Social media: The ultimate tool for democracy

While the “Everybody Draw Mohammad Day” page has been put back up on Facebook, it still remains blocked to users in India, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. In South Africa, the Mail & Guardian won a court case that allowed the small Johannesburg-based newspaper to publish its celebrated cartoonist Zapiro and his contribution to this raging debate.

In case you missed it, 20 May was designated by a Facebook group as the day when artists, illustrators and cartoonists around the world should defy Islamic law and use their creativity to depict the prophet. Millions of Muslims were outraged and death threats reined down on the creator of the page, who took great pains to distance herself from the furore.

It all began with Molly Norris, a cartoonist for the Seattle Times, who originally posted a cartoon on her website as a response to the death threats from Revolution Muslim against Comedy Central, the network behind the immensely popular TV series, South Park, who had depicted the Prophet Mohammed in their series.

But it was a pair of grad students in Europe who took her idea a step further and created the Facebook group which unleashed this torrent of emotion from both sides of the debate. The worldwide storm over this content has again proven the immense power of social networking to whip up controversy and strike fear into the hearts and minds of those threatened by an unregulated freedom of expression.

Social networks have become profoundly effective tools in the hands of individuals and groups seeking to organise and foment social change, as in the widely-publicised use of Twitter by Iranian groups seeking to overturn the fraudulent election-result. But they are equally effective when they harness the power of sarcasm and irony to throw up a mirror at society, and provide people with a platform to air their grievances.

The viral success of the Twitter hashtag #nickcleggsfault is a perfect example. In the run-up to the recent British elections, the right-wing media suddenly became terrified that the Liberal Democrats might steal the election from the Tories and embarked on a smear campaign that accused him of ‘insulting British pride’ and wanting to create jobs for asylum seekers. Twitter users, in a masterstroke of British wit and subtlety, created the hashtag #nickcleggsfault which implied that everything that had ever gone wrong was, in fact, Nick Clegg’s fault. In less than 24-hours, it became the second most popular trending topic on Twitter, behind Earth Day.

Everything from burnt toast to the weekend traffic jams became Nick Clegg’s fault, and served to severely dilute the power of the press to set the terms of the debate. Ironically, the hashtag lives on, and now that Nick Clegg is in power, it could lose its sarcastic tone and become a real platform for criticising government.

One of the most successful examples in recent times of turning political discourse into viral entertainment, was by the Black Eyed Peas’ transformation of Obama’s ‘Yes We Can’ speech into an uplifting, spiritual song featuring various celebrities paraphrasing Obama’s words.

And during the recent American health care debates, when the Republican speaker John Boehner exploded with a vitriolic “Hell No, you can’t!”, well, he should have known his fate was sealed. Within hours, his negative outburst had been spliced into the “Yes We Can” song as a perfectly balanced counterpoint to the optimism on display and a crystal-clear example of Republican obfuscation. The people struck back. With ridicule.

Recently, South African web-users had their own chance to exact a little revenge on our own politicians. In early April, a weekend of riveting television gave birth to phrases such as ‘Don’t touch me on my studio’, ‘You bloody agent’ and ‘This is a revolutionary house’. The AWB secretary-general André Visagie and the ANC Youth League’s Julius Malema both took to the airwaves expressing vitriol that shook our shaky sense of racial harmony. Viewers were left with a sense that this could all spin out of control, while British newspaper readers were informed of the beginnings of a “race war”.

But just the opposite happened. Ordinary people took control of the debate, and diluted any sense of anger or righteous indignation that might have flared up. Everywhere you turned people of all colours were saying ‘Don’t touch me on my studio!’ and calling each other ‘Bloody Bastards’ with a grin on their faces.’

Facebook and Twitter were awash with these catch-phrases, while at a head-turning speed, musically remixed versions popped up on YouTube and other video-sharing networks, achieving tens of thousands of viewings, that highlighted the absurd and childish nature of these outbursts.

Within days we were all laughing together at the creativity of the man in the street and pompous grandiosity of the politicians. The speed and the success with which these memes go viral is the natural counterpoint to the unequal power relationship in most societies.

The pact seems to break down like this. You get to use your power to speak to the people in a one-way stream from the corporate broadcasters. But we the people get to answer back, twisting, shifting and subverting what you say on our platforms to expose what we perceive to be its real meaning.

And while the debate will rage on about the rights and the wrongs of depicting the Prophet Mohammed, there is comfort to be gained from the fact that the tools to connect people and to inspire action exist and are free for anyone to use with as much skill and intelligence as they can muster in support of their cause.