Connecting to a Bigger Picture

Picture taken by Jonathan Acuña at The British Museum, London, England (2018)

Connecting to a Bigger Picture

Who’s really listening in social media?

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.
Head of Curriculum Development Academic Department Centro Cultural Costarricense-Norteamericano	Senior Language Professor School of English Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad Latina de Costa Rica
Thursday, July 30, 2020 Post 354

     Social media is being used for numerous reasons. It is not just a place where an individual is torn apart between his personal online self and his professional persona; it goes beyond this point. Social media is also used by corporations, and even by people in the government to sway people’s opinions and course of actions. But is this way of seeing social media a full gamut of ways to gather like-minded individuals to act and behave in willful ways to favor ideas or political instability?

         Let us take the case of fake news. In my home country, Costa Rica, congresspeople who do not favor our current government’s policies and ways of doing things have posted “campaigns” to discredit this presidential administration’s achievements. When confronted about the fake news he and his brother had published on their webpage, congressman Jonathan Prendas defended their publication of the news regarding the increase in the current sales tax in the country from 13% to 16% (Sequeira & Chinchilla, 2019), something that was not true.

Prendas’s news became viral and was then shared multiple times through different social media sites, and people started a wrestling match in earnest against the government and the approval of this new law. The question that remains unanswered is, “why did Congressman Prendas, being a member of a political party with a Protestant creed and religious affiliation, lie and induce others to error?” Part of the answer is that congresspeople know the power behind social media and try to exercise their influence as public, political figures. The cunning, immoral, and covetous intentions of the powerful can manipulate the mass to act, usually in their favor, even when a lie is contradicting the facts.

         Now let us take the case of a marketing corporation behind a political campaign. My second example is related to the 2014 presidential election in Costa Rica. The winner, President Luis Guillermo Solís, had jointly worked with a marketing corporation that profit from their listening to the social media platforms used by voters in Costa Rica. Though the losing political party, whose candidate was Johnny Araya, all were cast down by the electoral defeat; they all underestimated the power exercised by the marketing corporation on all social networks to discredit Araya.

Araya’s ideas, projects, and political campaign promises were deemed to be inappropriate for the country and exclusive because the poor, the needy, and the middle class were going to be highly affected. Understanding his defeat, Araya stepped out of his running for the presidency (DW Akademie, 2014). Had voters read and understood Araya’s potential government program and path? Probably not, but influencers in social media paid by Solís’s campaign team strengthened the dire repercussions of Araya’s future actions if he got elected. Unethically or not, emotional contagion was used, and Araya’s dream to get elected president of Costa Rica evaporated into the ethersphere.

         One thing is certain so far, corporations and people in governmental positions do listen to social media and quickly identify the trends in it, or they create those trends. If this is a sign that we are experiencing a greater connection to society, well it is happening, but this is not a two-way street, at least in a Latin American context. We have also understood that fake news can come from all sort of sources, even with spiteful intentions to discredit positive achievements in the government. Aside from this, we can also see that a political campaign can be taken to the social media platforms to sway people’s voting intentions. We are confronted with interesting ethical issues that were never, ever considered when social media were born in the world.

References

DW Akademie. (2014, March 5). Johnny Araya abandona la segunda vuelta en las elecciones presidenciales de Costa Rica. Germany. Retrieved July 30, 2020, from https://www.dw.com/es/johnny-araya-abandona-la-segunda-vuelta-en-las-elecciones-presidenciales-de-costa-rica/a-17478248

Sequeira, A., & Chinchilla, S. (2019, July 31). Jonathan Prendas defiende noticia falsa sobre alza del IVA en sitio web ligado a él. San José, Costa Rica. Retrieved July 30, 2020, from https://www.nacion.com/el-pais/politica/jonathan-prendas-defiende-noticia-falsa-sobre-alza/REH5KMKUOJC43HKI6HOFPUTVYE/story/

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