Social media: Better to be producers than consumers

In 1994, I was in Uganda completing my primary education. By that time, there was no Google, no Wikipedia, no Youtube, no Facebook, no Twitter, no Linkedin not even Myspace. There were hardly any people I knew who owned an email address let alone a computer. The post office box ruled and words like postage stamp and aerograme were part of daily lexicon. Mobile phones had not yet arrived and the corded phone with a dial on the face was the king of communication. TV, Radio and newspapers defined the media landscape. When the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi started, all the information we got was either through the news broadcasts on the state owned UTV or the government owned print daily The New Vision. The media landscape has since changed so much since the emergence of the internet. Now establishments like Google, Facebook and Youtube are more popular than traditional media companies like CNN or BBC. It is 2011 and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have morphed into new media platforms used by millions. The last time I checked, Facebook had amassed 600 million users while Twitter now stands at 300 million. It is actually said that if Facebook was a country it would be the third largest in the world after China and India. With that background, I would like to steer towards a story that made headlines in the region and globally in the past week. The story was about an exchange on Twitter between President Paul Kagame and a British journalist, Ian Birrell. They were later joined by the government spokesperson Louise Mushikiwabo. For the uninitiated, Twitter is a micro-blogging site that allows users to say something using only 140 characters. A lot has been said about the exchange with many focusing on the journalist’s contempt for Africans. Others have talked about the ‘amazing’ fact that an African president actually tweets! I have seen so many responses to the exchange on twitter, Facebook and numerous blogs and websites. The whole episode has a lot of lessons for us as Africans, East Africans or Rwandans. It is not a secret that Kagame has been on Twitter for a while and actually does the tweeting himself. The other time he surprised a Kenyan tweep (as users of the platform are often referred to) by showing up after an invitation via twitter. My fellow columnist Mr. Pan Butamire rightly pointed in his column that the exchange or ‘twitspat’ clearly revealed the contempt in which some Western journalists hold Africans. I also remember telling some friends on Facebook that there are going to be more Ian Birrells and it is more important to focus on the way forward instead of going on and on about what happened. In his address to student at the National University of Rwanda, President Kagame urged them to embrace social media since it possessed transformative powers. In other words what we should be asking ourselves is, “How can we transform the narrative about our societies to bring our stories to the fore front? It is high time more Rwandans or East Africans embraced social media but not as merely consumers but also producers of content. Although the number of Rwandans on Twitter is clearly small, the usage is what leaves a lot to be desired. Many simply sign for an account and forget about it. In such a scenario, the president is left as a lone commander out in the field without foot soldiers. Why should we let only the president and government spokesperson to respond to critics while the rest of us are mere observers? Why is it that instead of posting a good news story on our Facebook accounts we settle for sharing photos of a famous person at a party with female friends? The internet tries to level the media field and if we do not use it proactively, then we shall only have ourselves to blame. We need to take our space in the digital terrain and tell our stories. Government should continue with its ICT programmes, and also ensure that more ordinary computer users can access cheap and fast internet services since the long awaited fibre optic cable reached the region. Anyone who has been to school and acquired basic computer skills should be able to access the internet and use Facebook and Twitter. No one will tell the Rwanda story apart from Rwandans and our story will not be heard if all we do on our computers is visit football websites and tag ourselves in party photos on Facebook. ssenyonga@gmail.com