Swaib K Nsereko:Social media not territory for moral reforms

Communication remains one of the phenomenal mysteries surrounding the history of human creation. Every communication transaction is preceded and shaped by a previous one and a previous and a previous one….. to infinite. Every current communication is, with slight modifications picked on and on and on….. to endless. In essence, communication as a social construct has no defined beginning and end. In between, many things happen—some pleasant, some not, depending on the recipient.   That’s how powerfully impactful communication can be; it evokes strong emotions—experienced differently; as different as are our own fingerprints. It is, therefore, very objectionable that in the endless chain of communication, full of multiple emotional sparks—inconsistently positive and negative, only a particular character can be picked for sanction and none for reward.

Moralists in Wrong Territory

In some territories the ground rules are just obvious. Take social media communication, for example. For Facebook to overtake Myspace, the pioneer social media platform in 2004, founders, Mark Zuckerberg and fellow college students at Harvard University, USA, had to creatively generate a new communication genre that fits the taste of their most wanted audience—the youth. To these you could not bet on championing national policy issues or that kind of ‘gentle’ language. Myspace was already feeding them with kimansulo dance and they had overwhelmed it to the delight of the innovators—Thomas Anderson and Chris DeWolf as well as the big-time advertisers. To conquer territory, therefore, Facebook had to do a ‘kimansulo plus’. And this is where we are today. Over three billion subscribers and still counting, of whom, including moralists, half or 1.5 billion are active daily. Which particular national policy or legislation is going to effectively shape ways of communication for this audience, and deter them from the undefined ‘displeasing’ content? A content that the founders hold relevant to their success story? Should the founders shift to the ‘pleasant’ moralists’ language? They would then be intruding in a strange territory where if audience stats begin to dwindle it is a self-inflicted pain.  In reconsideration, it is assumed that we, the moralists in the social media space knew what to expect there before subscribing. Else, we are considered unwanted ‘intruders.’ We also must have anticipated limited powers of dictating things our way.

Empower Institutions

Therefore, if we are going to reclaim our desired national moral character, we must forget using foreign territories or technologies, so to say, that are far-off from our direct control. This is the same mistake we had committed by attempting to improve our tax to GDP ratio by introducing the Over the Top Tax—OTT. We had hoped to increase that ratio to 18% from 14% and catch up with the rest of Africa. This though, the rest of Africa was not reliant on foreign technologies but their own endowed resources. Therefore, whereas it is regrettable that the national moral character is fast nose-diving into the abyss, and every effort must be taken to save it, we must start with what we own. We own the Ministry of Ethics and Integrity. It is, however, one of the most under-resourced. We must strengthen its capacity to level with the social challenges it has to confront. We have religious institutions, cultural institutions and the education sector.  All these influence large sections of our society and can play pivotal roles in reclaiming and reshaping the national moral fabric. They just need a determined national empowerment pivoted on the state. These institutions should operate alongside, not parallel to the Ethics Ministry. The Muslims, for example, own the Qadhi Courts that are provided for in the 1995 Constitution as severally amended. By these courts, if operationalised, Muslim leaders will effectively manage their faithful into a proper moral direction. The same model should be extended to other faith organizations as well as cultural institutions. Over a period, positive social ethical behaviors will shift positively including the agreeable communication content, applicable in particular environments. But all this upon doing rightly in the right territories.

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Swaib K Nsereko is an Assistant  Lecturer, Islamic University in Uganda (IUIU)

Mass Communication Dept

P.O Box 7689 Kampala, Uganda

Tel: +256701872431