The Displacement of Public Opinion

Every issue stirred up on social media — Facebook, X, and the rest — fades after it’s raised, rarely lasting more than three days on average, before being replaced by a new one.

This is an Arab phenomenon, and perhaps a global one too. It’s become common knowledge that if you want to push public opinion away from a particular file, you simply open a new one. The shift in attack, criticism, or attention happens gradually at first, then quickly, until the priority once given to the earlier file is effectively erased.

Displacing public opinion is not a complicated process, because the tools used to control it rely on a specific technique: the new file must be more sensational than the last, enough to wipe it out and spark fresh controversy or dispute.

This doesn’t mean social media is unimportant — in many cases it leaves a lasting mark even after the debate around an issue has died down. A corruption scandal, for instance, might get pushed aside by a football match or a major fire, but at a deeper collective level, the impression of the corruption case remains lodged in the public mind, and the information can easily be retrieved if someone later decides to revisit old files.

The social media industry is dangerous in its ability to disorient the public, force secondary issues onto the public agenda, and even scatter attention away from more important matters. But it is also an industry built on chaos, with hundreds of thousands of pages competing over a single issue, capable of causing deep divisions or stirring political passions among a country’s various components — in addition to being a mobilization tool whose danger multiplies during critical, sensitive junctures that a country may pass through in exceptional circumstances.

The occasion for this discussion is a renewed call to go back to first principles — namely, the importance of developing Arab print, digital, television, and radio media. Media production of this kind operates under rules and standards, and the ability to manipulate the audience, while it does happen at times, is far easier to deal with than on social media. Traditional media, moreover, serves as a vehicle for promoting the professional content produced by these outlets, which guarantees at minimum a degree of professionalism and adherence to professional standards.

What is happening across the Arab world is a daily chase after the fashion of social media, a race to secure a seat on its bandwagon and compete over information and narrative. That’s a good thing in itself, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of forgetting the importance of fundamental investment in professional media, which social media can never truly replace.

If conventional media is not developed, its professionalism upgraded, and its credibility raised, the public will be left with nothing but social media — and that comes at a heavy political, economic, and security cost, because these platforms carry side effects that many cannot accept amid chaos, mismanagement, rumor wars, targeting, impersonation of names, programs, and slogans, and the infiltration of countless agendas posing as credible sources.

Social media may have a higher ceiling, but it too manipulates its audience, and it demonstrates on a daily basis the principle of displacement in public opinion’s priorities — hijacking the public toward alternative directions.