How social media has redefined ‘experts’

Until a few decades ago, our forebears received information about current events by reading the written word — newspapers, books, magazines and pamphlets. They also depended on in-person speeches made in barazas and sermons by religious leaders.

People who recorded and broadcast information — politicians, journalists, musicians, preachers — were revered and had a status stool in society. They did not necessarily have big titles and a long chain of academic initials after their names.

To their audience, they spoke the truth; truth that resonated with the community’s beliefs. For that reason, they were trusted, respected and rewarded — because people relied on them for information. They were the experts.

Compared to today, people wrote more and read more. They wrote to share their thoughts, persuasions and concepts.

They expressed themselves and their life through letters to offices, to their friends and family. Of course, the process of writing and distributing letters, books, magazines and pamphlets was not without drawbacks.

The authors had to contend with unreliable and time-intensive means of distributing them.

Then came the radio and then TV. The radio revolutionised how people received news, ideas and opinions that shaped their thinking.

Listening to a radio broadcast is easier than going to a shop to buy a book, or to a street to buy a newspaper or magazine.

The TV programmes are awash with “experts” who debate topical issues. Discussants who portray masterly of their subject and speak with verve win credibility from their viewers. This is good and bad.

It’s good in a sense that those who control the news, also to a large extent, control society’s views.

Bad because, “experts” can inseminate their audience with their views; views that cannot be challenged in real-time, simply because one cannot talk back to a TV set. Passive consumption of information does not strengthen independent thinking, freedom and truth.

In a way, the internet has liberated people by giving them forums on which to exchange views as opposed to receiving content passively from TV or radio.

Anyone on a social media, who has a way with people, can shape the minds and hearts of his followers.

Thanks to internet and allied technology, information that is widely discussed, trusted and shared doesn’t come from experts with titles.

It comes from regular people. The mainstream media’s power to influence is declining in favour of personal and group networks that use internet as ventricles through which information is shared.

“Expert opinion” as we knew it is therefore being redefined in social media networks. Social discourse is largely shaped by what common people watch and read on their social media forums, blogs, and WhatsApp, YouTube and TED talks.

Those who dissect, discuss and embellish information the way readers like it served — are the opinion-shapers. They are the new, social media-defined “experts”, and their opinion is the new “expert opinion.”