This tweet from CNN-IBN chief Rajdeep Sardesai via TMC MP Derek O'Brien got me thinking.
However, one group – the trolls - are a differennt beast (pun intended). Trolls don't just disagree
with you. Disagreement is fine. I follow and interact with many Tweeple whom
I openly disagree with. Trolls, add vicious abuse and sometimes, dire warnings to their dissent. And they do this anonymously.
By itself anonymity alone isn't bad. Many have valid reasons for staying anonymous: privacy and workplace rules are good examples. I have had conversations with such anonymous Tweeple off Twitter. Trolls however, hide behind the anonymity so they can never be tied to the opinions they express publicly. Worse still, their sole agenda isn't to improve the quality of debate but to identify people with opposing views and launch ad hominem attacks.
I block trolls for the same reason you’d
slam the gate on a snarling dog. You’d rather not deal with it. They either get
tired of snarling or find a new target to latch onto. I suspect it is these people who Rajdeep had in mind when he referred to "power without
responsibility".
Rajdeep is right in that sense. Trolls
have great power. They are blessed with the greatest of all freedoms – the
right to expression. This freedom, more than any other, guarantees our
democracy. Without a public space for
dissent and disagreement, our Republic wouldn’t be one at all. Just look at
China or Syria. Both, rather ironically, use the word ‘Republic’ in their official
styling. But both throttle public dissent. Public affairs, then, become the privilege of the elite.
And that brings me back to Twitter.
I feel the word social media is a misnomer. Why? In the modern sense, the term ‘media’ is synonymous for ‘the Press’. Social media, then, tends to get mistaken with
concepts of citizen journalism.
I think it is a much more
fundamental concept. I think the term ‘social media’ underplays the
real role sites like Twitter (and Facebook and others) play in our democracy. To
me, these are the new public squares; where people of all political and social colours
come together to share, debate and communicate. Some use it as a soap box; others,
to sell their wares. Still others use it for gossip. All this is fine.
The
public square was the hub of societies in years long past. Sites like Twitter are merely
shifting the location of this hub. They have become our go-to place for news views
and entertainment.
And this takes me back to the
trolls – those who enjoy “freedom without responsibility”. They abuse this public
good – the internet’s public square – and so, must be discouraged. We do not tolerate anyone who abuses and threatens us on a public road. We must not allow this in cyberspace.
Trolls hit at the very idea of a Republic by undermining the role of public debate. They - rightly or wrongly - make our governments more suspicious of the usefulness of public debate in shaping the public affairs. Let us then preserve our new public square so we can disagree as all rational people
would. But let us also keep the beasts outside the gates.
.
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