Am I my brother’s keeper? Below I have an article URL from today about a candidate for the US vice presidency, J.D. Vance, using social media. I wonder if there will ever be a time when society can face up to not even the horror of war, but merely the horror of social media news?
It’s so easy to say that my dad’s traditional media is fake news, or believe, as some earnest sheltered computer nerds do, that regular people all care to have journalism ethics. An old befuddled aunt or an innocent young student may whisper, “It must be true or they wouldn’t have forwarded it.”
Oh, don’t talk to me about students at university. Do even General Studies and Communications majors know that the Finns have a national program to debunk social media secretly crafted in Russian troll factories? If we in North America aren’t doing something similar then it’s because our entire society isn’t ready yet to face social media—not even idealistic students.
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/kinsella-haters-and-the-hate-are-back-in-class
Kinsella shows Canadian students hating fellow Canadian Jews, NOT just Israelis, because of consuming social media.
Here’s the vice president story
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/15/jd-vance-lies-haitian-immigrants
Because of Vance, Springfield has suffered two hospitals having lockdowns and school bomb threats.
I guess before we can copy the Finns or have our own nation-wide coping strategies, we have to first face that social media news can cause wrongful consequences. And before that… we have to be willing to face up to the fact that social media might maybe, sometimes, be fake news. Our lovely neighbours who gossip verbally may not have journalism ethics in what they type and forward.
Am I willing to exclaim, “That’s social media!” and rebuke my sister? It’s so hard to speak up, but if you and I won’t be willing to make a start, then our community won’t be honest, but instead doomed to social media, with things like hatred in Springfield, and, last month, those race riots across England: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14436499
Democracy dies in dishonesty. I guess I could speak in a neutral computer voice to my sister, stating calmly, “Roe versus Wade does not endorse abortions after three months.” Or maybe try, “When I hear you say that, I sense you got it from social media.” That would be better than nothing.
Next time I hesitate to make a friend or stranger mad at me, maybe I could think of those bleeding race riot casualties—and speak up.
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Sean Crawford
Calgary
September
2024
