Moulding Law and Justice Through New Media

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Shikhar Gaur

L-CA-0005-SOCIOLOGY II-MS. DEBLINA DEY BALLB(Hons.) 2019 SECTION-D

 Although Law and Justice have always been influenced in their judgements through
various outside forces and factors but never before we have seen such a great moulding of law
with the advent of ‘New Media’. The social media has become a platform which has made it
possible to bring together masses of people with same ideas in not much time and influence the
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legal system as well as the political structures. With large number of people connecting with
the Internet each day it becomes even more important to understand it’s both negative and
positive impact on society, law and justice and how it can be misused if its control gets in
wrong hands.

The power of social media or new media as people like to call it is first evident by the
#MeToo movement started by Tarana Burke. Never before a movement for women’s right rose
so fastidiously that the perpetrators of crimes against women were given swift justice. Which
is evident from the fact that many models and actors came out with their stories of sexual
harassment and rape by Harvey Weinstein. He was swiftly removed from Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences and Hollywood boycotted him from producing their movies ever
again. Kevin Spacey was also removed by Netflix from the famous show ‘House of Cards’ just
because of allegations through this movement. This movement helped women to come out in
the open and the men in power for the first time were challenged. Though this movement was
really effective in its initial stages and it really helped women from the lower strata of society
to come out but as we can see that in recent times this movement was capitalised by models
and actresses to accuse innocent men of sexual misconduct which resulted in destruction of
their careers. Then also this movement is a great spectacle of the sheer power of this ‘New
Media’ or social media.

Social Media as we can see in recent times has become home to many fake news which
is being peddled to create upheaval in the society by perpetrators whose vested interests gets
fulfilled through these upheavals. As I have stated above that this new form of media has far
reaching approach and is very efficient to get out information in no time. We can see that how
this media peddles fake news through the example of SC/ST Act dilution case. It was incredible
to see that as soon as the judgement was given on March 20, 2018 by Justices A.K Goel and
U.U Lalith that the arrest of an accused under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes
(Prevention of Atrocities) Act should be made after preliminary enquiry. The social media was
doing the rounds that it was the Bhartiya Janata Party led Government which was responsible
for this dilution of the act and the government was against the Dalits. This news led to
widespread protests across the country which resulted in clashes between upper caste and lower
caste and costed 9 lives. In various places ‘Bharat Bandh’ was announced.

This was used by many Dalit political parties to do their politics against the ruling
government and capitalise on it. Due to this the government had to take immediate steps before Gaur | 3
the situation escalated to reverse the decision of the Supreme Court. But one peculiar thing
about this protest was that this protest was only carried in states in which there is a BJP or NDA
led government such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, etc, but not in the state of
Punjab which has the highest percentage of Schedule Castes (almost 35 %) led by Congress
government. So, this shows that Social media can be used to mould the law very easily. This
also shows that social media which is considered to be much freer than the contemporary media
is not so much ‘free media’.

The fake news is not only limited to the above stated case, but social media has also
been the source for various lynching cases. Although lynchings have happened in the past but
during the recent times we have seen how fake news through social media platforms such as
WhatsApp and Facebook about child lifters and cow slaughter has resulted in death of many
innocent people. On July 1, 2018 five people were killed by a mob due to suspicion of them
being child lifters which was circulated through WhatsApp. There are various cases of similar
lynchings. Sometimes these news are even true but this platform has eased the way for Mob
justice. Due to these cases, recently WhatsApp had to publish guidelines for forwarding
message through its platform.

The social media platform is not entirely bad, there are also many benefits of this
platform. This platform has helped the electorate to make informed decision about their choices
in elections as now we can see that many parties have joined twitter and other sites through
which these different parties give information about what they have done for the people and
what they will do for them. This media also helps in disseminating information about the reality
of these promises. It has only made the electoral procedure of India more democratic as it is
much freer than the contemporary media. This media also enables the government to relay
about its different policies and programmes started by it. We can also see that through social
media normal people are able to tell its problem to the people in power easily and these
problems reaches to such a large number of people that people in power are not able to ignore
them and they have to act. With this platform no political leader can get away from saying
anything in the public sphere.
 Next, we move on to the case of Sabarimala Temple pertaining to not allowing women
between 10-50 years of age not being allowed to enter the temple supposedly because they are
of menstruating age. But this was not the case as had been made by feminist’s spin-masters.
This proposition of theirs was busted with the help of social media. The intellectuals who have
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studied about this temple were able put forward their views to a large number of people with
this platform. The judgement given by court to allow women entry into temple on November
17, 2018 created an uproar in the media. Due to this uproar against the verdict, the people really
got to know the nature of the deity and restriction of women of ages 10-50 is not because of
menstruation. Had this medium not been there the Communist government in Kerala would
have made sure women had entered the temple and the sanctity of the temple would have been
destroyed. Through this case we can see that social media was able to bring for the first time
the people of both north and south India together on an issue.

Next, we see how social media, or this new media has really transformed the thinking
of the society and the supreme court of India is through the Lesbian Gay Bi-sexual Transgender
(LGBT) community movement. We could see how this movement used social media platform
of YouTube to garner support for their movement. Many YouTube channels like TvfPlay and
Timeliners, etc, have made many videos on this platform which has really sensitized the society
about the thus LGBTQ community and have successfully tried to remove the taboo associated
with this community from at least the urban society of India. Even on Netflix a popular series
‘Sacred Games’ had a character of transgender named ‘Kuku’ which made us understand that
this community also has feelings. This feeling of change instilled in the society by the social
media has pushed the Supreme Court of India to reverse the decision of Delhi High Court. So,
because of this pressure the Supreme Court had no option but to de-criminalize Section-377 on
September 6, 2018.

Next, I would like to talk about how this media can also be proved to be very dangerous
for our political as well as legal structures. The Cambridge Analytica-Facebook Scandal is one
such example of how social media is proving to be very dangerous for our privacy. This scandal
came out in the open in early-2018. In this scandal Facebook was supplying data of the users
and this data was used by Cambridge Analytica to understand the political preferences of the
users and influence them towards voting a particular political party in elections. When the news
of this scandal came out, the news also came out that the grand old party of India has also
approached this organisation to help influence elections. The Russian government also used
social media to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections with the goal of harming the
campaign of Hillary Clinton and boosting the campaign of Donald John Trump. They first
created hundreds of social media accounts impersonating Americans supporting Trump
through Internet Research Agency based in Saint Petersburg. Second, they used hackers
associated with Russian military intelligence service to penetrate computers of different
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committees of the Democrats.

India is also not averse to attacking by foreign powers through social media. We are
witnessing a civil unrest in north east over the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016. According
to this bill Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, Buddhists and Christians who belong to neighbouring Islamic
countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan and are persecuted will be given citizenship
of India without any much difficult procedures. This bill will also give citizenship to illegal
immigrants belonging to upper mentioned communities. As we all know that there is already
problem posed by Bangladeshi immigrants in north-east so that’s why they are protesting the
bill. But recently the news in the Intelligence Bureau (IB) is going on that as these protests are
simultaneous or in quick succession, they are seeing a sinister plot in this. They appear to be
spontaneous but are well planned and are conducted by well-funded organizations and are
triggered mainly by social media. These activists have used the social media very intelligently
by being under the radar and remain anonymous to organise these mass protest and agitations.
What led to these suspicions was ‘Bye-Bye India, Welcome China’ posters in Mizoram
agitations.

So, in all social media or this ‘new media’ as we can see through various cases how it
is affecting our political as well as legal structures. We can see in many cases that this media
is not so free as it is considered to be, it might be comparatively freer than contemporary media.
Even though this media is very beneficial for any democratic society as it makes us more aware
about the various things going on in the society, but it is still very dangerous because this media
runs on data and data can be used by many mischievous elements to disrupt our society as we
can see in the case of north-east. What this media needs are stricter laws to govern it so it can’t
be used to manipulate the society.
 References
1. Pipyrou, Stavroula. “#MeToo is little more than mob rule // vs //#MeToo is a
legitimate form of social justice.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 8 no.3
(2018): 415–419. Gaur | 6

2. Dutta, Prabhash K. “16 lynchings in 2 months. Is social media the new serial killer?” India
Today, July 2, 2018.

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/16-lynchings-in-2-months-is-social-media-the-new-
serial-killer-1275182-2018-07-02

3. Mazumdar, Jaideep. “The Chinese Hand Is Behind Recent Unrest in Northeast India.”
#Swarajya, March 1, 2019.

https://swarajyamag.com/politics/the-chinese-hand-is-behind-recent-unrest-in-northeast-india

4. Srinivasan, Rajeev. “The Empire Strikes Back.” #Swarajya, January 2019. Vol. 62,
Issue 12.