Social media outrage offers a mechanism for accountability

The argument

Recently, the government in Brunei introduced a law that would punish gay sex with stoning. Keyboard warriors from across the globe immediately took to social media to condemn the decision, and before long the hashtag #BoycottBrunei had gained traction. What the episode demonstrates is that social media outrage supplies a form of pressure that the ordinary machinery of accountability cannot. Citizens of Brunei have no vote to withdraw and no court to appeal to; people outside it have no standing at all. Outrage that crosses borders and attaches a cost to the decision reaches a government that is otherwise insulated from every conventional check. The incident illustrates how social media outrage can hold governments to account for unjust policies that run roughshod over human rights and civil freedoms, and can punish political agents who offend the public sense of morality. The mechanism is reputational rather than legal, which is precisely why it works where law does not: it needs no jurisdiction, no standing and no procedure, only enough people willing to register their objection publicly and to act on it. It isn't just governments that can be held to account this way. Social media can also function as a corrective or punitive mechanism for those who have escaped civil or legal justice — cases where a formal process has run its course and produced an outcome the public regards as a failure. After fatally shooting 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, Florida's George Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder charges and of manslaughter, prompting social media outrage. On this argument, an acquittal ends the legal question but not the public one, and in a case like that, outrage is the only remaining avenue through which a verdict the public rejects can still be answered.

Context

Social media platforms seize control of the narrative from the political elite and the heads of national media outlets. Social media outrage, therefore, cannot be controlled by governments, making it the ideal tool to hold them to account.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Social media outrage that is directed towards government and political figures is rarely constructive. For every incident of outrage about a policy that breaches human rights, there are 1,000 trivial incidents that do political damage to politicians for no reason. We only have to look at the social media outrage surrounding Labour leader Ed Milliband eating a bacon sandwich to see how this outrage is most often deployed. Social media outrage can derail a politician's career for eating a bacon sandwich, eating fried chicken with a fork, or for Tweeting their own name by mistake. It is hard to see how this has improved society and politics.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejectin P1] Social media outrage is more often used to derail a politician's career for arbitrary reasons. [Rejecting P2] As a result, it does far more harm than good to the political narrative and conversation.