Global Politics

Political Engagement Activity

TOPIC: Weaponization of Social Media

Political issue: In what ways has social media been weaponized?

Exam Session: May 2022

Candidate Code: jbz564

Word count: 1980

Introduction

Social media has diverted from being an entertainment and communication tool. Scandals

such as; the stealing of consumer data and racist or biased algorithms on social media, are

just little pieces of a bigger issue. Social media is now used as a weapon to create conflict,

abuse human rights, and inhibit development. Moreover, social media today occupies a key

role in the politics of this world, and is being weaponized for political means. To create a

deeper understanding of the weaponization of social media, we can allude to the US capitol

riot. From a single tweet made on January 6 th by former U.S. president Donald Trump

insinuating the voting process of the 2020 presidential elections of being fraudulent, followed

by a speech which encouraged his followers to march to the Capitol; resulted in the killing of

5 individuals and equally huge property damage ("Capitol riots timeline: The evidence

presented against Trump", 2022). This thus leaves open the question: In what ways has

social media been weaponized?

According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, to weaponize means to adapt something as a

weapon of war. The definition of war in politics is contextual. Thus for the purpose of my

inquiry, it would be defined as conflict between two parties, be it armed or unarmed. Hence,

this essay aims at making sense of, and analyzing how social media can serve as a weapon for

one party to harm or negatively affect another one. This paper would debate the above

inquiry through a thorough analysis of collected data, from multiple perspectives, and at a

national and international level. My rationale is an avid curiosity to understand how this

dynamic issue faced by every nation in the world operates. If it is indeed rapidly being

weaponized, I wish to uncover the ways in which it is to contribute to creating awareness and

countering evil. I am eager to know how much of a threat the weaponization of social media

poses to humanity.
 Engagement Activities

My political engagement activity consisted of two interviews, a survey and an online political

campaign. Firstly, I interviewed the journalist; Eric Crepin Mougnaleba. Mr Eric is a

journalist at Visio Télèvisio. This interview was an essential element in researching my

political issue because the news agency for which Mr Eric works is social media based, and

thus is highly exposed to the traffic on social media. From Mr Eric, I gained understanding of

the functioning of social media, how the lack of tough regulations results in its

weaponization, how social media is weaponized to bring about conflict and equally how it

operates to influence individuals. However, he insisted on a balance between the

weaponization of social media, and use of social media to promote our lives, that cannot be

ignored. Subsequently, I interviewed Mr Ruffin Katcham, who is a media Analyst and

journalist at La Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV). The objective of this interview was to

gain a deeper understanding of the functioning of social media, its algorithm, and the ways in

which it is weaponized. I was introduced by Mr. Katcham to a new perspective through the

deep analysis he made on the psychological effect of social media, which he described as the

key element in its weaponization. He enabled me to understand the responsibility the

consumer has on the weaponization, sometimes even graver that of the producer. Next, I

conducted simultaneously a survey and campaign. My campaign aimed at creating awareness

on the weaponization of social media. The survey aimed at depicting the use of social media,

and the degree to which consumers are vigilant about its usage to avoid contributing to its

weaponization. I sent the survey to a total of 100 participants, 50 of each age group, older

than 18, and younger than 18 years old. From this survey I gathered information about the
rate of usage and reliance on social media to get informed, and forms of weaponization of

social media.

ANALYSIS OF THE ISSUE

What makes social media a weapon?

To understand how social media is weaponized, it is crucial to understand what makes social

media a suitable weapon. Mr Eric Crepin made mention of the fact that social media is being

weaponized because of its easy access. The aim of social media is to connect the whole

world. Thus it is affordable and easy to get. To further elaborate on that, they are about 2.98

billion users of Facebook active everyday ("Facebook MAU worldwide 2021 | Statista",

2022). From the data collected in my survey 100% of respondents admitted to using social

media every day. This makes it a weapon because in order to cause war, compared to other

mediums, social media is cost-effective, exposes users to minimal risk of sanctions/ justice

and is highly available.

In addition, social media is a weapon because it exposes the user to a large audience. This

was best substantiated by Mr Ruffin Katcham who said: "A post with sensitive information

simply associated with a Hashtag, can reach millions of people. As a result, social media is

used as a weapon because it enables the message to spread faster." This highly resonates with

the concept of interdependence in global politics. Interdependence, refers to the mutual

reliance of groups for access to resources that sustain a living arrangement. Users of social

media are interdependent. They all rely on the information of one another for diverse reasons.

This reliance gives room for easy manipulation, thus rendering social media an effective

weapon.
In addition social media is a weapon due to the weak regulations it places on its usage and the

spread of its content. Mr. Eric communicated that there are no strict regulations on the use of

social media. There is very little verification made by the management of the platform, as to

what is being posted on it every day. As a result, individuals find it easy to use it as a weapon

since the sometimes violent and harmful content they publish could easily go under the radar.

According to the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE), a full

half of 236 interviewees said internet-based recruitment and perusal of social media factored

into their decision to join ISIS. ("How Social Media Fuels Extremism — ACCO", 2022).

Nonetheless, social media platforms indeed take actions to reduce their weaponization. To

demonstrate, Facebook also announced a policy against Coordinated Social Harm, and shared

its first example of enforcement: A network of users linked to Querdenken, a German group

often compared to QAnon, has their Facebook accounts deactivated, pages and groups, as

well as their Instagram accounts, for posts that spread false and misleading information about

the pandemic, engage in hate speech and incite violence, wrote Nathaniel Gleicher,

Facebook’s head of security policy. (Dangor, 2022) Although the components of social media

make it more than suitable for weaponization, the managers of this platform, aware of that

disadvantage, take actions to make social media less weapon by limiting its access,

sanctioning users, and taking down harmful posts before they spread.

The Weaponization of Social Media Through False Narratives and Emotionally

Manipulative Information

According to the theory of ideological power by Stevens Lukes, people have the power to

influence the thoughts and wishes of others. This justifies the main way in which social

media is weaponized, which is through the publishing of false Narrative and emotionally
manipulative information, because these influence perspectives of those they are exposed to.

From Mr Eric Mougnaleba, I learned that the information we encounter on social media is

imposed on us. Users have limited power in choosing what they want to see on social media.

Equally, social media influences user's viewpoints. To illustrate, he made mention of the fact

that when an event takes place and is reported on social media, the narrative is transformed

by the publisher's emotions, beliefs and intentions. Thus the information is manipulated and

reaches a wide audience. As a result, receivers would react by emotion to such information,

which is misleading, emotionally manipulative and contains false narratives.

In similitude, Mr. Ruffin Katcham made me conscious of the fact that Social media takes a

psychological toll on us. Its user interface is designed for that, and equally to make it

addictive. Social media is weaponized by appealing to the user's emotions in order to control

our mental processes, and push us to act. People die because of comments on social media,

and the solution to that is avoiding being passive about what we see on social media. This

explains why in many countries social media is deactivated during elections to disable the

weaponization of social media. To illustrate, Cameroonian politicians and citizens exploit

social media to press home their views. Online posts of anti-Biya protests in Geneva in June

2019 prompted MPs from the South – largely Biya loyalists – to accuse the Western diaspora,

who are generally regarded as Kamto supporters, of tribalism. Violence broke out among

these groups in Sangmelima, in October 2019, although it caused no fatalities. ("Easing

Cameroon’s Ethno-political Tensions, On and Offline", 2022) Although this could easily be

counteracted by vigilance from users. Many fail to be critical of what they see on social

media. According to the data collected in my survey, none of my respondents responded to

verifying all the information they see on social media.

However, many may argue that social media is not weaponized, but simply used as a tool of

expressions. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in article 19:

"Everyone has freedom of opinion and expression..." This means individuals on social media

have that liberty of carrying on their own rational will without external coercion. Equally this

freedom of speech, gives way for the usage of social media for valuable reasons. To illustrate,

during this ongoing Anglophone crisis in Cameroon, social media has been used multiple

times, to encourage unity and non-violence; as seen with the campaigns flooded the Internet

after the assassination of students. The Cameroon Anglophone crisis clearly underscores how

social media, a key development tool, can become a force for unity and mobilization on the

one hand – as evidenced by the mobilization of Anglophone Cameroonians across the world

– and a tool to manipulate and expose violence and injustice on the other. (Gikunda, 2022).

This interconnectedness is the fruit of globalisation because social media has broken

knowledge barriers of what happens around the world. As a result, to fight injustice, with the

help of social media, communities are not left of their own, and can call on the global

community for support and pressure for change.

Ultimately, social media is weaponized through false narratives and emotionally

manipulative information. Such information evokes emotions in targets which can lead to

conflict, division and even violence. Nevertheless, not all information that triggers our

emotions on social media is its weaponization. On social media, everyone has the right to

express themselves. Also, social media is used for valuable reasons, such as fighting political

issues in a nation.

CONCLUSION
This engagement has permitted me to quench my curiosity about the weaponization of social

media by acquiring knowledge on the fact that social media is weaponized through the use of

false narratives and emotionally manipulative information that cause in the targets, division,

violence, and even can be fatal. The reasons social media is a suitable weapon, especially to

Extremism, are its easy access, the exposure to a wide audience, and weak regulations that

they are created with. Nevertheless, given the wide spread of this weaponization, social

media platforms are taking action to make it harder for social media to be weaponized. This

can be seen through the control and regulation of content, and deactivation of harmful

accounts. In Spite of all that I learned in my engagement, I acknowledge that further research,

and interviewing individuals with more diverse perspectives would have been more fruitful.

In a world where global politics has carved itself into every domain, like social media, it is

pivotal to us to analyze how this prevails because we are all affected by such situations in the

long run.
References

BBC News. (2022). Capitol riots timeline: The evidence presented against Trump. Retrieved

5 January 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56004916.

The Weaponization of Social Media. (2020, July 02). Retrieved from

https://www.mercycorps.org/research-resources/weaponization-social-media

Statista. Statista. (2022). Facebook MAU worldwide 2021 | Retrieved 5 January 2022, from

https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-

worldwide/#:~:text=How%20many%20users%20does%20Facebook,the%20biggest

%20social%20network%20worldwide.

How Social Media Fuels Extremism — ACCO. ACCO. (2022). Retrieved 8 January 2022, from
 https://www.counteringcrime.org/how-social-media-fuels-extremism.

Dangor, G. (2022). Facebook Is Removing Users Who Team Up To Harass Others And Spread

Misinformation. Forbes. Retrieved 9 January 2022, from

https://www.forbes.com/sites/graisondangor/2021/09/16/facebook-is-removing-users-

who-team-up-to-harass-others-and-spread-misinformation/?sh=43571b7c7f3f.

On and Offline. Crisis Group. (2022). Easing Cameroon’s Ethno-political Tensions, Retrieved 8

January 2022, from https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/central-africa/cameroon/295-easing-

cameroons-ethno-political-tensions-and-offline.

Nations, U. (2022). Universal Declaration of Human Rights | United Nations. United Nations.

Retrieved 8 January 2022, from https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-

human-rights.

Gikunda, K. (2022). Social Media & Modern Day Conflicts - Cameroon - #defyhatenow.

#defyhatenow. Retrieved 8 January 2022, from https://defyhatenow.org/social-media-

modern-day-conflicts-cameroon/.