We have a duty to use our social media to speak the truth.

“Donald Trump is a living example of the damage the mobocratic algorithms of social media can do to the democratic process.”
The same medium that so effectively transmits a howling message of change also appears to undermine the ability to make it. Social media amplifies the human tendency to bind with one’s own kind. It tends to reduce complex social challenges to mobilizing slogans that reverberate in echo chambers of the like-minded rather than engage in persuasion, dialogue and the reach for consensus. Hate speech and untruths appear alongside good intentions and truths. We’ve seen this both in the Trump campaign in the United States as well as the Brexit campaign in Great Britain.

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10/26/2016 02:21 pm ET Updated Oct 29, 2016
Wael Ghonim: We Have A Duty To Use Our Social Media Power To Speak The Truth
“Donald Trump is a living example of the damage the mobocratic algorithms of social media can do to the democratic process.”
Nathan Gardels
The WorldPost

DORINA LATA
Portrait of Wael Ghonim by Dorina Latav.
The same medium that so effectively transmits a howling message of change also appears to undermine the ability to make it. Social media amplifies the human tendency to bind with one’s own kind. It tends to reduce complex social challenges to mobilizing slogans that reverberate in echo chambers of the like-minded rather than engage in persuasion, dialogue and the reach for consensus. Hate speech and untruths appear alongside good intentions and truths. We’ve seen this both in the Trump campaign in the United States as well as the Brexit campaign in Great Britain.

When the body politic is serially divided among itself, each “tribe” hewing to its own chosen reality, polarization rigidifies. Paralysis and gridlock set in. Simple answers or authoritarian and strongman alternatives start to look like attractive ways to create order out of chaos.

      Wael Ghonim, a social activist whose Facebook posts helped ignite what would become the Arab Spring in Egypt in 2011, has experienced this process firsthand. During the Egyptian revolution, Ghonim said he thought that, “all you need is the internet” to set a society free. It turned out otherwise. That revelation has given the man, once branded the face of his country’s revolution by Western media, pause for further reflection. It prompted him to found Parlio, an online social platform to promote civility and dialogue. He is now pursuing the same aim at Quora. 

Ghomin spoke about how to curb the “mobocracy” of social media and make it more of a platform for civil, reasoned reflection that fosters consensus instead of polarization.