Social Media And The Power of Eye Witnesses Challenging Authority
Social media is a type of oral history playing a huge role in bolstering and expanding the scope of information gathering and distribution. In doing so it has harvested another dimension to information shared with the public. If the information that we receive is to have a social purpose, it is obligatory that any construction of events must take on a multi-dimensional storytelling framework. Reporting like history must not only reflect the voice of authority but the eyewitnesses, the ordinary voices who are a valued part of the recounting of any great moment in focus.
The contribution of social media as an added front to oral history has become relevant in that aspect. Like oral history accounts, it challenges the authority of institutional documentation at the exclusion of vernacular accounts of any event in time. As a discipline, it democratizes by giving a voice to the disenfranchised and by so doing personalizes some of the great history-making events of our time.
Oral History: The Precursor
A 2009 article in a University of Arkansas publication defines oral history as:
Simply put…a method: a way of gathering information from people who come into contact with history, who have lived through events or periods and are willing to reflect on not only what happened but also how they experienced what happened.
A prior 1986 UNESCO report: Archives, Oral History and Oral Tradition: A Ramp Study reinforced that notion:
Oral history, …is usually identified as an activity, a detached and academic process of inquiry into the memories of people who have experienced the recent past directly. This inquiry and the responses it generates are recorded to supplement written records that have been found wanting in some measure for historical analysis. It is a studied, abstract, and analytic practice of historians and other social scientists, and it relies heavily on a recording device, whether manual, mechanical, or electronic.
Oral history's greatest value is its personal nature. By way of interview, the interviewer is able to bring forth the reminiscences and points of view of individuals who either tell their life story or focus on a particular event in world history. Imagine hearing the account of someone personally involved in planning the invasion of Iraq or that of a specific period in world history such as the experience of a parent trying to explain the sounds of bomber jets flying through the air during World War II? Eye witness accounts provide all that albeit that the heavy reliance on memory demands rigid fact-checking and frugal use of information.
By contrast, traditional documenting of history draws upon a variety of sources such as government reports, newspaper stories, letters, journals, diaries and personal papers. In contrast to oral history, it is written in the third person, highly academic with bibliographical accompaniment as verification of credibility and authority. Yet it is this conservatism which led to the rise of oral histories.
The Shortfalls Of The Written Chronicles And The Rise Of Oral History
When the objective is not to tell the story of the vanquished but that of the victor, countless swathes of social history are denied documentation or if mentioned are mere footnotes, rather than issues in themselves, resulting in their diminished potentiality for social value purposes. Oral history was to challenge history written from the rigid confines of authority.
Among the pioneers of this new approach was socialist and historian Paul Thompson who according to a Guardian editorial in 2017 was a standard-bearer for a wider:
New Left historiography that sought out the lives of ordinary people to tell the story of history from below, a way of uncovering a radical message about power and agency.
Historians embarked on a new trajectory, going in search of subjects to interview to get their perspective — their own individual experiences. Oral history became not only a linchpin between archival recounting and the voice of disenfranchised people but a new cultural instrument.
That cultural instrument has taken on new life with the advent of social media platforms to challenge, refute, expose accounts coming from the highest echelons. Social media have become a bank of ordinary people experiencing history as it happens outside the purview of official documentation but no longer do their stories remain subject to the will and dominance of authority.
What Is Social Media?
investipedia.com describes social media loosely as:
…computer-based technology that facilitates the sharing of ideas, thoughts, and information through the building of virtual networks and communities. By design, social media is internet-based and gives users quick electronic communication of content. Content includes personal information, documents, videos, and photos”.
Social Media: What is it? by Matthew Hudson on June 23, 2020, was more pointed:
Social media refers to websites and applications that are designed to allow people to share content quickly, efficiently, and in real-time.
The ability to share opinions, videos and events in real-time is the transformative value of social media. In no time, for example, official reporting of any event can be challenged and where necessary lies are exposed. Social media platforms allow for a valuable invocation of original voices to bring cross-examination of the official narrative into the public spaces. It is not documentation through the eyes of a third party observer who may filter information in order to present a representational view of any particular interest. This is what adds to its appeal. History, as it happens, becomes open to scrutiny and broader interpretations. Lies and misrepresentations are exponentially exposed.
Social Media: Veracity! Undisciplined! Rebellious! Problem Child!
Ironically, social media’s weight in gold is also is its Achilles heel. It is unique because it is relatively uncensored information with massive global reach. The use of hashtags on platforms such as Twitter automatically connect users with shared views on any topic of interest. However, that strength is what makes it problematic. It faces much of the same challenges that oral history, eye witness views face in the writing of history.
Many in traditional media cautions against authenticity and the reliability of sources outside formal journalism that have not gone through rigid vetting processes. To compensate many social media companies censor the sharing of obscene or violent posts, for example, and there is fact-checking to immediately challenge the accuracy of questionable posts. Still, these restrictions do not measure up to those enforced in traditional mass communication.
Point taken! The stock in trade of social media reporting is that it has the ability to identify major lacunae in the official documentation and can invariably balance these stories because it is testimony from those up close and personal to the events in question.
For example, during the Arab Spring of 2010, social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter were able to neutralize the official word coming from government-controlled media agencies. We have witnessed the same in the mass protests in Hong Kong, Lebanon and those in Latin America last year. It has political value.
New Areas Of Inquiry
Social media reporting and the sharing of videos “transport” us to any geographical location: we stay in our homes miles away and virtually experience earthquakes, tsunamis and armed conflicts in various trouble spots. Additionally, eye witness reports also open up other areas of enquiry — areas again that may be left out by the authority.
Material circumstances give way to the examination and exposure of the effects of any event on the lives of those living through them. The effects on the lives of special demographics such as children, women, the elderly, family life, small business become areas of focus as information come to light from blogs and posts. How do children and teachers living in conflict areas, for example, navigate that reality? What of the experiences of the elderly or the physically or mentally challenged? Through revelations, the effects on those forgotten groups become a part of the conversation. As a source, this may presumably be the closet thing to striking a balance in reporting.
Dramatic Diversification
Authentic stories result in a dramatic diversification and radical transformation of the scope of information sharing. This new methodological change — -both in and outside academia — removes documentation from a closeted discipline to one that is decidedly more interactive. The input of social media is fundamentally more humanist with this availability of a larger set of social reasoning.
Outside of the obvious challenges that would dismiss the social value of the contribution of social media accounts, the field has re-energized and deepened the terms of reference. As a source, this power of eye witness accounts should not be readily dismissed but expertly managed.
