Messaging in Troubled Times

The second wave amplified the lessons of the first. Some were learned. Some were not. Most were forgotten. There might be a shortage of medical supplies & many other things, but information overdose is a reality.

 Earlier, information sources were in the custody of a few then web 2.0 made everyone a ‘seeder & a leacher’ of information online. This democratized information but skewed data-to-noise ratio. There is a certain alienation in digital communication. Not being fact to face, delayed feedback, devoid of non-verbal aspects and easy anonymity are a few of the parts that take the feel away.

 Groups on community messaging services like WhatsApp, following on social media platforms like Instagram & Twitter etc make joining any conversation possible. The urge is understood but not bereft of responsibility. Platforms are full of false info, tangential conclusions and utter noise masking the critical factual data. The ‘Pandemic’ is now accompanied by the ‘Infodemic’.

 In the pandemic, people have been marked, stereotyped, discriminated against, viewed negatively, and suffered status loss due to a perceived contact with a disease. In addition, high levels of stress and anxiety was experienced by people due to significant changes in their day-to-day life, social structures and movements. To top that, information professing helplessness & fear might be a good ploy to sell products or modify offline behaviour, but is certainly not aligned to a nationally beneficial perspective.

 Did we get hit again? Yes! Is someone at fault? Yes! But purely in the realm of information management, the most important factor is to empower the people with the right information. Sadly, it is complex to be simple.

 Effective communication is proactive, polite, imaginative, innovative, creative, constructive, professional, progressive, energetic, enabling, transparent and technology-friendly. However, there are multiple factors playing a key role in accepting information, like social and cultural characteristics. Gender, generational contrasts, language inclinations, strict convictions, religious beliefs, and varying literacy influence the action of the masses. To package information in a way that it presents the needed facts, in time & conveyed in a way that it gets accepted and acted upon is the big win. This is the integral job of all the official Twitter handles, Facebook pages etc and they need to be manned by specialists who can keep up with technology & calamity.

 Information on oxygen shortage clutters information on oxygen availability. It would be prudent to have a setup informing the reality of medical support availability and even availability of first-care information on how to approach symptoms. Today, it is crowdsourcing that is the real source of info, a simple analytic tool can converge feeds, mine info and make user data available.

 Communicating responsibly is everyone’s job. Highlighting ills is important but so is selling hope. And somewhere in between lies the need of plain information away from all the padding of politics, marketing, greed & sometimes just habits. Crisis response communication setups are the need of the hour. They need not necessarily be government-run. The setup will encompass manpower, hardware, technology and cross-departmental chain-linking. Private players can add value, incorporate innovation & be commercially viable for long-term sustenance & growth. Data integrity & security can always be imposed based on law-of-the-land info governance.

 Deaths due to covid are human statistics & not just numbers. The narrative controls have blurred all responsibilities. From the originators, the spreaders, the faulty planners & opportunity grabbers to everyone who has been an accomplice in “forwarded as received” acts. The need for a specialist information dissemination mechanism is as critical as the spread of the virus.

Hope feels that this pandemic will be over soon, but it might not be our last. There are many things that we need to get right, information management is vital as it will always be the common thread, whatever the next wave or type of calamity be.