Recently, I had been to a seminar on social media and how it has given voice to many anonymous figures both popularity and reach for their voices/opinions which otherwise was hostage to select few intellectuals, to quote a person in that seminar.

Talk Journalism
Talk Journalism

I also could spend considerable time with Dr. CP Joshi, former union cabinet Minister of government India who is now general secretary in charge of Assam, my home state ( going to polls early next year). He was a panelist to discuss about impact of social media on journalism.

I am no fan of Congress ideologies or any of the Congress leaders ( rather most of the time, I find myself allying with Anti-Congress camp), but I found one observation by Dr. CP Joshi which seems to be very true and we may have been overlooking that under the mass hype of Social media, that is, the people who can use social media like Twitter/Facebook etc. are already empowered section of the society and with social media, only this section of the society again beingempowered, thus making them doubly empowered while leaving behind the substantial population who are still uneducated, too poor to own a smartphone or telephone connection, for that matter. I think this is good message to the people and I am surprised that Congress has not been able to bring such voices to be heard among twitter or Facebook generation.

While, most probably, social media was never meant to be empowering the empowered or the downtrodden, but Dr. CP Joshi’s observation sounded honest and true.

talk-journalism-2

There should be some app which could bring these section of the society at par with people wielding smartphone and social media. But I have no idea how that is possible.

Some of the observations about social media at that Talk Journalism which was held on 4th and 5th July 2015 at Fairmont Hotel in outskirt of Jaipur are :-

1. Policy making and governance can not be based on Twitter RT or Facebook Likes : Sachian Kalbag @SachinKalbag Editor, Mid-Day, Mumbai

2. Now everybody can voice their opinion thanks to social media, which was otherwise hostage to few select intellectual : @raghav_chadha, Raghav Chaddha, AAP leader

3. People should give authenticated information on twitter and it should have some mechanism to do that: Dr. CP Joshi, Congress General Secretary, Former Union Cabinet Minister, @drcpjoshi

4. Social Media is 5th estate in democracy : AAP leader, Raghav Chaddha, @raghav_chadha

5. Its more of political bullying than cyber bullying in twitter or social media. : @ravishndtv Ravish Kumar, News Anchor, NTDV

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