Drinking and driving are acceptable – well, it, and smoking on planes, once was. Yet, as society evolves, so, too, does what society deems acceptable. But what happens when society goes too far? Can society go too far, or are the masses always ‘right’? What does ‘right’ even mean?
Wayne van Zijl CA(SA) Associate Professor at School of Accountancy WITS
As accountants, we are familiar with socially constructed ‘facts’ – where concepts as simple as cost and as complex as those related to share-based payments are examples. Accountants construct generally accepted economic ‘facts’ to reduce complex economic phenomena into relevant information that faithfully represents the underlying transactions and events. The resultant information is useful to users for a variety of purposes. Social media is another system for providing information. But is that information relevant and a faithful representation of what it purports to represent?
There are two issues to think about. Firstly, what general society deems legitimate changes over time, and rightly so. Drinking and driving were once okay but aren’t anymore. But are all the changes for the better? Or, by definition, is what general society deems acceptable via social media, really acceptable? These are the socially constructed ‘facts’ I’m comparing with accounting.
Secondly, social media allows anyone and everyone to make statements. But whether those are facts or credible opinions should not be taken at face value. It is too easy for people to write without thinking or, on the contrary, to think very hard about how to target us and deliver content specially curated to influence our thinking. In our words, it does not faithfully represent the underlying and may cause our personal value statements to become imbalanced with consequential bad decisions and actions.
So, what should we do? Like accounting, I suggest we develop a Conceptual Framework to help us deal with modern society and its technologies. We are the defined users, and the objective is to help us discern objective facts from subjective ones and distinguish faithful representations from ingenuine ones. The fundamental qualitative characteristics are relevance and faithful representation, while comparability, verifiability, ethical values and logical coherence are our enhancing characteristics.
Application: is the information relevant to you? If not, consider disengaging. Do you believe the information to be a faithful representation of what it purports to represent? Is it sponsored? Is it only spread on certain platforms? These may be useful indicators. Next, how does the information compare with other sources, and can you verify it independently of the social media source? Does it align with your personal ethical code and, lastly, is the argument logical and coherent with no contradictions or purposeful omissions?
What is your Conceptual Framework?
Should your Conceptual Framework differentiate fact from fiction, opinion from truth, and know when to get involved and when to let it be?
Perhaps an adaptation of AA’s serenity prayer may be useful to remember in our socially constructed world filled with social media: ‘Grant me the serenity to accept objective truths, the courage to think for myself about subjective truths, and the wisdom to know the difference.’
