If we look back media played a significant role in shaping our history. While the wave of transformation comes through education and awareness, social media has circulated them as wildfire among the public.
The power of social media can be seen how it helped people unite, join activism, advocate and launch a revolution. In Egypt tyrant ruler was overthrown with the help of social media. The people came to know about good and bad so they voluntarily joined revolution. The content we share shapes opinion of others. Social media is a powerful tool if used wisely otherwise it can equally be disastrous.
Social media became quite useful during the recent Gurkha Earthquake that devastated Nepal on April 25, 2015. Really how creative and innovative we were in using social media like Facebook, Twitter etc to share information about earthquakes. The first-hand information from grass-roots came directly to authorities making the relief operation activities more productive and efficient.
The informal media proved to be more accurate and systematic at a time when the formal lacks reporters in all the incident sites for reporting. There were several cases of misrepresentation and dissemination of falsified news that irked people awaiting aids. The exchange verbal garbs, opinion clashes, hijacking relief materials, dissemination of misleading news were few examples of media drawback.
The best example can be of Indian media that violated media ethics, played with sentiments of affected people and just sprayed salt on fresh wound of people with silly and illogical questions. As a result, people took to Facebook and Twitter using hashtag #Gohomeindianmedia to express their fury against the India media. Indian media really portrayed bad, inhumane picture of Nepalese life and devastation caused by the earthquake. Their misrepresentation of Nepal demonstrates negative attitude in Indian people about Nepal.
The social media has to be able to maintain its neutral position and should provide un-biased, accurate and credible information to the public. We are entering the next phase of political instability. The role of social media in shaping our views has further increased. The situation is very fragile even small misinterpretation can cause a huge loss of life and property.
The media should not hurt the sentiments of any social segments. The information posted should be accurate, credible and impartial. The situation is getting worse day by day and so is the sensitivity of issues which is ever increasing. Almost all people are relying on social media for updates and analyzing situation based on the views posted by social media.
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