Social media downsides and upsides
"A wonderful source of relational connection and cute cat videos, but also fuelling divisive perspectives and corrosive influences"... Anything else?
Dear Church Leaders (and everyone else)
Social media
Over the past few years I have noticed a growing trend in preachers making reference to social media. Here is a recent example:1
Social media… a wonderful source of relational connection and cute cat videos, but also fuelling divisive perspectives and corrosive influences
At least to some degree, I share such sentiments.
Like many others, I have appreciated being able to keep up with people via social media. Though online interactions are of course a pale imitation of face-to-face relationship.
And I quite like occasional videos and pictures of cats (and other pets). But I have sometimes wondered to what extent the focus on our furry friends serves as a convenient distraction from more important issues. I am reminded of how, at homegroup Zoom sessions during the covid era, before I resigned as leader, members preferred to discuss pets rather than e.g. why Christians seemed so indifferent to churches being closed in the context of a respiratory virus with an infectious fatality rate comparable to that seen in a bad flu season. And something similar could be said of church prayer meetings in those crazy times.
As to social media fuelling divisive perspectives and corrosive influences, I don’t disagree, but I see plenty of that in the mainstream media too. And as with any other forms of media, it does rather depend where you look.
But I don’t see social media going away any more than I see the internet going away. And what strikes me about what I hear from the pulpit on social media is not so much what does get emphasised as what does not. For me, a strong contender for the best thing about social media is the way that it enables the sharing of information.
Misinformation and disinformation
There is, obviously, the ongoing issue of misinformation and disinformation, but that surely applies to all forms of media. And in any case, it is hardly new, although it does appear that something changed around 2015:
Related:
But what more and more people, including me, are waking up to is the fact that much of the misinformation and disinformation that we have been fed over the past few years — not least on climate and covid — has actually been coming from supposedly trustworthy sources. Including members of an organisation calling itself the Trusted News Initiative, which I discussed in this post:
And who is behind this unprecedented and Orwellian-sounding collaboration of global corporations in a modern-day Ministry of Truth?
The BBC.
Here is the Trusted News Initiative on the BBC website:
The BBC
There is of course plenty to commend about the BBC: classic comedy, sport coverage, period dramas. Etc. I grew up watching little else.
But I know that I am not alone in thinking that the nature of the BBC has changed. And particularly its news output.
Consider for example, BBC News’ coverage of transgender issues:
Since 2018, there have been almost a thousand such articles.
Here are two questions worth pondering:
If an organisation is pushing transgender ideology like this…
What does that tell us about the organisation?
Why should we think the organisation is not pushing other agendas?
And yet I sense that many people, and many Christians, still seem to trust the BBC, and particularly its news output, in much the same way that they ever did. I wonder how many people leading church prayers still use the BBC — as I did ten years ago — as their go-to source of information when e.g. looking to pray for the wider world.
Whereas the BBC, headed by Director-General Tim Davie, featured here on the World Economic Forum website…
…appears to be unashamedly supporting and promoting the agendas of powerful vested interests, social media has (among other things) given a voice to those challenging the narrative of powerful vested interests, as I discussed in this recent post:
There is much more that could be said here, not least in relation to the overt and covert censorship of such voices.
But the main question that I have had on my mind recently is:
To what extent are Christians, including those at the church I attend, actually on the side of powerful vested interests? As opposed to the side of those bringing credible minority reports — often in defence of the weak, the poor and the vulnerable — that challenge the prevailing narrative.
Some might of course say, “We are on neither side. We focus on preaching Jesus Christ.” But I am less than convinced that the available evidence actually supports the first part of that statement. And I do wonder what Jesus Christ himself would actually say about the matter if he were walking the earth today.
Dear Church Leaders articles (some of which can also be found on Unexpected Turns)
The Big Reveal: Christianity carefully considered
From a sermon on Psalm 9