Every year, just as the Indian festival of Lights, Deepawali, gets over, a viral composite image of a satellite picture by NASA ritualistically starts making the rounds on social media. If we see the lights and concentration of colour then Deepawali seems to be a major festival in parts of Afghanistan (Hindu-Kush region), Chinese Occupied Kashmir (Aksai Chin), Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan (Indus Basin), Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (Azad Kashmir), Sri Lanka, and all across India (from Kashmir to the Andaman) apart from regional deviance or predilection for different colours. Further, for the alleged Diwali light spots to be burning so bright, megatons of magnesium, sulphur, and phosphorous (to say the least) would have been burnt and pollution equivalent to the annual output from America and China would have risen from the Indian sub-continent, in a single night, wreaking a major environmental catastrophe. As early as in 2009, a watertight case sealed the fate for the photograph christened ‘How INDIA Looked on Diwali Night from the Sky.’ The image was contextually a ‘fake.’ The photograph is a NASA satellite composite put together from many different images taken at different times.
The original caption to the alleged photograph of How INDIA Looked on Diwali Night from the Sky reads:
“India at night, satellite view. This image is a composite showing the change in illumination over India from 1992-2003. Satellite data from 2003 is coloured red, 1998 is coloured green and 1992 is blue. The three data sets are composited to form the image. Night-time lights on the map that are white are lights that were present throughout the entire period. Areas that are marked by red have only appeared in 2003. Areas coloured green and blue were only present in 1998 and 1992 respectively but are no longer visible. This image was created by the Defence Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP), National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, USA.”
To review the composite satellite image and the caption readers may visit http://www.sciencephoto.com/media/160012/view. Alternatively, visit http://www.sciencephotogallery.co.uk/india_at_night_satellite_image/print/1705155.html.
The photograph or the visual, however, is not important but the idea behind it, which has serious ramifications. The construction and interpolation of an alternative truth and negotiation of meaning by the working class is of serious concern. It is possible to construct alternate truths and let the media (social media in this case) do the rest. Often, behaviour psychologists, agents of the ruling elites, and online advertisers make use of such tactics. This technique is not limited to visual communication; in fact, it can help percolate any information requiring a simple contagion to diffuse as truth!
This incident, as have other countless examples, demonstrates the efficacy of any form of media (especially social media) as a tool to build convincing alternative truths and how interested parties (vested interests) can use this aspect as a semi-politico media complex to re-construct the (imaginary and euphoric) notion of ‘nation,’ specially amongst the Indian diaspora. Further, such social constructs of alternative truths always help the impoverished and denied masses with a dose of opiated nationalism and a false sense of progressive identity. What gives credence to the alternative truths on social media are their supposed inherent democratic credentials. True, the democratic potential of media increases the working classes’ access to information, which may lead to a functionally better-informed work force. However, at the same time, it leads to issues of information overload and practices of disinformation (through corporate and governmental malfeasance) generally with the complicity of the favoured elite or their agents. Both, information overload and practices of disinformation (propaganda) result in re-enforcement of prevalent and socially accepted norms and behaviour, i.e. status quo.
This construction of an alternative truth suits the agenda of the ruling elite. In fact, the elite class aids and abets most constructions of alternative truths. In some instances, it directly plants and grafts such constructs, thereby, curtailing and regulating the working class and their hopes & aspirations, while sanitising the social environs of any signs of class struggle or dissent - real or perceived. Any well-informed consumer of the internet knows that in the world of social media there is hardly a website not spiced with little icons encouraging a consumer to share, like, comment, publish, and so on. Just a few pixels square, these icons are signifiers of the potent tools for influencing people’s lives. They strongly influence and in some instances govern the way the working class generates and consumes all forms of data. It is important to understand that “the instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo.” (Gladwell, 2010) Another point that is noteworthy, is that there are 800 million active Facebook users (Facebook, 2011) , 100 million active tweeters (Twitter, 2011) , over 4 billion cellular phone subscribers by late 2008 (International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 2008) and these people actively consume and gratify themselves with new technology media products & services. The data available to an everyday consumer is phenomenal and beyond her/his capability and ability to process and negotiate meaning. Indeed, the age of Web 2.0 is the age of ‘communication overload’. This information overload suits the favoured governing elite of the third world, when in reality these selected few are by-products of the process of ‘manufacturing consent’ (Herman & Chomsky, 1988) , which replaced the Era of Colonial Empires. The super elites, the custodians of post-colonial hegemony, sit smugly enthroned in the western/developed world, manipulating, as biased gatekeepers, all data (information) to engage in subversion of universal rights and aspirations by the engineering of consent. Ironically, the ruling elite subscribe to manufacturing consent when dealing with their own working class and media. It is, therefore, of little surprise that technology, technological innovations, and media ownership should be concentrated in the hands of the few. In fact, all key industrial and production units in any society are always owned by the watchdog elite (agents of the ruling elite - second tier in the hegemony of manufacturing consent), though not necessarily by the ruling elites themselves (barring in the third world).
So, coming back to the photograph, if everyone knows that the image is a ‘fake’ (in the Diwali context), then, why should this image virally surface every year? What is in the image that makes it so endearing to Indians and people of Indian origin? Does the caption, ‘How INDIA Looked on Diwali Night from the Sky,’ fulfil any of J. L. Austin’s (1962) ‘felicity conditions’ required of some ‘performative utterances’? Alternatively, is this image, as Émile Durkheim (February 1, 1912) would have suggested, a visual symbol acting as a catalyst to achieve ‘collective effervescence,’ which in the eyes of some interested party/s serves to help unify Indian (read Hindu) society? Is there an ulterior motive, as was in the case of Babri Masjid/Ram Janam Bhoomi movement… is some individual or a politico-religious entity attempting to gauge public opinion or seek public (read majority’s) approval? Any person or organization depends, according to E. L. Bernays, “ultimately on public approval, and is therefore faced with the problem of engineering the public’s consent to a program or goal…When the public is convinced of the soundness of an idea, it will proceed to action.” (Bernays, 1947, p. 114) However, it may still early and the data insufficient and inadequate for any scientific/rational inference…or, is it?
Bibliography
Austin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, London, Oxford, New York 1976.
Bernays, E. L. (1947, March). The Engineering of Consent. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 250(1), 113-120. doi:10.1177/000271624725000116
Durkheim, E. (February 1, 1912). 'The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (May 17, 2008 ed.). (M. S. Cladis, Ed., & C. Cosman, Trans.) Oxford: The Oxford University Press.
Facebook. (2011, October 27). Press: Statistics. Retrieved October 27, 2011, from Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
Gladwell, M. (2010, October 4). A Small Change, Why the revolution will not be tweeted. Retrieved October 27, 2011, from The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?printable=true
Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N. (1988). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
International Telecommunication Union (ITU). (2008, September 25). Press Release: Worldwide mobile cellular subscribers to reach 4 billion mark late 2008. (http://www.itu.int/newsroom/press_releases/2008/29.html, Editor) Retrieved October 27, 2011, from International Telecommunication Union: http://www.itu.int/newsroom/press_releases/2008/29.html
Twitter. (2011, October 27). Basics: What is Twitter. Retrieved October 27, 2011, from Twitter: http://business.twitter.com/basics/what-is-twitter/
