My attention was snared the
other day by a story that the now infamous blade runner Oscar Pistorious is
going to be a patron of the ever so hospitable Pretoria Central prison, or as
it’s known now Kgosi Mampuru prison. I honestly abhor these constant name
changes. Anyways I am going off track. Where was I? Oh yes, Oscar.
I have recently developed an
aversion to all things controversial and all events that inspire an avalanche
of tweeter posts, re-tweets and whatever comes after re-tweets. Perhaps it’s
because of my technological inaptness that I haven’t got on the fray and
started tweeting about the third diet coke I drank this morning. And so when I
reluctantly read the story that Oscar might soon be a member of the 28’s, I
immediately knew that the evangelists of digital media have beaten the print
media to the story. The beauty of social media is its immediacy in breaking a
story.
It is no doubt that
journalists nowadays have entered into an era where ethical lines are blurred
and audiences are hungry for more tweets and re-tweets. As Gus Silber,
journalist and author writes, “The social
media is changing the way journalists source, distribute, and publish the news.
In this fast changing media landscape, there are greater opportunities than
ever for government to join in the conversation and engage with its citizens”.
The premise of Twitter, as
one might expect, is inspired by the popularity and convenience of text
messaging on the mobile phone. Its beauty, it seems, lies in its simplicity. In
a democracy like South Africa, Twitter has been a propagandist tool employed by
the political affiliates and a platform for the masses to engage and
participate, for no one can argue the power of the digital diaspora. In Marxist
terms, the proletariat now have a means of communication with the elites- and
in South Africa, the elite would comprise of the loveable rogues who occupy
that wretched building of gossip-mongers in Cape Town.
The South African society
and political landscape, like any democracy, is a platform where dissent and
discourse are rife. An advantage for any journalist, contrary to the practises of
yore, is not being present while the story breaks, but to have a Twitter
account and tell the story while it’s in the making. This is what Twitter
offers to everyone- to be a newsmaker and participate in citizen journalism. I
imagine honey moon destination like North Korea and Syria don’t have the
patience and zeal to tolerate this “counter-revolutionary” and paganism
nonsense of Twitter. The damage this would do for my uncles in the east, Kim
Jong-un and Bashar al-Assad in their political endeavours would be biblical.
Hosni Mubarak knows all too well the inherent dangers of a mobile phone in the
hands of an educated mind. Within weeks of a law student’s Tweets about Egypt’s
state of affairs, Cairo was filled with rioting descendants of Pharaoh
screaming “God is good” and burning the country’s flag. Young boys and girls
were now saying words like liberty and revolution instead of doing what any
well-adjusted autocratic regime expects of its civilians- to stay at home and
procreate like any true patriot ought to.
Being born in the 90’s means
that I am ungrateful, opinionated brat who believes that the world owes me
something and is brazen enough to say whatever I deem to be important. Any
anarchy that disseminates from Twitter is much welcome. But these Twitter
“wars” only get ugly for just an hour or two, and I am not overly excited about
anything that lasts for an hour, with the exception of happy hour of course.
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