By Hunter Freeman
Professional writers have the ability to destroy the world—hard stop.
The Status Quo
Every day, people make decisions based on available information usually sourced from the Internet or social media. Most of the time, these decisions are insignificant: Should you wear a jacket? What drink should you buy at Starbucks? On the grand scale, taking a left to avoid traffic will not detonate the Earth.
Contemporary professional writers play the role of the information middleman.
Businesses and organizations hire them as a buffer between the institution and the audience: to perform upkeep on public appearances, to report the demands of the people, to rally the forces against opposition.
More and more, professional writers are assigned to positions in the public sphere as social media managers, technical communicators, and content editors. At the same time, society is increasingly turning to social media and the Internet for news and information it can depend on.
This is to say, the work professional writers do affects public opinions more than ever. Professional writers choose what is displayed on the platforms that people are turning to for information.
The Shift in Responsibility
But what happens when society’s information platforms (Facebook, Twitter, websites) are corruptible? Fake political ad campaigns plagued Facebook and Twitter in the 2016 presidential election. It is still up for debate (at the time of writing this) how much the manipulation affected the results, but it certainly played a role in the election.
The argument is not that professional writers can’t handle the task. Writers are uniquely trained to create messages: they consider the audience, fact check the data and correct mistakes. But the adage about great power
will become a central operating philosophy for professional writers of the future.
In a scenario that would make George Orwell cringe, professional writers will determine what the public sees. They choose what information is displayed on a landing page. They assign a hierarchical importance to data. They shape your opinions. They influence your thoughts.
The job is changing with the landscape. With the advent of information technology, messages and videos now go viral, potentially reaching millions of people in a few hours. Wordsmiths will have to be more careful with the messages they create. The same skills that make a person a capable professional writer are the same that can wreak havoc on the public.
By selecting information responsibly and considering the impact of words, professional writing will become a new occupation in civic service. Borrowing from the words of Senator Richard Burr, professional writers will stand as our first line of defense
from the damage that words can do.
