Immigration tensions stoked by ‘information confusion’ crisis

Africa Day was commemorated in May, just as tensions regarding immigration flared up across South Africa. The issues igniting the discontent are not new, but the way in which they are engaged, packaged and amplified mirror the times we live in.

In an era of algorithms that are linked to a business model of mass distribution and even reward high frequency rather than substance of engagements, the risk of conflation of issues loomed large.

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The rising volume of discontent capitalises on the new instruments of communication that now define how we engage, with platforms like X and TikTok, and their model of replicating open community squares.

These are materially different from old models of information sharing and dissemination – which had some filters that mitigated the obvious risk of information, misinformation and disinformation being distilled into a vortex of intersection where the distinction becomes difficult.

Traditional media channels, which have been struggling against the headwinds of the impact of social media channels and alternative information sources for a long time, continue to struggle to find a business model that offers both the rigour of old practices and the agility of new competition.

Accountability

The critical role of media channels in serving as a source of information for the general public requires some standards of accountability that will ensure fairness and some baseline standards of practice in what they cover and how they cover it.

The relevance of this is simply that if something goes wrong – as it often does – affected parties need to have some recourse that will mitigate against the reputational, social and professional fallout associated with wrong information being distributed en masse.

The problem with the accountability channels is that they are applicable to those who regard themselves as traditional media and believe that participating in such forum is good for their own checks and balances and for the industry at large.

Such channels require resources in order to ensure the quality of their work is maintained.

As part of the mission to balance the books, they have sometimes implemented paywalls which address the financial-demands issue but can also limit the ability of audiences to access the content when they cannot or prefer not to pay past the paywalls.

This results in a dilemma where the content generated is accessible to a limited audience and in the ensuing gap, unregulated alternatives fill up the space.

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Those media institutions that practice journalism as generally understood, but who opt out of accountability structures, then operate from an accountability vacuum that forces those who take issue with a particular story to approach the courts in order to get some recourse.

Non-accountability

There is also a growing sector of individuals and channels like blogs that share none of the features of traditional media and whose only parallel is that they too are crafting and disseminating information to wide audiences.

The key difference is that they are able to do so without implementing some of the paywalls that traditional media outlets have resorted to just in order to balance the books.

This means that mass distribution is possible and direct accountability non-existent.

When it comes to issues as delicate and polarising as the issue of migration and immigration, the risk posed by conflated narratives and false assertions has potentially dire consequences.

What we know …

There is no doubt that South Africa’s economic profile and geographic location are a factor in the migration patterns we see.

There is no doubt that our authorities have not covered themselves in glory in dealing with the security of borders and the administration of the various processes that collectively impact the status of citizens that are within the borders of the country at any point in time.

There is no doubt that South Africa has its own economic and unemployment problems and that some people still think it offers better prospects than other economies that are also struggling.

The problem lies in understanding the scale and prevalence of these issues and figuring out how they must be addressed.

In the absence of clarity and an ability of the state to offer a granular analysis of what the actual state of migration and immigration issues really is, the voices of discontent emerge and real experiences are understood from the position of how loudly they are expressed rather than how prevalent they are.

We have ended up with a few voices, channels and pages able to issue information that sometimes conflicts and doesn’t always give us the clear picture of what needs to be addressed.

When traditional media channels cover these stories without applying any of the rigour and interrogation that is expected from them in order to synthesise between reality and perception, the crisis of information confusion is deepened.

What we need

In this gap the state ought to be taking the lead in capturing the essence of the problem and proposing solutions.

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It should address the real anxieties of communities that feel the burden of the unresolved issues much closer to their doorstep – rather than look to policy positions that trumpet the ideal instead of reflecting the unfolding realities.

The inability to proactively address these longstanding issues has led to a proliferation of groups that insist that the radical answers must be implemented immediately and that 30 June is the deadline for a solution.

It is not that the issues are not known – the worry is that the state’s ability to address them and avoid catastrophe is the great unknown.