In today’s era, social media has become a great source of income generation and an incredible platform to interact with a wider audience. In earlier generations, there was limited access to the internet; and years after the internet revolution, the lifestyle of many of its users has significantly changed.
Nowadays, people are going nuts online perceiving that without the use of social network channels like Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp, their talent would hardly be recognized by the prominent personality from entertainment, sports, and arts industry. Also, these days the trending fashion of passing defamatory comments on modesty, class, religion, and credibility has widely spread and with these notions, many individuals tend to leap into these magical wireless connectivity to the entire world.
The gathering of information, reporting, and publishing on social events with the extensive use of mass media and the printing press has evolved much better and attracted many viewers or readers by its elaborative style of appearance. Over the years of transformation, editors, reporters, and writers have penned down the social, economic and political events by keeping in mind the interest of likes and dislikes of humans. Some wrote to frame the ideas of expression in the beautifully painted canvas of truth, justice, and humanity; whereas some have diverted their pathway towards gaining the power of fame and money.
It has also been noted that how effective anyone’s voice can have an impact on social media websites, which would propagate to run the effective functioning of organization by maintaining the uniformity of any individual or parallelly heading towards something regarded as an unconventional path to destroy the ethical values of the constitution by echoing prejudiced remarks or statements made publicly to lower the status of the authority.
This particular independent space of which we are going to address today, to begin with, two haunting questions we should be asking ourselves: if freedom of speech is given to us, are we utilising it in an appropriate way and, if not, then why? Secondly, is the excessive use of social networking sites destroying the scope of the fourth pillar of democracy, i.e. media?
Media plays a very important role in unearthing the facts and presenting it to the world in the most reasonable, modest, and informative approach. People trust news channels believing that if their own elected government, administrative system, and society do not work sincerely supporting the whole nation to prosper in every aspect of development, then there must be a socially engaged representative who will be their choice of directing the prolonged issues right on the table of the authoritarian.
However, the memorandum of deliberative speech, articulating the dialogue between parties and owning the extraordinary advocacy power of challenging the dictatorship on behalf of public interest in the rule books of media and journalism seems to be disappearing with time. Only a fraction of the highly intellectual, top-ranked news channels and honoured media anchors are actively working to revive the mainstream media while the rest have downgraded the virtue of authentic news media by displaying unimportant, baseless, and fabricated stories. This is done to take a share of the highest grossing television rating point (TRP) earnings from the pockets of politicians and corporate houses.
It is watched many times on TV, whenever there is a mass protest or hunger strikes by farmers, youth, employees, and women in New Delhi and/or other parts of India. The tireless and mobilised activities of protesters battling day and night for their legal rights going unnoticed and suddenly, all their efforts to bring change within the system cease due to the repulsive demand of the central government and other media outlets to stop immediately.
And, the reporting of celebrity parties or in some cases the local MLA’s son’s late night partying suddenly met with an accident gets 100% coverage. This is why the majority of teenagers and elders are catering to the popularity of social media sites which gives the abundance of freedom to speak about anything by posting online of their pleas.
There has been an unprecedented recording of incidents that took place across the city which had caused a threat to the national-level security, which has propelled the regime to impose stringent actions against violators. In recent times, police officials have charged the dissenters for mocking newly appointed politicians, criticising their established institutions, and breaching the law regulatory which has resulted in the detaining of nearly 42 persons who were sent behind bars for posting “objectionable posts” from 2014 till 2017 stated by NDTV managing editor, author, and recipient of prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for journalism, Ravish Kumar.
Here, the point to be noted is that that the two different passages of life are assertive and offensive actions. It all depends on the psychological tendency of one’s mindset to decide. Assertive actions are progressed with the purpose of addressing concerns pertaining to society and the fundamental practice of one’s character duties. Contrary to assertive actions, offensive actions had defamed the characteristics of governmental bodies and frequently interrupted the confrontation talks or negotiations between the two nations on peace and humanity.
Therefore, in the end, it can be concluded that in any rampant situations the usage of social networking tools would deteriorate the functionality of the governing body and impact many. At any cost, the prime responsibility of the citizens should be to stay on ground when things go out of control and with regard to their exaggerating apprehensions, the government must validate the great initiative plans to launch the special cell which would look overall into these sensitive matters.