Opinion Making

Dr Atique Ur Rehman:
For a catch in pond, one need not to make a mud. There are other ways to catch the fish. If one is finding it difficult to persuade masses, it does not necessitate lies, there are many ways to speak the truth and convey your say.
New pattern of political campaigning is to craft disinformation, hire spokesperson from market and exploit algorithm through IT experts/tools. In the past, information,used to be, basis of opinion making but now, it is create panic, polarization, and conforming bias . It not helping to make a fair opinion because it is orchestrated/ manipulated. Nation states, Political parties, big corporations and power circles are crafting messages ( read information) to sell their view point and product. The crafted information reach to audience and viewers through social media and hired spokesmen. Stakeholders instead of nominating one spokesman from within own rank and file have hired many spokesmen from market. The hired spokesperson are opinion makers. These hired spokespersons are Vloggers, Tiktokkers, Bloggers. They are fed a crafted narrative by financier and they create content accordingly to reinforce confirmation bias or polarization. This is all business oriented technique.
For example In autumn 2020 Pfizer’s chairman and chief executive, Albert Bourla, released an open letter to the billions of people around the world who were investing their hopes in a safe and effective covid-19 vaccine to end the pandemic. “As I’ve said before, we are operating at the speed of science,” Bourla wrote, explaining to the public when they could expect a Pfizer vaccine to be authorised in the United States.
But, for researchers who were testing Pfizer’s vaccine at several sites in Texas during that autumn, speed may have come at the cost of data integrity and patient safety.
Artificial # are used to viral the content.
According to Samaa TV report In the month of May, June and July 2022, millions of tweets and hundreds of hashtag against institutions of state were created. Similarly political leadership in 2020, of then opposition party publically targeted institutions which was followed by social media campaign.
Yet again social media campaigns,on various issues, continue amid foggy environment of information. Public opinion is hanging between, push and pull of information. Thus, true Information, the basis of human development and progression has been threatened horizontally and vertically, by powers which are responsible for free and accurate flow of information.