 |
| Twiiter icon. Today, content on mainstream media is significantly informed by insights from social media |
Bestiality is the talk of town today. Recently, the media
has been awash with stories of men having sexual escapades on animals. A
Twitter update recently lamented how cows, donkeys, goats, chicken, and
dogs are now endangered animals in Kenya.
Reading from conversations on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and
WhatsApp, the Kenyan moral fabric is no more. What goes through the mind of a man
to sleep with animals? This rhetorical question that scores harbor fertilizes the response that something must be wrong.
Already aghast Kenyans point accusing fingers on the mainstream
media for the deterioration of morality, by airing these untoward stories. A
Tweet addressed to Kenyan media houses by The Trend Setter reads:
“Stop reporting cases of bestiality. We are fed up! You are
the ones who are encouraging such behaviors.” Three people Favourited the post.
It earned two reTweets.
So what is wrong with radio, newspapers and television?
And the media houses. Nothing.
By broadcasting on bestiality, the mainstream media is not being
petty. Besides, it is not ambivalent to people’s morality. Instead, it is
adjusting to the needs of the masses. With social media, mainstream media has
an upper hand in understanding how exactly to be accordant with the consumers. Welcome to the world of business.
Media houses are in business.
Anything else is just moonlighting. Being a member of the Fourth Estate,
influencing public debate, providing entertainment, setting public agenda, for
instance. The underlying principle is simple. Get something to keep audiences tuned in,
and make them loyal to your brand. This principle sells everywhere.
We board particular matatus
because they play some particular music, or provide internet services. It would
be naïve to assume that playing music and offering internet services are what
keeps the matatu in business. The proprietor
and crew understand that through this incentive, their matatu would be competitive. With customer satisfaction, brand loyalty often follows.
Similarly, commercials keep media houses running. To be
meaningful, media must be relevant to the masses. When people capture and
upload images on, say bestiality, and they go viral, the mainstream media
salivates. It stops at nothing to tap into this swarm, market.
Social media makes work very easy for media houses. Instead
of doing surveys to establish people’s preferences, they easily go to social
media sites. By monitoring conversations on their fan pages and elsewhere, media
houses often come up with products based on an understanding on the needs of
the masses. How untoward the preferences are is immaterial.
How many times have we seen episodes of local programs
themed on gay marriages, lesbianism, hard drugs, and sex? The other day, Witi
Ihimaera’s The Whale Rider, a novel with
gay undertones, outraged a section of Kenyans. What Kenya Institute of Education did not say
then was that they could have picked the secondary school set book because it exposes
readers to current developments in the society.
With social media, people are rebelling against the
traditional communication model. Information does not need to go linearly, from
source to consumer. Consumers are no longer passive. Editing, censorship, framing,
and agenda setting, signature processes in media houses, repel contemporary information
consumers, who are salivating for the reality. Social media is a one-stop shop
for this reality.
Social media gives information consumers unparalled power. People
know what they want to consume, and nothing should come in between. Before the
era of social media, traditional media had not embraced interactivity to the
latter. Anyone who has tried them knows that "Letters to the editors" are a mockery of interactivity, in its literal
meaning.
Fortunately, thanks to social media, consumers can rightfully dictate
on their preferred information. This recent development appalls media houses.
Social media is now the bell cow in journalism. Without
following consumers to the social media, media houses are aware that they
would be doomed to irrelevance. This then hints that when a media house realizes
that stories on bestiality excite the masses, they have nothing else left other
than to air such stories.
Does this then portray the high levels of insensitivity
on part of the media? Not really.
Mainstream media broadcasts what the masses are already
consuming. Failing to broadcast these stories therefore does not mean that
people are not accessing them. Instead, airing these stories, and inviting
insights from pundits, is a great way of promoting sober conversations around
the stories. In the Kenyan case, it can help in separating the stories from the
generalizations on ethnic groups they are attracting. This is not to glorify social
media.
Falling back on social media is
dangerous to the masses. According to Abraham Foxman and Christopher Wolf in Viral Hate: Containing Its Spread on the
Internet, social media is more potent than the propaganda schemes Hitler
and Nazis applied on Jews. This means that the media houses should take narratives
on social media with a pinch of salt. Then there is the meantime.
Social media is unstoppable. It is
time everyone appreciates that the world is changing. With social media and commercial
orientation of the media, Kenyans should expect to see and hear more unconventional
stories. From now on, the media will give you what you want.
No comments:
Post a Comment