Looking back at 2020 | ‘Live’-ing through the pandemic

Social media played a dominant role in our lives well before March 2020, but the pandemic year highlighted the growth of one of Facebook’s most ground-breaking features in the country.

Driven to their homes, people used social media to stay connected with friends and family members, making lockdown a tad more bearable. The COVID-19 pandemic also brought people closer to the phenomenon of Facebook Live on their mobile and computer screens.

On 5 August 2015, Facebook launched Live on a limited basis to celebrities with a verified page, starting with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. The feature went on to be a big hit, with users from around the world. While slow to pick up locally, the feature grew in the last years with the 2017 elections and the 2019 political crisis that shook the nation.

But even without cataclysmic events dictating the agenda, Facebook Live and all other social media apps with a livestreaming feature gave rise to a new army of ‘influencers’ and Z-list celebrities whose gift of the gab (and big mouths) propelled them to centre-stage.

One of them was Marsa resident Adrian Zammit, aka ‘Bebbuxu’, who unsuccessfully contested the Marsa local elections as an independent. Since then, he has broadcast a Facebook livestream on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays where he takes phone-calls while getting ready to eat unthinkable proportions of meat straight from the frying pan. With his trusty bulldog Goffy by his side, the outspoken construction worker waxes lyrical about local issues while ‘dining’ and serving his furry mate generous helpings from his plate. Goaded by callers to talk about all issues – abortion, racism, wages... – Zammit has become a fixture on the social media roster of entertainers.

Many others have taken note, such as Annabelle Zammit’s ‘Belle Liveshows’ or Terry Muscat’s ‘Zija TT’. Previously, Terry Muscat was simply known as one the Nationalist Party’s most ardent supporters in the diehard Labour stronghold of Bormla. Facebook Live turned a person only seen on the margins of partisan events, into a celebrity of sorts.

Starting off from the comfort of their own home, this new breed of wannabe influencers (ultimately their brands are problematic and not attractive enough for the world of commerce) is taking the social media world by storm, creating a loyal following. Their influence has become so widespread that tabloid news portals like Stradarjali and Gwida  regularly feature inconsequential reports on their most inane of suggestions.

Facebook Live has been crucial for government entities, parties and politicians, as well as the press, to discharge their duties and broadcast events. Unfortunately, the feature has also served as a platform for far-right groups and acolytes who in the COVID-19 pandemic were even eager to prop themselves up as vaccine sceptics. Anti-immigrant firebrand Anton Cutajar is one keen user of Facebook Live, with his shouty, angry-white-man outbursts on immigration, the Nationalist opposition and civil society activists, animal liberationists and critics in the press, being frequent targets. Cutajar picketed the Black Lives Matter demonstration in February 2020 and has used his platform to prop up protagonists inside Labour’s right-wing, such as Neville Gafà – as well as far-right sympathisers like Raymond Ambrogio, and a regular coterie of Moviment Patriotti hangers-on. With sweeping statements and misinformation building false narratives on foreigners in the country, the use of Facebook Live allows these people to bypass traditional restrictions on mainstream broadcasters so as not to be challenged, or to issue ‘edicts’ against journalists and media houses for calling out their views.

The phenomenon will only continue to grow as viewership increases and advertisers step in. The introduction of the feature into other social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter will also mean that as users get more accustomed to it, more effort will be put into producing content via livestreaming.