This first phase of the information and technological revolution was facilitated by the integration of computers, telecommunication and satellite. A networked global ‘village’ had emerged. People had access to diverse sources of news and information. The Internet created numerous platforms of political, social and cultural interactions. There were high expectations that information will be democratized... Read More

1. THE AGE OF FRACTURED TRUTH
– SUBHASH DHULIYA
This first phase of the information and technological revolution
was facilitated by the integration of computers, telecommunication
and satellite. A networked global ‘village’ had emerged. People had
access to diverse sources of news and information. The Internet
created numerous platforms of political, social and cultural
interactions. There were high expectations that information would
be democratized because of the advent of the internet. It was
partially so in the first phase but later the emergence of global
information giants in the field of news and information, the
democratization process got reversed. Google, Amazon,
Facebook, Apple and Microsoft have a huge amount of data of
users to the extent that these companies know more about us more
than what we actually know about ourselves.
The present phase of this information and technological revolution is
the integration of information technology and biotechnology and the
advent of artificial intelligence which has acquired immense power of
control and influence.

2. The era of colonialism of the industrial era has now acquired a new
form of data colonialism with immense power to contrail and influence
the minds of people. The age of the New Media has been
transformed into the Age of Digital Media in which data reigns
supreme. This is a much higher degree of concentration of media and
information power and drastically eroding diversity and plurality. In the
process, dominant voices have suppressed the dissent voices. Dominant
giants and the dominant voices are dominating the online spaces.
Diversity has become a camouflage to hide the concentration of media
power resulting in the marginalization of the truth as we have known it
before.
They collect data over a period of time which can be used to influence
our behaviours for various purposes including political preferences. The
very act of “Like” on Facebook is enough to analyze our behaviours,
preferences or attitude through artificial intelligence and
algorithms. We share data about ourselves the very moment we get
connected to the Internet. They are continuously gathering and
exploiting a vast quantity of data and through vast resources for the
Research and Development can anticipate the future.
The volume of information that is at our disposal is so massive that it
is impossible to process it and find out what is authentic and originating
from reliable sources or what is fake, disinformation and
misinformation. We are virtually drowned in the ocean of information
and not in a position to make any sense out of it. People keep on
accessing their smartphone numbers many times a day (according to
one study youngsters in developed countries accessed their
mobile phone 150 times a day).
Most of us are always on WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter or
Google News. We face an intense bombardment of information and
advertising messages.

3. Information and data from multiple sources flow with an
unprecedented speed and engulf us creating chaos and confusion to the
extent that we cannot sort out the truth from lies and facts from fiction.
With millions of Web sites, blogs, Tweets, there is an enormous
quantity of digital information of suspected reliability and suspected
origin. Information Overload takes such a huge toll that most of us often
fall prey to rumours, half-truths, and downright lies.
The initial phase of digital media provided diverse sources of news and
information to people. It multiplied choices leading to an increase in
pluralism. But the next phase, drastically witnessing manipulated
“choices” and artificial intelligence and algorithms used by social
media platforms and search engines expose people to reveal their choices
and preferences and also their political orientation. Differing viewpoints
and various perspectives of real issues that concern our lives have been
marginalized. The diversity and plurality of media are drastically eroded.
The news as we have known before is dead in dominant media. There
exist some dissent voices on some social media platforms but they are
drowned in the noise of information flooding by big corporations. The
news and information we receive is filtered, selected, slanted and
fabricated. What is left out is often even more important than what is
included. The journalism of headlines, clicks, hits and circulation
has diminished the real news. At times, what is in news is not real news
but what is left out is the real news. Headline journalism is meant to
“drag the attention” and leave out important details isolating the
news from its context.
The truth gets buried. In the process of selecting certain stories to report
on while not selecting others or selecting certain details of a story while
omitting others, the truth is the causality. What the media don’t report
has not happened for us. Only those events happen for us what the
media reports. Multiple and reliable sources of information are
missing and we do not get to know an authentic view of reality.

4. The very foundation of democracy is an informed citizenry. With the
massive amounts of fake news, disinformation and misinformation and
the fractured reality that is reflected in the news media, the future of
democracy and the future of freedom are hotly debated subjects as of
now. Secondly, in the recent past because of the kind of information
bombardment people are subjected to, it has become easier to play with
their emotions at the cost of rational thinking. Misinformed people
cannot make informed choices.
Voting in a democracy is increasingly tilting towards what people “feel”
rather than what they “think”. “Free Will” is not free in the traditional
sense but can be manipulated in the desired direction by those who
control levers of power (the digital media in the present context)
and direct people's feelings and emotions in the desired direction.
Democracies thrive in a diverse and pluralistic flow of information
through various channels of information which is getting eroded in the
new media landscape of the era of digital media. Media freedom and
pluralism are at the heart of any democracy which is continuously
eroding and getting blurred.
Ahuge amount of data is being collected on each one of us whenever
we visit a website or use social media. Our political orientation, reading
habits, consumption pattern etc. are analysed through algorithms and we
can be influenced to behave in a particular way.
The information giants have acquired immense power to play with our
emotions, virtually converting voting patterns in a liberal democracy to
be governed by what people ‘feel’ rather than what they ‘think’. The
Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal in early 2018 revealed that
Cambridge Analytica had harvested the personal data of millions of
peoples’ Facebook profiles without their consent and used it for political
advertising purposes. According to new research from Mozilla
most videos that people regret watching on YouTube come
from YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. The new
aggregators manipulate our preferences by overplaying the news that
gets more hits.

5. It is being argued that truth is dead and now we live in the post-truth
era. Truth is not what truth is but it can be manufactured. In the
post-factual or post-reality era, politics are being framed largely by
appeals to emotions, disconnected from details of the policy. Objective
facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to
emotions and personal beliefs. Global media giants are well equipped
to collect data and conduct micro-targeting to play with people’s
emotions and beliefs and to take them in the desired direction.
There is a huge volume of information at the disposal of a journalist and
the general public as well. Digging truth from this huge volume of
information has been the subject of intense debate. The term post-truth
era has been coined in 2016 which was termed as Word of the Year by
the Oxford Dictionary where it is defined as
“Relating to or denoting circumstances in which
objective facts are less influential in shaping public
opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”
“Post-truth politics is a political culture in which debate
is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected
from the details of policy, and by the repeated assertion
of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored.”
Stephanie Hankey, Julianne Kerr Morrison and Ravi Naik
write in a report on “Data and Democracy in the Digital Age”
published in Britain in 2018: “Data has become an increasingly valuable
asset for those that control it. Our interconnected world has become ever
more pervasive, ubiquitous and prominent. As personal data has taken
an increasing role in all of our lives and our lives translate ever more into
electronic media and data, the challenge of who controls that data and
what rights we have over that data are not just questions for those in the
IT world. They become problems that are as fundamental to us as any
other human right.

6. Yuval Noah Harari stated that “once Big Data systems know me
better than I know myself, authority will shift from humans to
algorithms. Whilst we have not yet reached a level where human
authority cedes to algorithmic decision making, we have entered a world
where personal data allows for micro-targeting with macro effects.
Almost everything we perceive and do will end up recorded somewhere.
For the most part, this time is spent on social media platforms. This
data, in turn, allows the entities that collect it to build extremely accurate
psychological profiles on both individuals and groups.
Indeed, entire studies have been written about the possibility of utilising
Facebook ‘likes’ alone to understand our psychographic details.
Amongst the concerns about such technologies is that the data needed to
produce such profiles can be bought and collated from various entities,
without involving the individuals concerned. These entities therefore
have the power to develop extremely personal profiles about our most
sensitive personal beliefs without individuals having ever known that
they were profiled. The personal detail and accuracy of the results can be
remarkable. Facebook ‘likes’ enable algorithms to assess your
personality better than your own friends could.”
All these developments pose a danger that we are heading towards a
kind of digital dictatorship where few information giants will control the
world. The future of liberal democracy is being debated hotly in the
context of the power of information giants to influence people to vote in
a particular direction.
The rapid proliferation of ‘fake news’- both my mainstream and social
media- has disrupted healthy democratic public discourse. The massive
outpouring of fake news is eroding the process of democratization of
information and creating misinformed public opinion. Question arises:
are ordinary people equipped with intellectual skills to
evaluate and verify the accuracy of information and judge the
reliability and credibility of the sources from whom the
information have originated?

7. This has given rise to information dissemination systems that have an
algorithmic basis and artificial intelligence, controlling access to news
and drastically reducing diversity and plurality and shrinking space for
varying and dissenting voices. Historian Yuval Noah Harari has put it
in this way in his book “21 Lessons for the 21st Century”: “false
stories have an intrinsic advantage over the truth when it comes to
uniting people. Commercial firms also rely on fiction and fake news.
Information is becoming highly specialized and complex. It implies that
despite the huge volume of information available to people, more people
know less. The resource information is far more difficult to exploit than
land and capital. It requires the highest level of intellectual skills.
The drastic decline in plurality and diversity in the digital age, the
unprecedented acceleration process synchronization of political,
economic, social and cultural life has created entirely new scenarios and
it is difficult to anticipate the implications.
Technologies advancing at a pace unheard before but those who are
inventing technology are not aware of its political, economic, social,
and cultural implications. It falls in the domain of social sciences
which need to rise to the occasion and address the issues and generate a
global wave of awakening. The future is uncertain and difficult to predict.
The answer is taking shape in the womb of the future. Nothing can be
said as of now… Read More
Web resources:
https://mondediplo.com/2021/09/13digitisation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_pluralism
https://www.slideshare.net/CmpfEui/new-threats-to-media-pluralism-in-the-digital-age