Spread the outrage
I got into an argument last night over what I first perceived as a “lack of sense of proportion” in conversations in social media. After all, it the girls that P-Noy loved before get more traction in social media than the names of all victims of the Ampatuan Massacre combined. People are more interested in tagging Foursquare locations than the deteriorating state of mining regions in the Cordillera, viewable through any satellite view map. It seems to indict the quality of discussions at first, but it does prove one very important thing: social media amplifies conversations. If a video goes viral for being so hilarious or awesome, shouldn't the same be the case for the gaffes of the government?
It should: a vigilant population that keeps the government on its toes can demand greater accountability and transparency. As with perceived diplomatic rows with speechwriters and international hostage crises with crazed criminals, it gives the government a healthy degree of paranoia. Keeping the government in check means being in step with it; following the leader means making sure that everything is kept in line. The watchdogs and critics will always be there, but the tweets and blogs that criticize the government on fair points shouldn't be immediately construed as destabilization or unfair criticism, but a way to make sure that expectations are met. For a Government built on great expectations, those objective criticisms from the social media front are all the more necessary.
Yet in the process of being vigilant watchers of the government, we can miss out on issues and events that deserve the amplification of social media. The past few weeks were great pickin's for netizens, but we did miss out on a few stories in the wake of the DoT fiasco. On November 18, Rogelio Salva, a 62-year-old farmer from Negros Occidental, died while holding a strike-camp with his fellow farmers in front of the Department of Agrarian Reform office. On November 15, the botanist Leonard Co, along with a forest guard and an aide, died after being caught in a crossfire between the Philippine Army and armed groups. There were no hashtags or viral Facebook pages for those.
Again, social media amplifies conversations. Yet it can only amplify conversations within a limit of understanding. The conversations amplified by netizens are those that are important to a particular class, understood by people with a certain educational attainment, or have the resources to access computers and afford Internet access. There is a lot of outrage to go around, but a lot remains to be said about how commensurate it is, or how relevant it is to other people who aren't netizens but are citizens nonetheless. It remains to be seen whether the outrage from bad restaurant service or astronomical mobile phone bills, for example, is the same outrage from the lack of basic services or having no phone service in remote, indigent areas. I could be wrong, but my answer is a predictable “no.”
Tempering online outrage with a sense of proportion is one thing, but tempering it with a sense of purpose is another. Netizens and the denizens of social media can do more than just hype up issues and stoke the fires of controversy, but act as a voice for the underrepresented, and give ample amplification to things that are underreported. There will be plenty of seats in the online table for people who like to talk about P-Noy's gaffes, but right now there are few who would talk about self-determination for indigenous peoples, for example. I guess the accusations of overreaction are not from mere acts of overreaction, but ones made at the expense of other things that deserve public attention. We're not after viral influencer-led social currencies (or whatever buzzword there is for that), but the recognition of the fact that some issues may be bigger and more important to us and to our fellow Filipinos than the next trending topic on Twitter.
Ultimately, the goals of “citizen journalism” and social media reportage should not just be for the sake of leaving opinions and stoking controversy and gaining personal mentions, but to lend credence and importance to underreported issues, and ones that run the risk of being ignored. So while it is important to be outraged at the government's gaffes, it's also as important to be the catalyst of outrage for those who can't do so, or do not have access to the media we often use to rage on.
We know where the outrage is. I guess it's time to pay it forward and spread it.
