According to my relate observation
and conversation with my comrades I discovered that in written all lives matter,
but in reality not all lives matter and this is self-explainable through recent
sad events that shocked the world and claimed many lives. Above all, the relate
French terrorism attacks attracted a lot of media coverage to an extend of
Facebook, the world’s leading social media creating a program that enabled its
users to show solidarity towards terror victims by putting the French flag as a
profile picture which is different to what is done to show solidarity to people
losing they lives in Africa or Mideast Syria. I believe at this moment many are
wondering why Facebook does not really care and I will explain in the following
sub title WHY.
WHY
Firstly it is important to
understand that Facebook is a business whose main agenda is to serve its many
users, but to issues relating to terror attacks and coverage, I believe face
book’s board of directors used two concepts to choose what to cover:
1.
The
majority wins concept:
Please observe
that this ‘majority wins concept’
did not apply to the board of directors but applied to its users in a way I
will explain. France has a population of 66 million people and approximately 22
million Facebook users compared to Nigeria’s population of 173 million and only
6 million users and the same applies to Syria. Therefore, Facebook’s board of
directors saw it fit to give coverage to the French crisis due to its many
users because it had to protect its interest. Business
first
2. The ‘where your treasure is, that’s where
your heart is’ concept:
This is an extract
from a religion scripture that most of us are familiar with and yes the Facebook
board of directors used this concept on their choice of coverage. The directors
understood that they ‘treasures’ are and will expand more in France and
definitely they move payed off because by 2020 the number of users will
increase drastically from 22 million to 30 million users compared to Nigeria’s
stagnant 6 million users which may increase to 6.5 or 7 million users by 2020.
In today’s world and business, remember statistics
really matter no matter the situation statistics
really matter and I believe the directors had to protect the interest of
users using statistics.
NAME OF COUNTRY
|
GENERAL POPULATION (Million)
|
FACEBOOK USERS
|
FRANCE
|
66.03
|
22
|
NIGERIA
|
173.6
|
6
|
SYRIA
|
22.85
|
5
|
KENYA
|
44.35
|
1.8
|
And to those Africans who would
want to ask Facebook why it did not react to terrors in Africa and Mideast the
same way it did for France, under the humanitarian
act that advocates for equality despite someone’s race, geographical
location, creed or religion, then it’s important to understand that the
humanitarian act or generally human rights do not apply for countries outside Europe
and American because:
In 1789, the France’s national constituent Assembly signed the Declaration
of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen or Declaration des droitis de l’homme
et du citoyen which advocated for equality before it was restored by Napoleon
in 1802 and re-abolished in 1848, therefore, it is important to observe that
even though France had colonies overseas like Africa, the declaration signed in
1789,1802 and 1848 did not include the natives of the colonies meaning the equalities
or humanitarian did not apply to them. And the same applies to the 1948, United
Nations General Assembly’s Universal
Declaration of Human Right which represents ‘ a common standard of achievement
for all peoples and all nations’, while in the actual sense, Africa was under
the rule of the colonial masters
meaning the human rights did not apply to
them.
Therefore, with the above already out lined, I believe it is
important for us to STOP crying over
‘the humanitarian act card’, because
it does not work and not many understand, hence it is the our duty as Africans
to let the Facebook and the world at large our grief, even when we surely know
that nothing will change, but a statement has been made and will be they
reminder in the near future.
Let us learn to pray
for the world #2016resolution#
written by Sishumba Musanda
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