bargain.
In a classroom situation, it engages students through useful tools to exemplify what they’re studying or make the process an interactive one, adding to a richer, more immersive experience. Both print and digital media, across their forms, stress the importance of basic literacy skills for the masses to make living efficient for them. On the one hand, where media contributes to improved communication and focuses on the needs of the poor or oppressed to cater to their socio-economic and cultural interests; projects like Educational Television, and Gyan Darshan aim to instruct and educate people, teaching basic skills to help develop their standard of living. On the other hand, it acts as a medium for trading and marketing products and prejudices. The media, which once claimed to be governed by righteousness and equity, gradually gives way to greed and self-aggrandizement.
One instance is the paid or fake news features that we now get to see in broad daylight. For paid news, wherein organizations supply money to news media platforms to get featured in a good light, the idea is to get the platform to write in favour of an individual, a political party, the government, or anybody who serves their interests and/or portray their rival/competitor in a bad light to bring them down. The published features may or may not be true, which is what directly attacks the authenticity that’s promised by well-to-do news platforms. The audience members often take that at face value as they associate the newspaper or channel with credibility, which in turn, makes them gravitate towards the narrative put forward there. For instance, a channel that is paid by a political party to showcase their policies and endorse them repetitively goes on to take away from the social responsibility that the media comes with, as the fourth organ of the government.
Similarly, fake news is a prevalent practice wherein misleading and/or fabricated information is spread across the media to deceive the audience for political motives. Propaganda falls under the same banner. Designed to manipulate perceptions around facts, it threatens journalistic ethics directly. Ideally, the job of the platforms should be to give their audiences complete information and let them choose sides rather than choosing on their behalf, in terms of personal opinions or judgments put forth across a public domain. With clickbait, eye-catching headlines doing the rounds over Internet-based news platforms, the audience gets swayed by the style of presentation. Add to that the rampant circulation of the same within minutes, which takes propagating falsehoods one step ahead. The lack of intention to verify facts before forwarding them leads to a culture of diminishing reflectiveness among consumers of news.
When the Internet is heavily relied upon by individuals and groups for more than one reason, it might do us good to look at the integrity required on an individual’s part rather than solely focusing on the evils that occur at the institutional level regarding the dissemination of information. Besides education, speeding up daily tasks, shopping, research, promoting businesses and innovation within them, digital transactions, money management, tours, and travel, it extends to a domain widely used by us all, which is social media. This necessitates media literacy, an essential component of ensuring media integrity at the most basic level.
Beyond the scope of entertainment too, users often find themselves struggling to find a balance. The challenges posed are far too many: reduced attention span, decision-making and response time, emphasis on quantity over quality, the filtered interface between media and personal life, occasional loss of individuality, desensitising towards violence through consistent exposure leading to aggressors being portrayed as attractive, normalising misbehaviour through trolling and hate speech, and the list goes on. It is worth remembering that some lines are never meant to be crossed, no matter what. That keeps our behaviour in check.
The posts, stories, and status updates are more than an act of sharing. They influence behaviour to the extent where junk food could be portrayed as cool without significant health concerns, consumed digital content could affect self-esteem in terms of dissatisfaction with personal life, expectations may skyrocket when fantasy clashes with reality, online and offline personas become vastly different as the ideal/authentic self loses its way, relationships and interactions go for a toss, and one’s safety and privacy are at risk, among the other distractions it could create.
Learning that all media messages are “constructed” and produced not only for education or artistic expression but also for profit and persuasion goes a long way. We must ask the right questions: who produces/pays for it, the purpose, techniques to increase believability/likeability, the target audience, what’s left out of the story, any stereotypes or biases contained, which lifestyles are promoted, and why. Understanding that the fear of missing out (FOMO) is sold like hotcakes and the increased patterns of media usage predispose us to be someone else could be a good starting point.
Responsible usage includes awareness, being mindful of privacy such that sharing updates is preceded by thought, reaching out for support, regulating screen time, forming opinions based on objective wisdom, tolerance for other perspectives, focusing equally on offline relationships, and spreading positivity through social media. When the cons outweigh the pros, it’s high time to put thinking caps on.
