Social media will outgrow its exploiters

Two media clips posted online – one audio and the other video – are still making big political headlines. The audio clip has put Thaksin Shinawatra in a bad light, while the video purportedly shows Muslim militants planning to hunt him down. The clips might be two separate things, but cynics see connections. We live in an era when much to do with politics is played out on the social media, so anything is possible.

The audio clip appears to indicate that Thaksin is attempting to “re-dominate” the military, launch a political blitz to impose an all-encompassing “reconciliation” and “amnesty” programme, and return home as a free man who will then vie for a prestigious job. The “leaked” clip amounts to bad public relations, if not disastrous, for Thaksin.

Few people believe the video is authentic. And it seems the Thaksin camp is more at ease responding to it than the audio clip. Although the video footage invokes unpleasant memories of Thaksin’s handling of the deep South, the “political damage” is nowhere near that caused by the purported dialogue between him and a senior defence official.

We can only speculate who is responsible for these clips. Social-media wars have made politics even more complicated to read. Even before the arrival of social media, Thai politics was infamous for its multiple layers of ploys. When a politician’s home was bombed before an election, or when a candidate’s posters were vandalised, no one would jump to a conclusion. The politician could have bombed his own house to evoke sympathy, or someone else could have done it to make the public think he had done it. Similarly, the posters could have been defaced or destroyed by those wanting to make it look like a scheme to gain votes of sympathy.

Only a few people know the real stories behind the audio and video clips. But a divided society seems to have made conclusions as to who is responsible. Another war is raging beneath the bigwigs’ war, and involves many people who are clueless about why they are fighting their friends, office colleagues and family members.

In the ongoing political crisis there is no light at the end of the tunnel, and that means more clips will be released and more suspicious schemes cooked up. The social networks, for all their benefits, have made it easier to turn us all into political pawns. On one hand, they are supposed to make everyone smarter, but on the other, everyone is more susceptible to cunning political ploys.

In the past, a “game changer” needed a relatively long time to become effective. A scandal had to brew on the front pages for many days before someone could be “blown away”. Today, a clip on YouTube can change things overnight, if not in minutes. Social-media politics plays on our curiosity, reactionary impulses and tendency to take things at face value.

There can be no immunity without a syndrome, however. We can only hope our love affair with the social networks is going through an adaptation process. Some positive signs have been seen: a few lesser political schemers seem to have been put in their place by the social media. Maybe one needs to be fooled in order to get wiser. Before Thais can truly utilise the new media and achieve the wisdom of the crowd, perhaps spending a little time in a fool’s paradise is not a bad idea.