During the very first topic exploration for the ONL 192 course, we were tasked with unpacking and investigating a specific, provided scenario that sounded quite “close to home” for many of us. The scenario positioned an online user accessing an online education course for the first time and feeling a variety of emotions about it. These emotions chalk quite squarely up to fear, and excitement.

This quote was lodged in my head as I tried to grapple with the dichotomous notion of fear and excitement about online platforms and engaging in less localized online forums. It appeared, through group discussion, that many of us fear social media to some degree. Each group member was able to rattle off a series of advantages and disadvantages about using social media and the reasons thereof.

I have not been able to shake my thoughts and feelings about this since the first week of the topic. Why are so many people afraid of social media, and specifically, why are we so hyper-concerned with bad publicity?

I suppose I should take a step back and acknowledge my own views. I am an intersectional feminist who believes that all persons are, and should be, held accountable for their views, opinions and beliefs to the fullest extent as we work collectively toward a just, decolonised and equitable world for ALL PEOPLE. I believe that the power of social media yields great potential for activism, for paradigmatic shifts and for introducing new ideas and meanings to a persons meaning scheme.

I must be clear – there is no “freedom of speech” argument that could convince me that narratives shared online, whether a joke or a meme or a photograph, that violates the existance and safety of other people in the world is appropriate. There is also no arguement that would persuade me to believe that people are allowed to make callous statements that infringe on the lived experience of people in this world, be it sexist, racist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, classist or fatphobic.

I do not believe that there is a place anymore for people to call “it’s my opinion” when they share content that persons with whom this content is hurtful call it out. However, I do know that there is a global concern arising out of many persons who fear “saying the wrong thing” may land them in some kind of space for judgement. My question however – is the following:

WHY IS THAT A BAD THING?

In our current society, we absolutely fear, what we now call this call out culture – but as humans, we are used to being critiqued. Either from our parents, our teachers, our friends and extra mural coaches – we know that at some point in our lives, someone will stop us and say, “hey, that thing that you are doing, it’s not good, it’s bad, it’s not okay”. Today the difference is that is happens very publicly – online. So then, I ask, is the fear less about being called out, or more about being “publicly shamed” and the after effects thereof? I don’t have an easily worded question but I do have a recommendation: it’s time that we start critically reflecting on our own inner meaning schemes and perspectives, and we start thinking about how our views, beliefs and ideological standpoints that reiterate the gross injustices and disparities we see in the world today. A good activity for this would be to consider theories on positionality and our invisible knapsacks.

When we start to interrogate these, we start to see that the “call out culture” that is existent online and very much in real-life spaces too, is not a personal/bad thing. It promotes active engagement in understanding the layers and intensive meanings behind many of our views and it begins to illustrate the ways in which we may have been blind to many of our own ideologies. It may even help us get to a point where we can not only handle being called out, but it can also aid us in doing to work we need to as variously-privileged-persons in order to shift the problematic narratives that exist on online social media today.

Everyday, based on the accounts I follow, I am able to witness the ways in which social media mobalises larger audiences into action for social justice. In South Africa, almost a month ago, we had a series of brutal and violent attacks on women and trans persons and after the sharing and use of a single hash-tagged image, the country moved into a state of civic emergency 100 000’s of people were encouraged to march, protest and strike against the rampant gender based violence that the country was facing. Not only was social media a tool in creating such wide spread action, it was also a space in which people could learn about critical terminology, action steps and various other platforms which needed immediate financial and social support.

It would be impossible for any of us to think that there is not critical reflection work to be done… but let’s say you’ve already started, and you’re an intersectional feminist, yet, you still have this fear of social media… maybe THIS article is for you!

I feel as if I have merely introduced some concepts here, and that I could spend the next month writing this blog-post entry but I need to end it somewhere. So I will leave the following thoughts:

• I wish there was less fear around using social media, especially on the point of fear of freedom of speech.
• I wish that more people used their social media accounts and platforms to highlight very important social justice issues our fellow humans experience.
• If you are engaging in a respectful, and socially conscious way online, there should be little reason to fear the use of social media.
• I would like to ask you, that if you share this fear of publicity feeling, to do the important work of trying to understand exactly where that fear comes from.

Please feel free to drop me a line on any of my social media platforms if you require any additional readings, any longer discussions or you wish that I elaborate on any of the above with you. I hope to build on, refine and finese this blog post as the weeks progress. I appreciate that you’ve taken the time to read this. Here’s to *perhaps* having introduced you to a new concept/idea.

KM.