Opinion – Atila Iamarino: The parallel reality of social networks

While the great world leaders recognize the legitimacy of the 2022 elections, the lives of many Brazilians continue to be damaged by those who do not accept their result. And without punishing those who generate disinformation on social networks, the attacks on democracy will continue.

Adoption of a new technology happens in phases. Like the radio. One thing was the communication between the first adepts, who used the radio transmitter to send and receive messages between acquaintances. Another was the communication inaugurated with broadcasting and mass communication, when people started to have receivers at home, the radio device through which they can only listen without responding.

Online social networks have gone through the same thing. While incipient, with users among the most educated and with the most access to technology, they were the medium where decentralized communication initiatives emerged, when movements such as the 2010 Arab Spring inspired the notion that a digital enlightenment would change the world, bringing education and the truth for everyone.

With the entry of billions of users, social networks have become something quite different. Here, it happened with the mass adoption of the cell phone. We reached 280 million cell phone chips in 2014, more than one per Brazilian. A major motivator of this popularization was WhatsApp, installed on 99% of cell phones, according to the Mensageria no Brasil survey.

We don’t have a cell phone, we have a Zap number. In part because it got around the cost per SMS. In part because voice messages are more accessible to those who are partially literate. And much for the effect of social networks where each new user makes it more important and valuable to participate as well. Services, sales, payment, service, deliveries, family fights, all this could already be done by Zap before the pandemic.

This massification took place in a country with a very particular consumption of news. Since 2013, when the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford started to publish about news consumption in the Digital News Report, we know that Brazil is one of the countries that most consume news via social networks. Brazilians are among the consumers who most seek news with politically aligned opinions and among the most proactive — who comment and share the most.

We are also among those who do this most in WhatsApp and Facebook groups. We are one of the countries that have the highest consumption of information in groups of strangers in these networks, the medium where hyper-partisan information thrives. And where the myth of early treatment was widespread in 2021. We are big social consumers of information, even if it comes originally from traditional media.

This consumption can still flourish in a well-isolated environment. For millions of Brazilians with a prepaid plan that includes free WhatsApp, without credits, only the content within Zap is accessible. It’s no use even clicking on links outside the network, which will not load. WhatsApp is the only reality for many. A trend reinforced and explored by the current cycle of lying, which has videos, audios and external prints shared within groups, with the possibility of being the only source of information for those who follow the news there. The potential to maintain parallel realities in this medium is enormous.

As traditional media transitioned from social media to mass media, all newspapers, radio and television were surrounded and regulated. It was clear to the rulers that all these means were too far-reaching to be used without accountability. We live in such a transition, where social networks have become means of mass communication — means of mass disinformation, in many cases.

Without accountability to whoever does this, even if the outcome of that election is accepted, the means to question any future election (or the next pandemic) continues to work. Like the qanon cult conspiracies against the election of the current US president, which prevail circulating on other social networks. And as the case of Nancy Pelosi, a US politician who had her husband attacked at home with a hammer to the head inflicted by a conspiracyist who screamed for her, shows, even high-ranking figures are at risk.