By Hassan I. Conteh
Sierra Leoneans are going to the polls just a week in June 24 general elections.
But there are deep fears and panic inflamed by social media users. These people are using Whatsapp channels, facebook blogs, instagrams and twitter handles to spread messages of fear, hate and panic among the people of Sierra Leone.
The practice by social media political commentators is considered as irresponsible since senders of information are not upholding moral standards.
Their messages are devoid of sound ethical considerations since the platforms where those messages are sent through to target the masses are not regulated.
This phenomenon is posing a serious challenge for Sierra Leone’s democracy.
The government is struggling to keep away fear in the minds of Sierra Leoneans.
While social media inciters of public fear largely influence people’s opinions, Sierra Leone’s government is unable to stabilize situation on the ground.
The use of social media in Sierra Leone, of course, is not being controlled by the government.
Like Sierra Leone, most countries around the world including the United States of America, the bastion of democracy, has attempted to stipulate policies that would regulate the wrong use of social media.
But there has been a debate around the First Amendment in USA’s constitution which provides and empowers ‘free speech.’
All over the world, in democratic countries, democracy holds that people must freely express their opinions in matters that concern them.
But a strange world exists with the emergence of social media spurred by constant innovation in technology.
As citizens become aware of their rights to express their opinions freely without government’s control, irresponsible users of social media expand their wingspans as they spread messages of incitement, rumours and hate speeches on the new media, social media forums.
Most governments around the world are losing their tight grip on maintaining peace and stability among the people they ought to provide security for.
Today’s presence of various social media channels has given overwhelming power to citizens in governments around the world.
Protests have been happening in Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Guinea, Sierra Leone, USA, Iran, India, France, Hong Kong, etc. Most of the demonstrations in these countries are made to happen because there is access to the internet which is promoted by the use of citizens’ social media platforms.
Social media commentators, for example, in Nigeria on EndSars; Black Lives campaign, and Sierra Leone’s August 10, 2022 and June 12, 2023 protests, have overwhelmingly influenced public opinions to orchestrate demonstrations against Nigerian and Sierra Leonean governments.
When both governments fail to win over people on their side, majority of the citizens are persuaded by civil activists, pressure groups and anti-governments information gatekeepers to take up ‘demo actions’ against the governments.
The Sars in Nigeria are security police hated by Nigerians right activists. While Sierra Leone’s August civil protest was against the rising cost on a gallon of fuel by civilians.
And the latest Monday June’s 12 citizens’ sit-down strike is said to be fuelled by opposition parties’ calls for a disclosure of voters’ data by Sierra Leone’s electoral commission.
Despite Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone had released the said data few days before Monday Sit-down, the previous information by anti-government social media commentators telling people to sit home had already instilled deep fear among Sierra Leoneans.
“I believe most people have fear to do business today because they might think something bad would happen like August 10,’’ said a passenger of a vehicle. Leaving from Waterloo, Western Rural to Freetown, there were very few people moving about.
A similar action of a sit-down or protest is said to happen in the following days if government fails to get vehicles on the streets. To react to August and June’s protests, government of Sierra Leone seemed to have responded lately to those crises.
How will the media help?
Most people say security men (police and army officers) being deployed on the streets holding guns on the days when protests are in place are sending messages of fear.
Since government has the duty to protect its citizens against those they sometimes refer to as rebellious persons, it must not inflame more fear on other people.
It is expected that information ministry works with respective departments such as peace commission and community stakeholders to speedily and timely respond to false news, rumours and hate speech.
But sadly, government’s strategy is failing to respond adequately to suppress growing disinformation and anti-regime sentiments.
Some analysts have observed that ‘’the reckless’ use of social media is largely because most users (bloggers, Whatsapp’s admins, commentators) are uneducated partisans.
The problem is also partly because ‘senders’ of anti-government messages and ‘receivers’ alike are mostly not affected directly by their immoral actions.
Some of them are living a better life and therefore they have no cause to worry about.
While business people, workers, and hand-to-mouths earners suffer, government is similarly affected at protest times as it loses huge revenues.
Banks don’t get customers to transact businesses while other private and public agencies face similar problem. There have been many killings of civilians and police in the past demonstrations.
To suppress social media rumours, government might think of shutting down the internet. But that would further disrupt businesses while state functions may be affected badly.
Sierra Leone’s government has always taken a misstep approach as it fails to quickly react to rumours and protests call.
In modern democratic states, deploying armed soldiers on the streets to quell off protests may reinforce a message of a totalitarian government in operation than a democratic government in power.
The current technology revolution being driven by the internet now requires a savvy media thinking when responding to growing concerns and protests by citizens.
Since smartphones and ‘android holders’ have wielded more power to ‘plus-check and minus-check’ governments’ mandates, state officers must speedily democratize their information outreach to the people as counter measures to suppressing wild rumours and messages sent on social media platforms.
The traditional media outlets (newspapers, radio, TVs, taxi-speakers, village/town criers) should be effectively engaged to inform and influence people’s opinions days before planned protests.
For example, government of Sierra Leone, in the past, used to do ‘taxi mega-speakers’ walk around, village/town criers to inform and sensitize the people of Sierra Leone.
But today, such media engagement with the public has stopped.
The government is now creating a wide vacuum between them and the people.
Government’s ministry of information needs to revert to the old traditional means of communicating with the people of Sierra Leone in a bid to weakening the strength of anti-government social media messages.
Whilst many people don’t get consistent messages in the form of public notices by the governments before planned demonstrations, majority of people acted on information on ‘demo’ sent on social platforms mostly weeks before protesting days.
About Author: Hassan Ibrahim Conteh, Editor Africa 24 Newspaper, a graduate of Mass Communication (April 2017) with a BA Honours, Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone.