The social media government

The accusations levelled by Senator Anil Roberts against the family of St Vincent and the Grenadines PM Ralph Gonsalves were not part of any discussion in Parliament.

They were, instead, raised on Mr Roberts' daily blog, a series of short video clips he appears to produce over morning coffee in a bold new venue for government communication.

Mr Roberts is hardly alone in this effort at amplifying the voice of the ruling party while adamantly lowering the tone of public discourse.

He was preceded in this by Phillip Alexander, also a Minister in the Housing Ministry, as is Roberts, who raised the ire of Delcy Rodriguez, Venezuela's executive vice president.

His vociferous statements online and outside Parliament have targeted issues in Venezuela that are completely outside of his official responsibilities.

Those rants ran so completely out of control that they drew a rebuke from the Prime Minister, which he has ignored without further reprimand,

Mr Alexander may not have the blessing of the cabinet colleagues whose jobs he exuberantly steamrollers, but it seems there is some level of acceptance of his communications methodology by Mrs Kamla Persad-Bissessar who has not insisted on compliance with her public demand that he "stay in his zone."

The PM's presence is manicured on her X account, where posts reflect her public statements, even those that have proven to be demonstrably wrong-headed, such as her endorsement of the US Secretary of State's dismissal as fake news reports that countries are limiting intelligence sharing with the US.

That withdrawal of collaboration is believed to be driven by concerns about the extra-judicial killings that are the murderous calling card of America's naval forces in the Caribbean.

Social media is well into its third decade as a medium for political communication and is no longer just a tool for the campaign trail.

Donald Trump created his own social media platform, Truth Social, to open his own pipeline of over-capitalised statements to his supporters.

Social media platforms are now part of the arsenal of politicians with aggressive agendas who don't want to be constrained by the irritating and slow-moving regime of fact-checking and multiple sourcing that define the practice of journalism.

UNC supporters will, no doubt, point to the posts of Rhoda Bharath's Newsauce as precedent, but their party's efforts to bottle their own communications lightning, ignore actionable information and nuance as inconvenient road bumps for posts that inflame their political base.

In pursuing viral spread, theatre, including the inflation of a plastic bag by Homeland Security Minister Roger Alexander for local media, seems to have replaced any pretence of reasoned debate and discussion.

When political positioning is reduced to an online shouting match chasing views, the public is not only left uninformed, the resulting chaos encourages misinformation and idle speculation.

Discourse then devolves quickly into dissonance and despair.