EDITORIAL: Be more discerning
Without a doubt, this upcoming election in Barbados will be keenly contested by all parties and their supporters. As such, the public must be especially discerning about all material they come across, especially in cyberspace.
Recently, the role that social media will play in the upcoming elections was addressed by General Secretary of the Democratic Labour Party and candidate for St. John, George Pilgrim and Member of Parliament for Christ Church East Central, Ronald Jones. The matter came to a head when a poster advertising an event in Jones’ constituency was distorted and rebroadcast to not only reflect inaccurate information, but insinuate that vote-buying was on the agenda. In decrying the changes as false, Jones lamented how the public sometimes accepts everything they receive ‘as gospel’, and without question.
We’ve already seen this kind of fabricated information making the rounds in Barbados, and in some cases, it has caused confusion. In 2016, for example, a broadcast on social media linking a spate of sudden, unexplained deaths to lead contamination from new smart water metres installed by the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) was so widespread, the BWA was forced to respond and assuage citizens’ fears about the safety of the metres and the rigorousness with which it tests potable water. Some months ago, a fake ‘werewolf’ video had even the Barbadian Diaspora thinking that supernatural events were occurring right here on our rock.
Despite its ease in our lives, new media is still in relative infancy, considering the span of social media sites created in the last 15 years (Facebook, for example, was created in 2004; Instagram in 2010); and there is a whole generation of children growing up on these new platforms who have to be educated in online dos and don’ts. Ironically, however, it may be the older generation that needs instruction on how to recognise fake transmissions.
As media changes, and digitisation and technology allow for greater facilitation – and manipulation – it would be wise for the public to understand that not everything they see online is real. To make matters worse, international news reports confirm what many have suspected for some time. There are now ‘deepfakes’ – videos which are fake but are created with artificial intelligence software to make them look real – which can literally apply the face of a person onto the body of another. As one can imagine, the potential for its abuse is frighteningly disturbing since most of the videos look authentic.
During the 2016 US presidential elections, Wikileaks released e-mails from the account of John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Through those leaks, a chat group on the Internet came to the wild conclusion that Podesta was apparently ‘linked’ to a child sex abuse ring located in a Washington pizza parlour involving other high-ranking Democratic Party officials. Soon after, users on Facebook and other social media sites disseminated the ‘story’ (affixed with the hashtag #Pizzagate), which was then picked up by mainstream media outlets. Convinced the story was real, 28-year-old Edgar Welch stormed the pizza parlour with an assault rifle to rescue abused children and the owner of the establishment was also subjected to protests and threats online. In short, what was fake became all too real when some persons believed it.
While this very dramatic recounting is extreme, it illustrates the lengths to which people will go to disseminate incorrect information – and unfortunately, the degree to which the public believes it. We hope that Barbadians can be far more discriminating during the silly season and beyond.