The President is on Facebook!

Perhaps this blog has come two weeks late, maybe more.

It is not every day that the main daily tabloids get the same lead story and headline. Of course the phrasing of the headline can never be ‘identical’. Over the last two years, there have only been three occurrences when I noticed to have been carried as the lead story in all the daily papers. The first was in February 2012 when all the papers carried a sports story as the lead headline after Chipolopolo (Zambia National Soccer Team) were crowned AFCON champions for the first time. Then in December 2013, every newspaper carried the news of the death of Nelson Mandela as the lead story.

So on Saturday 18^th January 2014 when the three main daily tabloids in Zambia all ran the story of president Michael Sata joining Facebook as the lead story, it dawned on me that this had to be a momentous happening. More than a week on, the action by his excellence the president to join Facebook was still attracting debate. Hot fm radio breakfast show on Monday 27^th January 2014 played a clip of a gentle man (I can’t recall his identity) who complained at the fact that the president has never held a press conference since assuming office but decided to interact with people on Facebook when statistics indicate that internet usage in Zambia is really low. 

The fact that the president is embracing Facebook does not come as a surprise to me as I believed that it was just a matter of time before it happened. Besides, in the preceding weeks before the screaming headlines of the president joining Facebook, I had noticed a lot of opinion makers in Zambia touch on the subject. The Post Newspaper had carried editorials in which social media and Facebook to be specific was attacked. The post cited two aspects of social media which they seem not to like. The first issue cited was the fact that a lot of Zambians were spending a lot of productive time posting and responding to Facebook updates at the expense of productivity. Their second concern has been that a lot of fake Facebook accounts exist just for slandering others, rumour mongering and character assassination of fellow citizens while hiding in the anonymity of such accounts.

However not all opinion makers had a bone to chew with Facebook, as Emmanuel Mwamba upon being appointed information permanent secretary pledged to modernize the public media as well as making sure they respond to new trends such as the new media --social media. In order to be relevant to the people the president has to engage the people using a media that is most outreaching –and Facebook is one such platform. Hakainde Hichilema, Elias Chipimo, Silvia Masebo, Edith Nawakwi, Myles Sampa, Judith Kapijimpanga and many more have all been using facebook for many reasons chief of which is to communicate to the public of upcoming events and the positions they take on several matters of national importance.

Above and below: Screaming headlines

Myles Sampa in particular has used Facebook effectively. He has been able to highlight developments in his constituency, explain some government decisions and generally engage the electorate. In fact, I was very elated when Mr Sampa recently posted something that suggested he would address the bad state of Vubu road in Emmasdale which falls under his constituency. A lot of people have accused Mr.Sampa of neglecting Vubu road simply because Emmasdale is not as densely populated as the other areas of his constituency. It is common knowledge that politics is primarily a game of numbers; hence it is more beneficial to him if he facilitated the building of a bridge at Shadreck area, a basketball court in George compound or a futsal pitch at Matero market.

However this theory may just be mere speculation. Because he has been giving feedback through interaction on Facebook, the Matero MP has come out now to say he will look into the issues of Vubu road. Perhaps he just never noticed the state of Vubu road or it just one of those non priority roads.

My view… My thoughts…

Charles Darwin is famed for his theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin’s theory states that "In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment." However, Darwin is also quoted as having said that, "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." You may not agree with all of Darwin’s theories but nothing comes as truthful as that. If you do not respond to change you become irrelevant.

A lot of politicians have realized that Zambia’s population is largely youthful, and the medium of communication most popular with them today is social media. In the quest to avoid being irrelevant, they have had to adapt and join the band wagon that uses social media as a means of communication

In August 2013, I blogged on Social Media and Marketing and I got a response on Google plus from a lady who claimed I am overrating the power of social media. The truth is that social media has become more powerful than television in shaping public opinion and this is what HEMCS has realized. What I doubt though is if the page is run by the president himself. Running a page that responds to people’s questions and posts regularly is a lot of work which needs a team of minimum three people that work round the clock at least 20 hours a day.

In this case I’d think George Chellah, the special assistant for press and public relations at state house is the brains behind the page. Of course it may be a lot of work for him alone so I further suspect he has a team that does the work which he nods and forwards to the head of state for approval before posting online. The responses to people’s questions are kept to a minimum to avoid over committing the head of state. This in itself is a problem because once you open a Facebook page for the purposes of communication and media relations you must interact as much as is possible.

Failure to do so can prove costly as one individual who may feel 'short changed' by an inadequate response can easily turn to be a thousand people, then, a million people and so on. In as much as social media gives a plat form for communicating to lots of people quickly, it can also be a means of transmitting negative feedback to far too many far too quickly.

However Facebook like any product and technology can have many people that abuse it, the same way internet is abused by many people. Face book also must not be the reason for unproductiveness. Those that go to school must divide their time properly the same way my generation maneuvered through the problem of too much television. Those who are in business or employed, unless employed to be updating an organisation’s Facebook page must put away their phones and all manner of gadgets during working hours. With or without Facebook the lazy bunch will always find something to take them into procrastination mode.

As for those that create fake accounts to slander others, that is crime and all the police can do is invest in IT training to be able to counter cyber-crime more effectively. It is not only slander that is the problem; Facebook is full of conmen and con women that commit fraud. At the end of the day, social media doesn’t make anyone less productive or a criminal. The criminals just find yet another way to commit crime while the unproductive find yet another reason to be unproductive.

I personally think it was a good move for the president to open the page, but going by the numbers of posts that have been put up so far, it is too much too soon. An official page like one for a president must be updated maybe weekly to communicate a message and another one the following week. It should not be made a campaign page that shows every junction where new traffic lights are installed and so on. Let the page inform, communicate and explain many public policy announcements. At the moment the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), is one such policy that has been received with mixed reactions. The government through the page can make the nation understand its mechanism and most importantly the importance.

As long as you are not biased, the setting up of the Facebook page by the president is a good and strategic move to get closer to the youth, the majority voters last time out. While some sections of society are not happy that the president has never called a press conference since assuming office hence should not interact with anyone on the internet, it is important to note that it is impossible for the president to entirely run the Facebook page. This page is not entirely for interaction or question and answer as a press conference would have aspects of questions and answers.

The president himself may not be directly interacting with his audience but just authorizing messages that go online. But because these messages are passed to him for authorization before going online it is still good enough. The bottom line is that the page is there mainly for PR purposes and maybe…and just maybe… to keep a foot on the ground with the people so as to read the mood in the country regarding various issues. If George Orwell had written the book Animal Farm in the era of Facebook, Squealer would have had a bigger role than the book portrays already.