To communicate clearly without mistreating each other
Excellent reflection of KarimaOliva Bello:
Good morning everyone
#SolidarityYes
#HumanitarianInterventionNo
# CubaSíSOSNo
This campaign that is happening now, has, very likely, the hours counted, but we can do some interesting readings, because the next one is already on the way.
When you follow the behavior that social networks have had in Cuba in recent times and take into account the subjective influence mechanisms that they have been using in the communication war against our country, the SOS, the call for a humanitarian corridor and the rise in tone with the viralization of a claim for humanitarian intervention, they were predictable.
Faced with a scenario of psychological exhaustion conditioned by more than a year of pandemic, material shortages and the rise in the number of infections and deaths, an ideal climate is presented that those who manage the communication war were not going to miss, on the contrary, they are capitalizing on it.
Three patterns of behavior in networks can make the difference in terms of not playing the game of the media war that is being waged to us at the moment, but that we can also transfer to other occasions, since what is really interesting is to create a critical culture for defend Cuba in virtual territory:
1. Do not replicate posts or chains of messages such as SOS, the request for humanitarian intervention, etc., induce the state of opinion that the country is in a situation of crisis of ungovernability and should be intervened. Instead, produce and / or share content that communicates in the opposite direction, now, for example, reinforcing the importance of solidarity and NO to intervention.
2. Avoid sharing expressions of anguish, despair, chaos, prone to generating negative emotional contagion. Instead, promote confrontation guidelines focused on the fulfillment of hygienic-sanitary measures and on providing the support that our population and our state need in the management that it is doing in the face of the pandemic.
3. Stay informed and share all possible information from our media, known social actors and / or secure sources to counter the fake news that will surely be circulating.
Why NO to humanitarian intervention?
The opinion matrix that they are now inducing is the same as all the previous campaigns that we have seen, and we will continue to see it, varying its thematic content, depending on the context: the Cuban state collapsed, government management is inefficient and the system does not work . Arguments against that thesis abound. Paradoxically, one of the most obvious logical arguments is provided by the blocking policy itself, since if they were so sure that our system does not work, they would never have spent a minute of the last sixty years blocking us. But that is another issue.
The least Cuba needs at this time is to be intervened by military troops from international bodies that, with high probability, would be subordinate to the country that is responsible for a large part of the crisis that we are experiencing. You have to think about that scenario.
The campaign for SOS and etcs, whether paid or not, well-intentioned or not, counterrevolutionary or not, is suitable only for the interventionist agenda of the United States, that does not merit much explanation. It's your terms, it's your guideline. Let us ask the peoples of the countries that have intervened humanitarianly in recent years how they have fared with the "freedom" that they have brought and with all that of prosperity and the American dream.
But what to do with the concern and the desire to help then?
Concerns and wishes to contribute that are so legitimate may find other avenues to be realized. Help can be requested and provided through the mechanisms enabled by our institutions, or at least, without undermining the social stability that we need as a country to move forward. It is time to be united, not to be disruptive looking for individual protagonists.
Instead of sabotage, our state needs support, because it is fighting a strong battle for our lives. They are fighting with all the health personnel, medical students, doctors, scientists and they are tired.
In full and intense phase of vaccination, with a blockade on it and a very crude lack of resources, our country has guaranteed PCRs for everyone who has needed it, it has even had a bed for those who have only been suspected of contagion. Holding this whole scheme of coping with the virus and protecting our population for more than a year now!!!! Do we know in how many countries in the world this has been guaranteed? I dare to assure that in very few.
Why NOT tonencourage discouragement and a sense of chaos?
The figures hurt and each person who dies. We are not used to images of corridors with beds and patients. Have we wondered why it impacts us so much when that has been, from the beginning, the day-to-day life of countries, even the so-called first world? Because we had not seen it in Cuba, despite the fact that we have been handling a tense epidemiological situation for more than a year. And that speaks in favor of our system.
Only in the news have we learned that in other places groups of elderly people have died abandoned in care institutions. Or of the dead literally lying in the streets. Or that they have chosen between saving a young person or an older adult. Regrettable events that have not occurred in Cuba.
It does not console the pain of others. But we are not in the circumstances that are manufactured in the media. It is hard what we live, because this virus has been for all countries, for the rich and for the impoverished, whose vulnerable populations have had the worst part, but it is very possible that we are in one of the places in the world where government management has been more committed and effective in saving lives. That is the objective reality, there is no other.
It is enough to look at the figures available to everyone and what has been happening in the United States itself and the rest of the world to realize that in what is being said about the need to intervene in Cuba, there is a great deal of manipulation.
The same figures from our country that frighten us, paradoxically show that our situation is not the most critical, but quite the opposite, without us being able to sin in triumphalism or fail to recognize the seriousness of the moment.
Let them remove the blockade if they want to help. Siege that the last US administration intensified and that the current one is deliberately spending all the time in the world to "review", with slander through, in the midst of a health crisis.
If they do not wish to abandon the double standards of foreign policy towards our country due to known geopolitical and economic interests, etc., at least we are assisted by making the decision not to bank on blatant hypocrisy. And when I say this, I am not thinking about the position of our government, which has always been clear in this regard, I am thinking about our position as citizens, compelled by the circumstances to a responsible civic participation in the scenario of political debate that we are living. What the United States has to do is to remove the blockade, there is no more thought to do about the matter. And with this we are not asking for mercy. It is what we are entitled to.
Meanwhile, let us bet on the channels of international solidarity that have historically been accompanying our people.
Let us thank every person, organization, social movement, government or solidarity group that joins us. Let us support with all those who are giving their best in this difficult hour to win the battle against the pandemic.
A route to become strong subjectively and communicationally speaking......
I see utility in dealing with campaigns instead of serving them, without wearing ourselves out in personal fights, the best strategy is to deconstruct their opinion matrices and position our own content. Come out in front of so much misinformation and media manipulation. Viralize the truths about our reality to flood the virtual territory with them. There are already colleagues from the international left believing the story that there is chaos here because of all the fake news that reaches them.
These campaigns do not take us by surprise. They will continue to occur. This will pass in a few hours, we have no doubt. Others will come. We need to model future media scenarios, each time, to promote our proactive communicational agendas, to contain and neutralize the mechanisms of subjection typical of the communicational war that is being waged on us. But that is already the subject of another analysis.
