MUGWE: Understanding Riggy G through cocktail party effect

 

Imagine you are at a party. Loud music is playing. Glasses are clinking. Champagne bottles are popping. Drink bubbles are fizzling. DJ is scratching the vinyl. And dozens of conversations are driving up the decibel levels. Yet amidst all these distractions, you can still zero in on the one conversation you want to hear.

How is this even possible?

In 1953 a British psychologist called Collin Cherry began to study the situation of air traffic controllers who received intermixed messages from different pilots over loudspeakers in the control tower. What interested him is how the traffic controllers were able to isolate several streams of incoming information simultaneously sent from arriving and departing planes which were relayed to them by radio and received through headphones. The controllers then had to make quick decisions based on that information.

Cherry decided to conduct an experiment. In the first, he played back two different messages voiced by the same person through both ears of a set of headphones. He then asked the participants to write down one of the messages. After some effort and concentration of what sounded like an incomprehensible babel, the participants were able to eventually separate one of the messages from another.

The real surprise came though in the second experiment. Here, the participants wore special headphones that sent one message into the right ear and the other into the left ear all voiced by the same person. Suddenly, they could separate the messages from each other and even shift their attention between the two.

His conclusion was that humans have an important binaural function to detect one sound in the presence of competing sounds. He named this the cocktail party effect. It refers to the ability of people to focus on a single talker or conversation in a noisy environment. In essence, it’s a form of aural eavesdropping.

The nation has become one big air traffic control room. There are many intermixed messages simultaneously being relayed formally and informally; through social and legacy media; and in print and verbal construction. The messages vary from high cost of living to high taxation; from high cost of fuel to costly bipartisan talks; from presidential electoral disputes to delimitation of boundaries; from presidential term limits to deployment of policemen in foreign jurisdictions. It just never ends.

Yet in the midst of all this seemingly incomprehensible babel, there is one man whose utterances are reported daily in the media. Riggy G.

A spoon can be used to stir coffee; drink soup; eat food; measure cooking ingredients; or boil heroin. All you see is the spoon. Not what it does.Likewise, Riggy G is many things to many people. That is why he is presidential at the debate podium, and boorish on the political soapbox. He is dexterous. He reads the room well and knows his audience. He epitomises the perfect political pitbull. But all you’ve been made to see, is the Riggy G through the cocktail party effect.

For every five tweets you read and every other headline or sub-heading, a snippet of what he has said blazes the headlines. Whether it be about breaching protocols, Kenyan tigers, losing the fight to coffee cartels, being a son of Mau Mau, or empty coffers, the ‘truthful meen’ is constantly in our headlines.

Begs the question, amidst all the other valuable and salient discourses the Deputy President delivers, why do we choose to focus on these derisive snippets? Why are we obsessed with doomscrolling Riggy G?

I submit that the social and legacy media is afflicted with the cocktail party effect. They have mastered the art of selectively filtering out any valuable information relayed by the Deputy President, and instead chosen to portray him to the nation and to the world through his snippets. His wisecracks have then been elevated as the main story.

However, the deputy presidential debate in 2022 portrayed a very different orator. Riggy G was composed, articulate, factual and informed. He looked and talked the part. So what is different about today’s Riggy G?

In political-economy-speak, this portrayal of the Deputy President using the cocktail party effect is known as political hobbyism. This is when we follow politics as a kind of entertainment rather than the actual work of politics. Political hobbyism is to public affairs what watching SportsCenter is to playing football.

We have become political hobbyists. The uncomfortable truth is that we consume news as a hobby and as a way of self-gratifying our own emotional and intellectual needs. We retweet, forward and share the attention-grabbing and sensationalist snippets and memes to feed our mix of endorphins and adrenaline.

We sometimes vote, occasionally sign an online petition and watch political rallies behind the safety of our screens. We obsessively follow the news through the lenses of our polar political affiliations making our politics feel intense and personal. Then we complain and taunt our family, friends and WhatsApp acquaintances.

What we do not realise is that we are prey to the cocktail party effect. Through this the social and legacy media has made it very easy for us to engage shallowly. We’ve deluded ourselves that expressing political opinions online is doing politics. However, real politics is about persuading people to have a discourse and act on the issues that are more efficacious in making a change in our lives and in the world. But this is hard and demanding work.

Indeed, the hours we spend on politics are our pastime. And when the next election cycle comes, we have the same faces back in political spaces. And headlines loom large – same monkeys different forests.

But what the social and legacy media doesn’t seem to realise is that they have lost control of agenda setting. Whether by design or by default, Riggy G has taken over the reins of that agenda.

He has become the tail that wags the dog. He is politically savvy enough to recognise that because of our affliction to the cocktail party effect, we will only be focused on his snippets despite all the other core issues plaguing our country. He is alive to the axiom that there is no such thing as bad publicity. And for a politician, these snippets aid his cause. He is not about to stop anytime soon.

Finally, my unsolicited advice is to Wanjiku. A spoon can be used to stir coffee; drink soup; eat food; measure cooking ingredients; or boil heroin. All you see is the spoon. Not what it does.

Likewise, Riggy G is many things to many people. That is why he is presidential at the debate podium, and boorish on the political soapbox. He is dexterous. He reads the room well and knows his audience. He epitomises the perfect political pitbull. But all you’ve been made to see, is the Riggy G through the cocktail party effect. Now you know.

He that hath ears to hear, let him hear – Matthew 11:15   BY THE STAR