Social networking sites in Kuwait .. wealth and settling accounts

Mahmoud Kafrawi - Kuwait

Day after day, the presence of social networking sites in the life of the Kuwaiti citizen is increasing, which shows clearly that Kuwait ranks first in the Gulf in the number of accounts on those sites, both citizens and residents of Kuwait.

According to previous statistics published by the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas, there are three million Facebook users in the country, 108 million users of Instagram, in addition to 1.68 million users of Twitter, and 1.68 in Snapchat.

This proliferation and strong presence on the sites of communication was an extended arena to achieve different objectives; begin to exploit for the rapid richness, as in the case of "fascencities" who specialize in advertising brands and supplements on those sites, through accounts aimed at political gain or moral assassination of personalities Some accounts can move and control public opinion by launching tags and paying hundreds of other accounts, both real and fake.

Kuwait has 350 sites and services licensed by the state, as opposed to dozens of unlicensed sites or services or fake accounts, or those issued from outside Kuwait.

The increasing role of social networking sites in the country is attributed to the President of the Electronic Media Federation Faisal Al-Sawagh to become a parallel world in every sense of the word, as a result of the increasing interest in using it to convey news and information more quickly and more interaction, which explains the high number of users.

In this situation, the income of some electronic accounts or pages owned by social media celebrities sometimes outweighs the achievements of some of the oldest local newspapers in advertising, thanks to the number of followers, and advertisers' preference for those accounts.

Information machine
The parliamentary election season represents the peak of the use of this media machine, the harvesting season for those responsible for it, the price of one tweet in some accounts or news services during the 2016 National Assembly elections exceeded 1,000 Kuwaiti dinars (US $ 303,000), and it withdrew much of the rug that remained in the paper press. Dominated for decades.

While its dominance has been confirmed, some news services and websites have been used efficiently to settle personal and political accounts. Some officials and ministers have even been blackmailed, according to a number of local newspapers recently, and investigations into related cases have revealed a serious deviation from their role. Which prompted deputies in the National Assembly more than once to raise the matter and talk about the relationship of some influential accounts and certain websites.

The opening of the current session of the Council witnessed the warning of the largest authority in the country represented in the Amir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah from the deviation of social media, which he described in his speech as "shovels to destroy and tear the national unity and harm the reputation and dignity of the people and their symptoms," and called for action Urgent to face that serious phenomenon.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera Net, Al-Sawagh looks at the warning issued by the Amir that it stems from a sense of responsibility towards preserving the social component.

The professor of electronic media at Kuwait University, Mohammed Daifallah Al-Otaibi, identifies the most prominent aspects of the deviation, including infringement of persons and the prevalence of personal interest to the public, and the use of those accounts in favor of one party or political stream at the expense of another.

Media Code of Conduct
Al-Otaibi believes that this deviation is a reality felt by all, which necessitates specialists to find a fixed definition to clarify the concept of freedom and what it means, so that the media can deal in the light of it, which can be called a code of honor for electronic media based on the freedom of others, and stay away from Criticism of people, focus on criticism of actions and actions.

Al-Otaibi considers the existence of this context as the first to impose restrictions on practices because they will inevitably be circumvented in several ways, including the opening of the account from outside Kuwait, while the goal of the Charter to create self-censorship by the owners of newspapers and sites themselves.

The state of lawlessness that family sociology professor Siham al-Qabandi sees is not limited to Kuwait, but is one of the secretions of the global technological revolution.

Al-Qabandi believes that the problem in Islamic societies, including Kuwait, lies in the penetration of social media through the cultural and values ​​framework, which has been adhered to over the years, pointing out that the freedom afforded by that revolution ensured everyone to choose his platform, and the solution lies in her view And activating the role of educational institutions, and educating individuals to face any resulting impunity.