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Journalism of Courage
With Twitter and Facebook high on the controversy quotient in India ever since the Assam violence started,it did not take the political class long to jump on the bandwagon – first with the government trying to ban the vicious flow of hate on the social networking sites and then others actually protesting the Centre’s role in cracking down on these foreign websites.
In the latter category is Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi,who has expressed his anger at the Central govt’s clampdown actions by actually removing his photo from his page and instead uploading a black picture.
His expression of protest is equal to the black armband many groups and individuals use to express protest or in respect of people who have passed away.
Narendra Modi thereafter tweeted: “As a common man,I join protest against crackdown on freedom of speech! Have changed my DP.”
He added: “Sabko Sanmati De Bhagwan.”
For good measure he added ‘#GOIBlocks’,which has been trending for the last 24 hours in which Twitter users have been criticising the govt for asking Twitter to block hundreds of URLs and Twitter handles in the name of curbing hate content that instigated violence amongst communities – causing one of the biggest movements of people across the country ever seen (referred to by most as an exodus when people from northeast were forced to head back to their home state under threat of imminent violence).
While some of the content has flowed through to India via Pakistan,there are reports indicating that much of the content is home grown.
Riding on the wave of protest created by the surfers,Narendra Modi accused the government of curbing the people’s right to freedom of speech under the guise of cracking down on hate mongers.
Today,Twitter succumbed to govt pressure in a small way and said that it had deleted some fake accounts those about the PMO. For the rest it has expressed its inability or difficulty in curbing the flow of information on its site.
