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GS Paper: Social Media Networks & Internal Security

  • Vande Bharat and Samudra Setu Missions to repatriate Indian nationals

    India is all geared to operate flights and naval vessels to repatriate Indian nationals stranded abroad.

    The name Samudra Setu typically sound like a combatant naval exercise whereas Vande Bharat reminds us of Train-18. Both ideas have opposite context and meaning. One must keep this in mind.

    What is the ‘Vande Bharat Mission’ mission about?

    • ‘Vande Bharat Mission’ will see the operation of 64 flights from May 7 to May 13 to bring back around 15,000 Indian nationals stranded abroad.
    • Once completed, it may turn out to be the largest evacuation operation ever since the 1990 airlift of 1.7 lakh people from Kuwait.
    • Approximately, 2,000 people from abroad will fly back to India daily.

    What is Indian Navy’s ‘Operation Samudra Setu’?

    • The Indian Navy launched ‘Operation Samudra Setu’ (Sea Bridge) as a part of national effort to repatriate Indian citizens from overseas.
    • Indian Naval Ships Jalashwa and Magar are presently enroute to the port of Malè, Republic of Maldives to commence evacuation operations from 08 May 2020 as part of Phase-1.
    • INS Jalashwa is the largest amphibious platform in the Navy and is based at the Eastern Naval Command headquarters in Visakhapatnam.
    • It can normally accommodate 1,000 people but will take about 800.

  • Trolling in India

     

    The Amnesty International India has released a report titled “Troll Patrol India: Exposing Online Abuse Faced by Women Politicians in India”. The report analysed more than 114,000 tweets sent to 95 women politicians in the three months during and after last year’s general elections in India.

    Highlights of the report

    • The research found that women are targeted with abuse online not just for their opinions – but also for various identities, such as gender, religion, caste, and marital status.
    • Indian women politicians face substantially higher abuse on Twitter than their counterparts in the U.S. and the U.K.
    • Around 13.8% of the tweets in the study were either “problematic” or “abusive”.
    • Problematic content was defined as tweets that contain hurtful or hostile content, especially if repeated to an individual on multiple occasions, but do not necessarily meet the threshold of abuse.
    • While all women are targeted, Muslim women politicians faced 55% more abuse than others.
    • Women from marginalized castes, unmarried women, and those from non-ruling parties faced a disproportionate share of abuse.

    A matter of concern

    • Abusive tweets had content that promote violence against or threaten people based on their race, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, religious affiliation, age, disability or other categories.
    • They include death threats and rape threats.
    • Problematic tweets contained hurtful or hostile content, often repeated, which could reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes, although they did not meet the threshold of abuse.

  • Social Media: Prospect and Challenges

    The term social media is being used quite often by everyone and has become a popular topic of conversation, debates and controversies.

    “The social networking phenomenon continues to gain steam worldwide, and India represents one of the fastest growing markets at the moment”.

    This reflects the emergence of social media in India in upcoming time…so here is presenting a brief article on social media: prospects and challenges.

    • Introduction
    • What is social media?
    • Types of social media
    • Implications and uses
    • Challenges before social media
    • Prospects of social media in India
    • Concerns about privacy
    • Way ahead

    Introduction:

    • Social Media is the latest form of media available to the audience of varied groups. It is a form of electronic communication through which users share information, ideas, personal messages, videos and pictures and other content through it instantly.
    • The major reason behind its popularity is that the users are given a free service to create a virtual social world where they exchange photographs, play games, become friendly, fall in love, split, fight, argue and quarrel at many times without having met physically.
    • But, on the other side it is an encroachment to someone’s privacy which can lead to different type of illegal activities by using the information such as name, location, and email addresses.
    • Social media provides us a platform to express ourselves without any restrictions which is becoming a major challenge as it may infringe the fundamental rights of privacy of a human being.

    Various forms of social media

    • Social Networks– Services that allow you to connect with other people of similar interests and background.  Usually they consist of a profile, various ways to interact with other users, ability to set up groups, etc. The most popular are Facebook and Linkedin
    • Bookmarking Sites – Services that allow you to save, organize and manage links to various websites and resources around the internet.  Most allow you to “tag” your links to make them easy to search and share.  The most popular are Delicious and StumbleUpon.
    • Social News– Services that allow people to post various news items or links to outside articles and then allows it’s users to “vote” on the items.  The voting is the core social aspect as the items that get the most votes are displayed the most prominently.  The community decides which news items get seen by more people.  The most popular are Digg and Reddit.
    • Media Sharing– Services that allow you to upload and share various media such as pictures and video.  Most services have additional social features such as profiles, commenting, etc.  The most popular are YouTube and Flickr.
    • Microblogging– Services that focus on short updates that are pushed out to anyone subscribed to receive the updates.  The most popular is Twitter.
    • Blog Comments and Forums – Online forums allow members to hold conversations by posting messages.  Blog comments are similar except they are attached to blogs and usually the discussion centers around the topic of the blog post.  There are many popular blogs and forums like RSS Feeds.

    Implications and uses of social media:

    • Social media serve as a superior medium to stay connected with friends and family, to meet new people, and make new friends.
    • It seems to be the most effective form of communication as feedback is instant.
    • It is like a boon to introverts as they find a safer zone to initiate conversations.
    • It is an upcoming media to integrate people and follow the principle of many voices one world.

    Effect on Function & Performance of government 

    • Accountability and transparency in Government
    • Various deals, decision by representative are Instantly getting shared on Social media
    • It is helping people decide that what things are actually done by Government
    • It is also causing swift actions by government
    • Making representative more closer through Digital interface
    • Democratising effect

    Effect on Governance and Institutions

    • It is providing voice to the people
    • Office delays, and Bureaucratic red tapism, absenteeism has been affected.
    • Recent protest on free speech has also caused judicial activism thus prudent judiciary in even of infringement of rights
    • It also helps political leader during election campaign for propagating manifesto
    • Cost of dissemination of information, expenditure of government has been reduced Vis a Vis to other forms of Information.

    Challenges before Social Media:

    • The misuse of one’s personal information, hacking of accounts, morphing of personal photographs, addiction of social networking sites, spam and viruses are most high-flying problems faced due to social media.
    • Some other prospective challenges are illiteracy, reach and accessibility of internet, lack of censorship on social media, need of regulatory body to govern the social media.
    • The most worrying aspect to the social media is the fact that it cannot be controlled and therefore it goes without saying that its consequences can also be dangerous and uncontrollable for all those who use it recklessly and in an irresponsible manner.
    • Frequent networking on sites like Facebook could also generate negative feelings like inadequacy, envy, jealousy or even aggressive behavior.

    Concerns about privacy:

    • Most networking sites do not really protect an individual’s privacy. A simple example is that of photos being posted on such sites without taking permission from all the people concerned.
    • There is no authenticity of the data posted nor can everything be taken on its face value.

    Prospects of social media in India:

    • There has been a remarkable increase in the internet connectivity in India. There has been successful penetration of personal computers even in the small cities and towns in the country. We all witness the intense mobile penetration in all nooks in India.
    • Seeing the high number of youth in the country who are tech friendly, it can be said that there is a bright prospect of social media in India.

    Way ahead:

    • Social media in India has to meet other challenges apart from illiteracy, reach and accessibility that are revenue generation.
    • There has been a rapid increase in social networking sites, microblogging, media sharing and bookmarking sites. India is lucrative market and social media is certainly gaining opportunities to deepen its roots resulting into a strong foothold in India.
    • There is need to regularize the social media. Some agency must be deputed to monitor the anti-social activities taking place on virtual world of social media. Laws relating to cyber crime should be made more stringent. There should be a separate policing department for cyber crimes.
    • There is a need of extensive research study for finding ways to regularize crime against social media.

    Social Media, with all its benefits and the potential for more, is definitely a boon, however misuse or irresponsible usage can have negative effects on individuals and society, especially the young impressionable minds. We need to guard against the negative impact of the social media, which ought to be used in the correct manner for creative or productive purposes so that it is progressive to mankind and society at large, rather than regressive.

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