Attack shows dark side of social media
Threats illustrate need to hold social media companies accountable
Comments threatening Dr. Mustafa Hirji that were posted on social media Saturday were “just deplorable to espouse that kind of violence,” says Brock University professor Tony Volk.
“This is one of the real dark sides of social media,” said Volk, who has studied bullying through his research with the department of child and youth studies at the university.
“Previously, someone would have said that at home and that’s it. But what’s happening here is a group of people are acting like an echo chamber for each other. They’re egging people on and encouraging each other to speak these awful things online.”
Volk said he wouldn’t classify the weekend posts as bullying, because bullying would require an imbalance of power that doesn’t exist between the people posting and Hirji.
However, he said it was an attempt at bullying, by drumming up enough online support to intimidate Hirji into changing his mind.
Blayne Haggart said he watched in real time as hateful and threatening comments attacking Niagara’s acting medical officer of health quickly escalated.
The associate professor of political science at Brock, who has previously researched the need to regulate social media giants, said the threats made against Hirji and other health professionals illustrate the need to hold the multinational corporations accountable.
“In a sense, what they’re interested in most is people’s engagement and they don’t really care about what type of engagement they actually do,” Haggart said. “They’re monetizing your attention.”
He said social media companies often remove material they deem to be problematic, but the decision on what material to remove and when is often left up to the companies “and they can be a little bit capricious about it.”
At times, he said, companies often only take action when threatened with government regulations.
While there’s an obvious need to regulate speech on social media, and that is already done to an extent, Haggart said the business model driving many of the platforms also needs to be addressed.
“You have a business model behind the scenes that’s basically driven by this need to keep people engaged and keep people coming back. That’s something that is never really talked about because it would be much harder to do given the fact that these are global companies.”
Through his research, Volk said he has found a growing lack of civility in society, partly fuelled by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“You can see this with people yelling at cashiers for saying they need to wear a mask, people yelling at reporters who are just covering an event and, certainly, what has been happening down south, this idea that it’s OK to express yourself in these uncivil anti-social ways across the board, online and in person, is I’d say both a disturbing cultural trend and something that’s being exacerbated by the pandemic as something that’s putting people under a lot of stress and a lot of pressure.”
Brock child and youth studies associate professor Dawn Zinga agreed, describing it as disturbing that people posting comments are comfortable in not disclosing their identity.
“It suggests that they find it appropriate or justifiable in some way,” said Zinga, who lists cyberbullying among her fields of research.
Haggart said social media platforms have been extremely useful especially to disseminate information during the pandemic, “but at the same time, social media — the way it’s set up today — also invites harassment for people who are just doing their jobs or often just living their lives.”