Good morning! It is natural for people to like to be praised. If, however, we surround ourselves with flatterers, it is only a matter of time before our perception of reality will lose touch with reality and shake us to the bottom. It seems to me that former independence supporters are going that way.
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What is Echo Room and how does it destroy opposition?
As soon as someone starts hunting witches and looking for moles, and sees a traitor and an enemy in every dissonant tone, you can be sure that that someone is on a career downslide. Organizations that fall into this paranoid culture are at risk of rapid disintegration and failure.
An echo room is a room of echoes. In the media sphere, these rooms are created when certain elites think it is a good idea to isolate a part of the public and pump their truth in that isolated virtual information echo room, thus strengthening their party and sympathizer army.
Those rooms with us are the most visible on Twitter and Viber groups. So, you have a bunch of real and fake accounts on Twitter that retweet and spread party narratives, and thus try to artificially expand them.
Although the appearance of widespread support is created, the real truth is that in this way already convinced people are patting themselves on the back and praising each other and raising them to the sky. After some time, confirmation bias is created and that part of the public unconsciously and automatically sifts through information and chooses those that serve to petrify their attitudes and convictions. Over time, this public begins to become smaller and further away from reality.
All parties deal with these things. This is most often done by those in power, because in addition to the support they provide through the attractiveness of their narratives, they also rely on coercion and the fear that supporters, sympathizers and activists feel due to the potential loss of privileges.
No one likes to be criticized, but smart people see in dispassionate criticism an opportunity to provide themselves with additional support and profit by addressing those criticisms.
The biggest problem with the Montenegrin opposition is that it still lives in the conviction that it is in power and that it can automatically dictate topics and narratives. And the problem is that it has acquired the instinct that someone is still afraid of it, so when it can’t keep a medium on a tight leash, it thinks it can easily destroy you and make one of its own – the one that will be obedient and won’t do anything wrong or rebel, and which will exclusively carry out the party’s propaganda activity.
And what usually happens? A lot of money goes into such a project that no one will watch. Why? Because even party members don’t read party bulletins. People are not interested in watching “forums” where everyone agrees, and where there is no pluralism.
This information sheepfold naturally narrows over time. Paranoia sets in and you see enemies in everyone. Then it makes the sheepfold even narrower, and the most agile sheep slowly start to jump out of it. In the end, you are left alone with the clumsiest ones who cannot jump the fence. As the space becomes more and more narrow, they start to push each other out and there is a fight and chaos in that minimal narrowed space.
The former elites do not realize that their time has passed. I am referring to both the former government and the former opposition. Civil government and the opposition. If we do not become aware and realize that we are on the way to lose Montenegro, if we focus on ourselves and our spite and our small particular interests, then perhaps we deserve everything that is happening to us.
That’s it for today. We wish you a pleasant rest of the day.
Kind regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM analyst and columnist
(The opinions and views of the columnist are not necessarily those of the CdM editorial staff)