TO POST OR NOT TO POST

While social media has facilitated people's right of expressing their opinions on different issues, at times users' personal opinions, or extreme views on issues  like sexism, racism, religion, politics, even cricket, also stir controversy leading to a conflict. As Bangladesh has made a substantial advancement in ICT access in the last few years, the increase of online hate speech, cyber bullying and misuse of personal information and pictures have left many of our social media users paranoid, to say the least.

"Freedom without responsibility is a disaster," comments Shafiul Alam Bhuiyan, founder chair of the Department of Television and Film Studies, University of Dhaka. "One of the major problems with social media is that, unlike print media and television it does not have any gatekeeper to filter and select the posts making the users fully liable of their expressed views," says Bhuiyan.

"When any of our national cricketers fail to perform well in a tournament, we see the rise of unhealthy criticism more on social media than any national daily," says Rezwan Adnan, a blogger and cricket fan.  "Our social media users, including different pages and groups, prodigiously make negative and humiliating posts on their online profiles which are scrolled, scrutinised and shared by thousand others," he continues. "We often fail to identify the fact that those demeaning opinions and memes are visible to every one including the victim and his family, which might affect his mental health, future performance and personal relationships," he says.

Photos: Kazi Tahsin Agaz Apurbo

For a better online environment, it is important to find the balance between what to post or what not to post. On the users part it is important to reflect the same morality and common sense in the virtual platform that they would have applied in real world issues while practicing their freedom of expression.

"Only online control laws and regulation cannot make social media a better platform for expression," says Bhuiyan. "Inclusion of different aspects of freedom of expression in our education system could be considered one way to act responsibly on the social media."

On the other hand, our government needs to be more flexible to let its citizen practice their democratic right of expressing their views digitally.

Photos: Kazi Tahsin Agaz Apurbo

"With the increase of connectivity and electronic transactions most South Asian countries including Bangladesh, India and Nepal have their own ICT laws," informs Tahmina Rahman, director, Article 19.

"They primarily facilitate e-commerce, however almost all of them have penalised expressions relating to decency and morality, those that hurt the image of the state, persons and are hurtful to religious sentiments," she continues.  

"This is deeply problematic as these laws neither provide any guidance as to what constitutes these grounds nor do they contain the protections afforded in other laws of the land  for these offenses, leaving it widely open to arbitrary application."  

This trend of arbitrary use promotes a culture of fear and shrinks the space for online expression, tacitly forcing online activists, users, and bloggers to resort to self-censorship when expressing their opinions, believes Tahmina Rahman.

Laws and legislations should encourage us to use electronic media as a platform to disseminate information and invoke healthy debates on different issues, not the other way around.

Let's hope for a digital Bangladesh where we can make proper use of a digital platform without being in  constant fear of getting punished or threatened.