Those who dismissed Harold Lasswell’s magic bullet theory of mass communication perhaps never reckoned with the Twitter generation.
That theory, in ascendancy around the World War years (World War 1: 1914-1918; World War 2: 1939-1945), assumed that the mass media message was a “bullet” – and such a magic one that when “shot”, it would just “pierce” the mass audience, who then would sway, willy-nilly, to its magical tenor. Sheer magic, there!
But other theories would challenge this assumption; and insist the audience indeed filters mass media messages through some physiological, psychological and indeed socio-cultural screens before reacting one way or the other — without prejudice, of course, to the well and truly hare-brained, who are in the micro-minority.
The Twitter mob goes against this grain. That, however, is where many of Nigeria’s so-called “youths” luxuriate. There, with a fetid zone of caustic abuse and free insults, inanities are treasured business. That was the case at the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) parley in Lagos, to which many presidential candidates headed to sell their programmes.
Kashim Shettima, the APC vice-presidential candidate, was there to sell his joint ticket with Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. He stuck to facts and verifiable figures: voters should judge the duo on the strength of their joint gubernatorial achievements (Shettima: Borno, from 2011-2019; Tinubu: Lagos, from 1999-2007).
Both featured at two different times from Nigeria’s democratic journey from 1999: Tinubu, at the very beginning when he set a Lagos template that continues to be a national reference. Shettima, at a very difficult time for Borno and its Boko Haram crisis. Yet, Shettima pointed to hard-to-beat achievements in both states, urging the voter to judge by candidates’ past records, and not by some fanciful rhetoric of colourful lies.
You would have thought such a challenge would draw traction to the past records of rival tickets, with the expected clash of facts and figures opening a sane path to voter wisdom — but no!
What interested the Twitter mob was how Shettima dressed: the sneakers he wore, how he buttoned his suit and his sartorial gait! Like water running over smooth stones, whatever Shettima said had absolutely no impact on these “youths”!
You would have expected a more serious-minded commune to shun the invite to inanities. But these millennial mob just needed a half — no, a quarter — invite to latch on to such inanities and yammer away!
Yet tomorrow, after making a bad choice, the same crowd would drone and cry and screech, lamenting how things were ringed against them!
Nigerian youths must cultivate the culture of solid introspection, not turning mere tech into some self-corrupting opioids, to merrily display their full emptiness. If you doubt, check their social media exploits, with Twitter as prized handle.
It’s a dreary window into happy self-retardation. No youth progresses with such happy liability.