A’ Ibom Information Commissioner wants compulsory social media etiquette introduced in schools

Akwa Ibom State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Comrade Ini Ememobong has suggested the introduction of a compulsory course on Social Media Etiquette at all levels of education in Nigeria.

In addition, he made a case for amendment of the Cyber Crimes Act to reflect current challenges on social media as well as mechanisms for the enforcement of its provisions.

He made this proposal while delivering a public lecture on “Social Media and the Quest for Authentic Leadership: The Challenge of Government Information Management at the department of Political Science and Public Administration, Akwa Ibom State University on Friday. He stressed that these measures would train every Social Media user on acceptable norms.

Ememobong argued that such early training, backed up by an understanding of the provisions of the law would further encourage social media users to fact-check every contentious item found online to diminish tension and emotional trauma associated with unverified viral information.

“Finally, more stringent community rules should be engaged by the different platforms. They should observe to know the different styles that people have used to bypass the existing laws and modify the command in a way that traps the offenders”. He recommended

And compared with the mainstream media which has layers of quality control occasioned by its vertical communication dissemination processes, Ememobong said that social media messages are horizontally disseminated, hence an individual can disseminate to millions of people at the same time.

“With Social Media, the information disseminator does not need any formal training to understand the 5 Ws and H of news writing or the need for fact-checking or balancing. The person just fires a post and the rest is left for comments, likes retweets from people who may not bother to check the veracity or otherwise of the story”. He said

The Akwa Ibom Chief information manager said such lack of control of the social media space has put the contemporary information managers in a fix on how to manage the information about the government and his principal, especially in Africa where governance is designed to be undertaken behind the prying eyes of the citizen.

In his words, “The contemporary information manager is at a loss as to where the attack will come, his gatekeeping capacity is stretched to its limits. While he may be monitoring Facebook, the attack may surface on Instagram or Twitter and begins to trend in less than two hours.

“The narrative or images may be doctored to suit the aim of the poster and no amount of explanation, including posting the original images can help”.

On how to survive the rough information management terrain, the Commissioner advised contemporary information managers to expand their toolkit, especially in the area of Public Relations where such managers must very early on, try to build goodwill for their principal and themselves with the conscious that bad weathers may surface along the line.

“The goodwill must be huge in size and large in the coverage area so that when scandals and crises hit, the toll is not too much for the principal not to bounce back.

“The media manager must refuse the undertaker role in governance, where he is only called in when death has occurred. He must be invited or pushed to be invited into the decision-making process, where he can offer useful advice that can prevent a crisis from happening at the first instance.

“He must prepare his crisis communication disposition early on and intermittently simulate it. From my experience, crises are inevitable, which is why PR experts must prepare well ahead for it”. He advised

Earlier, the Vice Chancellor of the University, Prof. Nse Essien applauded the idea of a public lecture on such a topic, especially at a time when the country is wearing an unfavorable mood.

Prof Essien expressed optimism that the deliberations would add to the national discourse, especially in charting a course for a better approach to leadership and information management in Nigeria.

Acting Head of the Department of Public Administration, AKSU, and Organizer of the Public Lecture, Dr. Imo Ita, in his tone-setting said the lecture was organized with the aim of transforming lives within and outside the University community.