Climaxes, Earthquakes and Social Media in the Dock
To misquote the movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn we’ve seen events in recent weeks that have ‘started out with a climax and worked their way up to an earthquake.’
The climax came during the recent emergency session of Parliament when Prime Minister David Cameron said he believed that ‘the free flow of information’ was a major problem when it comes to dealing with civil disobedience on the scale witnessed in the recent London riots.
Such was his concern that the Government is actively considering the banning of free use of Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools such as BlackBerry’s BBM during such emergency situations. Later this week there is an official meeting with Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry to discuss logistics of just such a proposal.
So social media stands in the dock accused, and in my opinion the power to ban represents a very dangerous step and a clear threat to UK democracy in the digital age. Having the power to stop people from using social networking sites because some irresponsible thugs happened to use those tools to organise looting and criminal activity is like thinking of needing to ban London buses because of a single bus accident!
As someone who contributed to the Jan25 Egyptian revolution through effective use of social media channels, I’ve witnessed first-hand how ineffective such government shut downs could be in tackling the problem at hand; we now have proof that blocking real-time mass communication services at the Government’s discretion is definitely not the best way to tackle the issue. And it’s a slippery slope. In fact, such potential restrictions to freedom of speech threaten to cause lasting damage to British democracy and could even affect the freedom of rights of internet users elsewhere in the world as other governments decide to follow suit.
The fact is that social media tools are just another communication channel -exactly like mobile phones or email- and can be used for both good and evil. For example, during the riots and using the same tools to organise criminal activity, the public was also alerting other citizens and the authorities through hashtags in real time, as to where looting was breaking out, and even built an interactive Google map of the affected areas.
The next day social media was central to kick-starting a series of positive initiatives, organising groups to clean up those neighbourhoods that were impacted by the riots and arranging accommodation for those displaced by the disorder. And, perhaps more importantly, the public was quick to use the same digital channels to help the police distribute pictures of those wanted criminals to the masses through Flickr for identification in order to expedite their prosecution.
Ironically while we still don’t see widespread adoption of social media by many government agencies, following this week’s earthquake in North America, the US Government urged citizens to use social media to contact relatives during the crisis. It seems that the US, for one, has got the hint at least that there’s no faster way to spread the word among the masses than social media channels.
The real causes and solutions to the UK’s problems are much more complex, and its root causes are clearly more cultural than technology related. Pointing fingers at social media is scapegoating at least and simply ludicrous at worst. Better utilisation of existing CCTV and advanced facial recognition technologies could form part of the answer to a needed early warning national security system.
Follow @MoElnadi
0Comments
Why Social Media can’t be blamed for London Riots
Posted by Mo Elnadi August 24 2011 05:05pm