How social media is testing the sacred unity

By Emmanuel ADU-MENSAH

There was a time when the Ghanaian evening was heralded by the warm, flickering glow of a lantern or the crackle of a compound fire. Elders sat with children, spinning tales of Ananse and weaving a tapestry of shared identity.

In those sacred spaces, a beautiful truth was passed down: “prayɛ wɔhɔ yi, wo yi baako a ebu, wo ka bɔ mu a emu”– a single broomstick breaks easily, but when bound together, it is unbreakable. Today, that warm glow has been replaced by the cold, blue light of smartphone screens.

The compound square has moved to X, TikTok, and WhatsApp groups. Technology promised to stretch our hands across the Volta, over the Kwahu mountains, and through the northern savannahs, knitting our beautiful mosaic of Akans, Ewes, Ga-Adangbes, Mole-Dagbanis, and many others into a single digital tapestry. But as we look closer at our feeds, a heartbreaking question emerges: Are we using this boundless connection to build bridges, or are we simply digitizing our deepest tribal divides?

The widespread adoption of social media has completely transformed how we interact and engage with our society. It has granted ordinary citizens unparalleled avenues to express their viewpoints and participate in national discussions, especially those of political significance. However, look closely beneath the surface, and you will observe unacceptable levels of ethnocentric behavior being exhibited across these platforms daily.

Ethnocentrism is the dangerous inclination to evaluate other cultures, societies, or ethnic groups through the narrow lens of one’s own cultural standards, norms, values, and practices. This bias-infused standpoint confers a perceived superiority or heightened legitimacy to one’s own cultural convictions relative to those of others.

It rejects cultural relativity – the essential practice of understanding and appreciating cultural differences without making harsh value judgments. Instead, it favors one’s own culture as the absolute standard, creating a toxic environment where subtle predispositions grow into overt prejudices, precipitating deep misunderstandings, clashes, and schisms among people who share the same geographical borders.

The ethnocentric tendencies we witness online manifest and persist due to several key attributes inherent in social media technologies. First, the comfort of echo chambers and filter bubbles isolates us. Social media algorithms are designed to enhance user engagement by presenting content that aligns precisely with our existing beliefs and preferences.

This inadvertently creates ideological cocoons where we are exposed primarily to information that reinforces our own worldviews. In this environment, we lose exposure to diverse perspectives, which strengthens our ethnocentric biases and makes it challenging to engage constructively with different cultural viewpoints.

Furthermore, online platforms provide users with a degree of anonymity and detachment from real-world consequences. This perceived anonymity leads to digital disinhibition, where individuals feel emboldened to express extreme, divisive, or biased views that they would never dare utter in a face-to-face interaction in a traditional Ghanaian marketplace or town hall.

Finally, the rapid dissemination of misinformation and fake news fuels polarization. False narratives that portray other cultures or ethnic groups in a negative light spread like a harmattan fire, distorting reality and widening the gap between online communities.

While these technologies enable global communication, they ultimately magnify local conflicts, allowing an issue in one small geographical area to swiftly gain global attention and escalate into a widespread national problem.

The implications of this digitized ethnocentrism are multifaceted and carry heavy, wide-ranging consequences for our digital and real-world experiences. It leads to severe polarization and division within society at large, making it incredibly difficult to find common ground or engage in constructive dialogue.

By limiting our exposure to diverse perspectives, it perpetuates harmful stereotypes, diminish cross-cultural understanding, and ultimately destroy empathy and tolerance among our youth. The spread of fake news and biased content creates a toxic online atmosphere characterized by open hostility and conflict.

Most concerning of all, this online venom inevitably spills over into our daily lives, influencing how we perceive and interact with colleagues from different backgrounds, affecting workplace dynamics, breaking down social relationships, and corrupting political decisions.

This continuous erosion of trust makes users increasingly skeptical of information sources, creating challenges for social harmony and hindering true efforts to promote inclusivity and diversity in education, employment, and public discourse.

To foster a more inclusive and harmonious online discourse within Ghana’s diverse society, we must deliberately shape and govern how we interact with these technologies. First, the promotion of media literacy is imperative.

Educational programs targeting both young and adult internet users should be widely implemented to impart critical thinking skills and fact-checking techniques, equipping individuals with the ability to discern credible sources from unreliable ones. Emphasizing cultural sensitivity within these programs will play a pivotal role in enabling users to recognize and reject biases inherent in media content.

Additionally, social media platforms must prioritize transparency in their content curation algorithms, giving users greater control to fine-tune their content preferences, diversify their sources, or opt-out of personalized recommendations entirely. We must also facilitate constructive dialogue by advocating for moderated online discussion spaces governed by clear guidelines for respectful behavior, overseen by impartial moderators.

Fact-checking initiatives must be strengthened to actively counter and report misinformation before it propagates. Finally, we must actively organize and promote online cultural exchanges, webinars, virtual tours, and language-learning initiatives that encourage mutual learning and appreciation for the richness of our various cultures.

Ultimately, the impact of social media on ethnocentrism in Ghana is a complex issue, carrying the potential for both positive cross-cultural interactions and the negative reinforcement of old biases. Social media is merely a mirror; it does not create the ugliness within us, it only magnifies it. Whether these platforms reduce or ignite ethnocentrism depends entirely on the heart of the person holding the phone and the hand typing on the keyboard.

Ghana’s true wealth has never been just the gold in our earth or the oil beneath our waves; it has always been the peace in our streets and the unity in our diversity. By understanding these technological traps and implementing proactive, collaborative measures involving government bodies, civil society, and tech companies, we can reclaim our virtual compound.

The next time you poise your thumb to forward a divisive message, pause and remember that the person on the other side of the screen is a child of the same soil. Let us silence the digital drums of division and use our collective voices to build a more harmonious, inclusive, and beautiful Ghana, both online and in the real world.

The writer is a lecturer and researcher who explores the intersection of technology, culture, and human agency

Post Views: 3