The Dirty War in the digital age

After the Industrial Revolution, perhaps the next great leap that human societies took was the so-called Digital Revolution, which brought with it a number of technological advances that have impacted almost every aspect of human life.

The Internet, that invisible force that has little by little taken over almost every corner of the planet, has led to the development of what Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells calls the Network Society.

The Network Society has been responsible for many phenomena, ranging from large mass movements to trend-setting through content made viral. It has become one of the top marketing tools, capable even of causing international market price fluctuations; it has also managed to swing election results and even remove presidents, through the simple interaction among people.

One of the main characteristics of the Network Society is interconnection, which allows us to access and publish all kinds of information in real time. In today’s digital age, anyone can play journalist, and any piece of information, even if false, can become news. Interconnection has dethroned truth, and verisimilitude took its place.

To get posted, it is no longer necessary for information to be true, it is more than enough just for it to seem true. People have shown that if information seems credible, they are ready to share it. In this context, societies have fallen into a kind of Dirty War, through which black campaigns are no longer exclusive to the political world, and today, any citizen can become victim to a smear campaign against them.

It is a Dirty War, carried out by equally dirty soldiers, who often resort to anonymity as the ultimate expression of their cowardice.

But this war was not always dirty . At first, social network content made viral was organic, that is, it was based on the willingness of a user to share certain factual information. This made publications more credible since, when shared by a contact, it was immediately assumed that said contact had not only read the shared information, but also found it interesting enough to put it on their profile. It seemed that power was finally changing hands, placing a small share of it at the disposal of each social network user.

Yet, such a long-awaited change came to a halt in 2012, which was when false profiles began to proliferate and, with that, an entire industry emerged, the innovative “Netcentric” industry. “Netcentrics” are groups of people who manage several false accounts, which they use to publish content with the aim of altering public perception on a given subject or person.

And so, social networks became crowded with smear campaigns, which consist of writing libel and making false accusations to discredit a person, distort public perception of the person and incite unjustified hatred. Social networks became potential trenches for this Dirty War, from which netcentrics shoot to kill the reputation of a person.

This war is the dirtiest of all wars as it takes just 280 characters and the “netcentrics” machinery running to vilify, libel and practically destroy a person's reputation. While the power of the common user has fallen under the shadow of netcentrics power, all is not lost. We still have the power to decide what information we create, comment on and share, and with this comes the citizen's responsibility for verification, as this is how we can counter the wave of misinformation that we are experiencing.

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