Archive for the 'Dark Side' Category

Last week the IABC’s* EuroComm Conference 2008 took place in Barcelona, where I chaired the plenary panel discussion on social media. I was joined by co-panellists Giles Colborne of cxpartners, a web usability expert, and Marc Wright of simply-communicate.com, an internal communications specialist. We had a really good session, which was primarily the result of great comments and challenges from the 80 or so business communicators taking part in the session. I just want to focus here on one issue that emerged from the discussions, which I think reflects the main concern of businesses around social media: control.

When we asked the delegates what was preventing their businesses engaging in the social media, the main reason appeared to be an anxiety about losing control. If you have a blog or social network space, people can come and leave negative comments. If you allow your employees to use social media for internal communications, they could spread seeds of discontent internally. Social media tools also make it easier for staff to leak your internal discussions externally. If you offer spaces for user-generated content, you can lose control of the content and message.

But we also discussed how control is an illusion in the brave new world of social media. There could be people out there already expressing negative views about your business or brand on other social media spaces even if you don’t have a business presence on the blogosphere. Your staff are already able to sign up to Facebook or set up their own blogs at home, even if you block them at work. Leaks occur with email as easily as via any other internet or intranet tool. Someone could be filming you or any of your executives with their mobile phone camera even now, capturing your pratfall or offguard comment to be served up on YouTube for the world to see. Employers are doing internet searches of potential recruits as an add-on to the traditional ways of doing background checks - will they find that photo of you taken by a friend at your cousin’s wedding with someone’s knickers on your head?

For businesses who are worried about controlling the message about their product or services, the least you can do is monitor what the online is saying about you even if you decide never to engage in social media. And if you do engage with a blog or other social media tool, that can actually help enhance your reputation especially if you engage in an authentic way. The community you build around your blog will come to trust, respect and like you and loyalty can count for a great deal in times of crisis.

For individuals, the question is: will we always have to be “on” not just when we engage online but wherever we are because we never know when someone may capture us unawares on digital media? This is a much more challenging issue. It is impossible to be perfectly behaved all the time - that’s just a fact of being human. And perhaps we have to trust that people know that - and that in the long term, people seeing someone’s mistake displayed on YouTube will recognise that it’s just a very human momentary lapse, especially if there are other images of that person online that counter lapse. Perhaps in this early period of the mobile phone video, there’s a lot of press and publicity about this issue because it’s novel but that in the long term, there won’t be such a hoo-ha because there’ll be so many unremarkable human failings available to view online. Or perhaps we will all have to hire public relations consultants to help us with reputation management in the future, whether we are Britney Spears or just an ordinary non-celebrity…

We did not reach any solid conclusions during the discussion, only that this is one debate that is going to contine.

What are your thoughts?

Photo: of car wreck thanks to OpenSkyMedia from flickr.com (CCL)

*International Association of Business Commuicators

by Angie Macdonald

Social media is changing the way we do things and one of the issues involved is that of control. Control is slipping from corporates when it comes to promoting their products and from conference speakers and college lecturers, who are no longer regarded as the expert with the final say on the matter.

One example of this phenomenon is “back channelling”. In the social media context, this refers to people at conferences, or students, blogging and/or Twittering while listening to a speaker. It can also involve instant messaging or chatrooms and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Channels. This is the “back channel”, where the audience engage in a different conversation, separate from the speaker directly in front of them.

At some conferences, a screen is erected behind the speaker, on which the audience can post comments directly from their computers. The speaker, facing the audience, cannot see the comments appearing on the screen behind him or her. From what I’ve heard anecdotally, the comments which tend to appear are generally negative comments on the speaker’s clothes, or how bored people are, rather than comments that further the debate. It is the equivalent of heckling, only here it is virtual and silent.

I’m sure there are some highly skilled people who are able to multi-task and keep with the programme. But most people are unable to give two things the same amount of attention at the same time. If you are trying to listen, analyse, remember, write and follow the conversation all at the same time, something’s got to give. You just have to think about the dangers of driving while talking on a mobile phone to realise that multi-tasking has its limits.

In an article published in the New York Times, David E. Meyer, a cognitive scientist and director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan is quoted as saying, “Multitasking is going to slow you down, increasing the chances of mistakes.” In the same article, René Marois, a neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University, when describing the ‘cognitive powerhouse’ that is the human brain, says “…a core limitation is an inability to concentrate on two things at once.”

What usually happens, is that by the time the blogger or Twitterer has finished writing or texting a particular thought, the speaker has moved on, the information that has been imparted in the interim is hazy, and the thread of the argument has been lost. This creates a knowledge gap which can result in misunderstanding, which in turn can lead to miscommunication.

Now, it’s fine if one individual has misunderstood. But what happens when that individual has published their misunderstood information online and millions of people around the world read it and get the wrong end of the stick? What are the repercussions? Where is the value in that communication?

Don’t get me wrong, I can see that there are advantages to back-channelling. It can be an inclusive behaviour too and means that those unable to attend a conference in person can follow what’s happening by reading updated blogs or receiving Tweets on their mobile phones.

It can also be a way to open up and encourage discussion and debate around a topic. So rather than information being delivered from one so-called expert in a top-down fashion, everybody who knows something or who has an opinion can join in and conference goers have an opportunity to learn from their peers. In that way, learning can become a more democratic process - a knowledge exchange offering instant feedback and reflection.

The danger is that in the process you may have to listen to people who think they are right, when they may be wrong, or people who love the sight of their words in print and subject everyone to their opinions whenever they can. As in the real world, sometimes conversations are inane, occasionally they are a waste of time.

We live in an age where children are being medicated for Attention Deficit Disorder and adults put their lack of success in life down to the fact that they were never diagnosed with ADD in school, and yet, here we are as adults, actively engaging in attention deficit behaviour. Not only that, but rather than being in the moment and giving it all our attention, we are taking a step back to observe and comment on what is occurring, analysing it as it is happening, rather than experiencing it.

There is no doubt that technology is changing social behaviour, communication and relationships. In spite of the advantages, I still think that in today’s attention-seeking world, perhaps the highest form of regard we can offer anyone, is to give them our full-blown attention.

Photo: thanks to jean djinni on flickr.com (CCL)

This post also appears on the EuroComm Blog today, where I am one of the blogging team.

The dark side

“The online world can lead to isolation and anti-social behaviour. It’s all very well having all these virtual friends on social networks but they can’t give you virtual hugs. You need real people for that.”

“Facebook and social networks are dangerous because you can lose your privacy. I would never want to put my details on Facebook.”

“I don’t read blogs. They’re not relevant for businesses, are they?”

“What’s social media? I don’t like computers. It’s all much too modern for me.”

These are a some comments that came up recently in a number of conversations I’ve had over the last year with some business people, intellectuals and professionals. It seems there are many people who have not yet had the time or readiness to be introduced to the remarkable opportunities for human communication that is available through social media tools. One of them even said to me, “It’s so refreshing to come across someone who is so positive about social media for a change.”

I felt like I was the odd one out at these particular gatherings. For awhile now, many of my closest friends and colleagues are happy social media campers like me and I’ve met numerous business people and professionals who are engaged and curious about the possibilities of online communications. So it has been a surprise from time to time to have been the lone voice of enthusiasm. It got me thinking. Why am I so positive about social media?

The bright side

There used to be an ad for BT, British Telecoms, the phone company with the tagline “Reach out and touch someone”. In my mind, social media offers exactly that experience. Perhaps I’m more sensitive to such opportunities, having lived apart from my family since I was 12. All the way across the vast globe, my parents and family were home in Malaysia while I grew up during my years at school and university here in England. The only communication used to be letters that arrived a week after they were written or through echoey, expensive phone calls once every few weeks. It could be lonely, counting the days till the next holiday when I’d be able to see my Mum, wondering what my family was doing just at that moment, imagining them having dinner together in Malaysia eight hours ahead while I was in a Maths lesson.

So, how amazing it is now to be able to email a message within seconds, type out an instant message - well - instantly, speak with my family online free or for a few pence and even see the other person face-to-face online as you do so. How fantastic to make new friends through blogging about shared interests even though you may be on different continents. How incredible to be able to follow each moment of another’s life through Twitter or Facebook status updates.

Existential crisis

And I don’t think it’s just me trying to recover from childhood loneliness. The reason so many millions have engaged so intensely online is because of the very human urge to connect with others and to express ourselves.

Yes, there are people who isolate themselves in their rooms all day playing on the internet. In India, universities have become increasingly concerned about increased suicide rates which they link to too much time spent on social networks. In Japan, a young girl blogged about killing her mother and her public journals were only investigated after the mother died - and it was found that she did indeed kill her mother. For me, the question is what kind of society drives young people into isolation because they feel they can’t talk to real live people right there next to them so that they feel that they can only engage online? How are those live people right there next to them not engaging with them, not hearing them, not understanding them?

Facebook

Using blogging and Facebook, I keep in touch with my family and friends in Malaysia and all over the world. I have made new and interesting friends whom I have met subsequently in real life and who continue now to be real as well as virtual friends. OK, I can’t get a virtual hug but I can get a verbal one through their written, audio or video messages - which must surely be better than the silence of being offline and disconnected from this global neighbourhood. In my real life, I still have my friends and family in the flesh who give me the real hugs and I reckon a lot of bloggers and social networkers enjoy that, too. It just means that my friendships and relationships are no longer all bound by having to physically being in the same place with those others.

Yes, you can lose your privacy on Facebook. But only if you choose to upload your personal data like your date of birth, your mother’s maiden name, your social security number etc. No-one is forcing you to do that. And, yes, employers are now checking Facebook profiles before they hire and an inappropriate photo of you can affect your chances of getting the job. With Facebook, the key is to use it judicously and to look at the privacy options you can set. It is prudent to think of it as a public space rather than a private one. There are advantages if you navigate your way through such a public space wisely - for example, you can ask for introductions from friends to other friends - which is particularly useful in a business context, replacing the old-fashioned letter of introduction.

Beware FUD

Crime, suicide, isolation, murder and loss of personal privacy are important issues and I am not dismissing concerns about them. It’s just worth stepping back for some perspective and context - and for the other side of the story to be offered up. There are millions of blogs and millions of people engaging in social networks and online games. In most cases - ie in millions of cases - these experiences are positive and the new technology is helping people connect with each other. Traditional media like newspapers and broadcast media thrive on FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt - no-one buys the paper to read that everything is fine and dandy. So newspapers etc will naturally pick out the doom and gloom stories. If you rely on the traditional media to tell you about social media, you’re only getting one side of the story.

Social media is here to stay and I think it’s a shame for those who choose not to engage out of FUD. They are losing out on ways to connect with friends, colleagues and family that can enrich their personal and business life. If you met your friends in a public place like a restaurant or on the street, you’d be sensible - you wouldn’t leave your handbag in an easily snatchable place, you wouldn’t give out your private details to a stranger walking by and so on. So it’s the same with social media - be sensible and you can get the best out of the time you spend online.

Photo: thanks to Ondra_L from flickr.com

User-generated content is all the rage at the moment. It’s cheap, and often free, for the average person like you and me to create content eg by blogging, podcasting or uploading videos to YouTube. There is also a social networking element in that others can read/ listen to / view that content and comment or create other content in response. For example, when you watch some YouTube videos, there’s a sidebar on the right where you can see other people’s video responses to that video. On blogs, other bloggers may be inspired to write something on their blog about what you’ve written - and they may agree or disagree with you.

So it seems a great idea for companies to involve their customers and everyone else in creating content relevant for their brand. It creates a buzz around the product or brand. It brings people together around the brand. It taps into people’s creativity and desire to be noticed and rewarded for their endeavours. That’s the theory.

Heinz launched a competition inviting anyone to submit a 30-second video ad for their ketchup. The New York Times reports:

“Heinz has said it will pick five of the entries and show them on television, though it has not committed itself to a channel or a time slot. One winner will get $57,000. But so far it’s safe to say that none of the entries have quite the resonance of, say, the classic Carly Simon “Anticipation” ad where the ketchup creeps oh so slowly out of the bottle.”

So what kind of entries did they get? Some examples given in the New York Time article are:

• a teenage boy cleans his teeth and shaves with ketchup

• another kid rubs ketchup on his face and puts pickles in his eyes

Videos that have been rejected by Heinz have ended up on YouTube anyway.

Heinz have also been criticized for trying to get cheap advertising by looking for user-generated campaign although they say that it has actually been more expensive in terms of managing the process and sifting through all the entries.

There are concerns that the campaign has damaged the Heinz brand by its being associated with “gross-out” video images of its product being used in inappropriate ways - and appearing in cheap, home-produced, badly uncreative images.

You can view the Heinz ad competition and the videos on YouTube for yourself.

Here’s one involving a toilet….

I think that the idea and the intention of looking to the public to create content around a theme relevant to your brand or product is a sound one. The issue here is the management of the particular project or campaign. In the old days, when a company launched a competition eg to choose its new logo or tagline or the image that most represented its brand or some such, it controlled the process entirely and no-one would see the rejected entries. These days, the bad, irrelevant, scurrilous stuff gets circulated anyway by the very tools that makes this new form of advertising possible. It’s worth doing a full risk assessment on any social media project - as in any big project - assuming the worst case scenario in human nature. Perhaps Heinz - naively? - just expected more of the people they were bringing into the video conversation…

But it’s not all doom and gloom. On Monday, I’ll look at a user-generated video campaign that worked.

A recent online survey by the Recruitment Employment Confederation (REC) confirms what some people feared was true. Employers check up on potential employees before they hire them - and there’s no easier way then via the internet. You google people you know, don’t you? The ones you’ve just met or are about to meet; your friends and associates; your lost love? So it figures that employers do, too.

The survey shows that 86 per cent of the 298 recruitment consultants questioned think candidates should think twice before putting certain information on the Internet for fear of it affecting their chances of employment. The REC press release on their site reports:

Tom Hadley, the REC’s Director of External Affairs commented: “As more employers take interview shortcuts and rely on Internet searches to filter out unsuitable candidates, it’s vital that job seekers take their Internet footprint seriously and keep in mind that it could affect their job prospects.

Before posting any personal details on the Internet, candidates need to think twice about how an employer might perceive them.”

This is of particular concern for the “millenials” - the 75 million young people born between 1977 and 1998 who are the main participants in social network sites like MySpace and Facebook where they let it all hang out, sharing their views, thoughts, mis-adventures and much more - often in casual, coarse or uninhibited language as well as photos and videos that might be fun and crazy in that context but shocking and inappropriate in a career context.

On the other hand 51 per cent of the recruiters thought that recruitment agencies may find themselves with fewer candidates to place as social networking online becomes the new way for people to find jobs. Think of the professional online networks like LinkedIn (for business people and professionals) or MyRagan (for business communicators).

While it is worth noting these concerns and thinking before you blog or video yourself or post a photo of yourself in horseplay, bear in mind that we are in a time of change - and fast change at that. At one time, Richard Branson was a maverick because - shock, horror - he didn’t believe in wearing a tie to a business meeting. These days, among the old guard, there are new businesses with new work/ life values - think of Innocent smoothies, Google, Yahoo! , any tech startup and indeed, Virgin. Perhaps as the millenials grow up and rise to positions of power within companies and businesses, they won’t be so concerned about the shenanigans of other millenials documented online. They will be the ones recruiting each other via social networks and maybe their criteria might include “Proven drive and energy - please link to your MySpace video showing wild partying and to the software application you designed the morning after”….

As it is, a recent Twitter job ad for an Operations Engineer included this line: “Must have: excellent triage skills, mild manner, rockstar inside (ready to rise to any occasion), strong interest in Twitter.” (my emphasis).

Personally, the one finding from the report I found the most disturbing was this one: “71 per cent said something written in the ‘other interests’ section of a CV has put employers off taking candidates through to the interview stage”. What?! There was a time when you needed to put something in that section to show that you were a well-rounded person. Now, it looks like some companies want only one-dimensional entitities, rather like robots who will work and work and work and nothing more. Having interests outside of your job is not only healthy but also contributes to factors that make you do your job better - like motivation (quality time with your family brings you bouncing into work the next day), creativity (working on a complex hobby can stimulate ideas for complex problems at work), diverse and transferrable skills (volunteering on a committee brings team building skills to your job), people skills (having friends helps you get on well with co-workers and customers), networking (that person you meet at playing cricket could bring in some work for your company) and the list goes on …

What do you think? Do you let it all hang out online? Or have you never taken the step to blog because of exactly these worries? Add a comment or email me and share your thoughts.

Photo: thanks to Xamonich from flickr.com

NOTE: ZenGuide is updated Mondays and Thursdays

Continuing the Conversation from the social media discussions in Slovenia….

One of our round table participants held that one of the core values of blogging is its openness for everyone to take part, to add their comments, to disagree or disagree, to share ideas. That gives blogging and social media its vibrancy and energy and it is through open conversations without centralised control that fresh ideas emerge, freedom is embraced and exercised and democratic principles are lived out in the flesh.

Is there a place for private blogs or private networks? Can an online space that is public and open to all in some situations restrict one’s freedom to express oneself fully and truly? Some possibilities come to mind:

• a forum where bloggers who have experienced cyberharrassment might want to share and support each other.

• a business network where financially sensitive information needs to be discussed

• a network where business leaders may wish to network freely with each other - be able to disagree, argue, debate etc without what they discuss being open to misinterpretation to those not within their industry

I’m sure you can think of other examples as well.

It can be very valuable for victims of trauma to speak openly about their experiences without feeling judged or put down by others. Public spaces on the web can be uncivil and unruly, jostling spaces, just like any street or the subway in rush hour. A safe space for such discussions would need to be private.

Similarly, with any other matter that is sensitive whether financial, personal or in business, private networks may be the only way that social media can be used effectively.

Debate, discussion, disagreement and argument in are all part of the process of negotiation or coming to a decision or consensus in the Western democracies. Sometimes there are disagreements between people on the same team or same Board or the same committee while they work out their ideas and before they come to a firm conclusion. It may be that where social media is used to facilitate this process, it needs to be private between the relevant people so as not to have the process hampered by those who are not meant to be involved in that process. It also may not be appropriate for these people who are playing on the same team to be seen by their stakeholders in the process of the disagreement if that is going to be misinterpreted as a problem in the leadership and cause unnecessary instability within the corporation or their market - when in fact it is merely a process of interrogating an issue that will ultimately be resolved.

I find this issue a challenging and very interesting one. I agree whole-heartedly with my colleague who upholds the value of openness and lack of controls on the blogosphere as a whole. And yet, I find that there are circumstances when in fact you can only have openness within a ring-fenced “safe” area.

What do you think?

~~~~~~~~

Photo: thanks to Aaron Jacobs on flickr.com

Note: ZenGuide is updated Mondays and Thursdays

prjslv

According to a Microsoft survey, 75% of blogs hosted by Blogger.com are spam blogs. These are the free blogs that have “.blogspot.com” as part of their domain name that up till now have been used primarily by personal bloggers and those who don’t want to spend any money on their online presence. This disturbing new trend was reported on a legal blog, Real Lawyers Have Blogs, in April 2007, by Kevin O’Keefe a US lawyer.

He makes the point that law firms who use the free Blogger platform to save money are therefore in a blogging network surrounded by spam blogs. I would add my voice to this concern - as a business owner, are these the kind of blogging neighbours you want associated with your corporate blog? If “.blogspot.com” is widely known as the blogging platform of choice for personal bloggers, people who don’t want to invest any money in their web presence and now spam bloggers , what does it say about your brand to have that as part of your domain name?

I reported awhile back on the recent US survey that indicated that 75% of the wealthy in America read blogs. This is a great opportunity for businesses who would like to reach this group via blogging. But the wealthy and powerful are most likely to be used to top-quality, high-value goods, services and experiences. Will your .blogspot.com domain and generic template give them a blog-visiting experience that is going to meet those expectations?

I came across a US-based life coach who was offering services that would help his client achieve “excellence” and “peak performance”. His copy was all superlatives of that nature. But his blog was a .blogspot.com blog - and he was using the first template you come across when signing up to a blog on Blogger. I have to say, I didn’t believe that he believed a thing that he was saying.

There is a reason why designer goods stores and top-notch service firms are fitted out luxuriously with top quality wood and shiny marble, gleaming glass and indoor exotic plants and water features. They all add up to say “We’re worth it” and “You, as our customer, deserve the best visiting experience.”

For a business to have a free .blogspot.com domain - especially if you don’t even make an effort to customise the generic template - seems to me increasingly like trying to setting yourself up as luxury goods outlet offering Gucci and Versace products and then selling them out of the back of your car on a lay-by.

The survey “Connecting Web Spammers and Advertisers” can be read as a pdf file. It has been said by other commentators that the survey was commissioned by Microsoft, who are rivals with Google, the company that owns Blogger.com and the outcome was bound to have something negative to say about Blogger. Personally, I like Blogger as a starting point for new bloggers - because it’s free and it’s easily customisable, it’s a great place to practice your blogging skills. It’s also ideal for personal bloggers and others who have little or no budget. But for business or corporate blogging, you really need to see blogging as part of your brand and marketing strategy and act accordingly.

I’ve also blogged earlier on the merits or otherwise of free blog platforms in my post “Are You Worth It?”.

Disclosure: we offer a bespoke website and/ or blog design service starting from £500 and a year’s hosting from £30. But you don’t have to use our design services - our consultancy is about helping you enhance your online presence not just selling web design services. So, if you want a bespoke blog, one place to start is to speak to the people who designed your main website and see what they can do for you - or if you’d like to find out more about how we can help with designing your integrated website and blog, by all means email or call me via the Contact Us link at the top of this page.

Photo: thanks to alaska.net

A few weeks ago, I asked my readers to email me any aspects of blogging that you’d like me to explore on ZenGuide.

One of my readers, who is new to blogging this year, emailed to ask “How do I protect content - or what is the least I can do?”

The bad news

It is very difficult to protect your content once it’s posted up on the web, whether in a blog, on a website or on a social media site like flickr.com for photographs.

Anyone can come along and cut-and-paste your text or save your image to their computer or download your music or podcast as an mp3. If you make a pdf document available for download, someone can come along and download it to create into a book that they then sell as their own, as happened to marketing guru, Seth Godin - I blogged about this on my writing and arts blog, Fusion View.

Some bloggers take your feed and run it on their site to use your content as bait for visitors - whom they hope will then click on their Google or other ads and thereby earn them some revenue.

So if you put stuff up on your blog or any social networking site, you are at risk of having it nicked.

The good news

A lot of web and social media developers give tons of their expertise and skill away for free. Wordpress, which is the platform that this blog and many others are built on, offers you a free blog on their Wordpress.com site. You can download their Wordpress files for free and re-design them and upload them again onto your own server - this is what my blog designers did for me. Many people develop Wordpress “plugins” to add functionality to their blogs and then offer them for free to anyone to download and use.

In the offline world, businesses and professionals often give free seminars and workshops, send out free newsletters and expert journals, do some initial work for free. They are giving away their expertise gratis as a way to showcase their talent and raise their profile. Other businesses give away their products for free or at huge discounts - again it’s a form of marketing and raising awareness of what they have to offer.

In that light, making your content - whether it’s written or a photograph or a video or music or whatever - available on the web allows it to be seen potentially by anyone who has a computer and is connected to the internet - ie millions of people. And if many of them think your content is fab enough to take and share and pass on to their friends - well, that’s free word-of-mouth marketing for you!

As for those people who then nick your stuff and make money out of it, you can try and get them to stop it (very difficult, especially across international borders) or take it in your stride as one of those risks. And perhaps if it’s annoying you, you can work out how you can make money out of your own content in the future before someone else does.

Practical things you can do

I have a policy here as follows (and a similar one on my other blog Fusion View):

All the content of my posts is copyrighted - copyright belongs to ZenGuide unless otherwise stated.

You may use portions of a post or copy and paste portions of a post into another site or document provided you put that portion inside quotation marks and you acknowledge clearly on that site/ document that it is taken from ZenGuide and also that you credit ZenGuide clearly with it. A portion for these purposes would be up to one third of the text from the relevant post. This broadly reflects the UK law on copyright.

So far as I am aware, most people who have quoted my posts have done so honourably as per this policy.

I’d recommend having a similar policy clearly stated on your blog or social media site.

The Creative Commons Licencee also provides a standardised framework for licensing your work.

If people don’t comply, a policy on your blog and/ or the Creative Commons Licence gives you some leverage when trying to rectify that breach - but be aware, it is likely to be difficult to enforce (again, especially across international borders).

For photographs and videos, you can watermark them with your name or website but you may feel that that could interfere with the enjoyment of viewing them.

Take home message

There are practical things you can do to try to protect your content but at the end of the day, when uploading your content onto the web, it’s best to choose things that you are prepared to give away for free

Photo: thanks to RBerteig from flickr.com

The world was horrified by the events at Virginia Tech last week when a student went on the rampage and shot fellow students and teachers at the campus, killing 32 people. Like many people following the unfolding of events, I am saddened by this tragedy and offer my sympathies to the families of those killed and injured.

Traditional media

When I hear about such horrific things in the news, I turn first to the press and traditional media. I expect to get from that source a reliable and factual reporting of events. We trust the traditional media because we know they cross-check stories and are careful to distinguish speculation from facts and opinion from reportage. Professional journalists arrive at the scene and start finding out what happened, talking to people who were involved, getting stories from witnesses and taking photographs.

New media

With email and social media tools like blogging and Twitter - and the ubiquitous mobile phone, the people involved and others who witnessed the Virginia Tech shootings began spontaneously to tell their own stories, in some cases even as the events were unfolding. The Guardian reported on 17 April that the traditional media was looking to websites for their sources:

News outlets turned to CollegiateTimes.com and PlanetBlacksburg.com, as well as to amateur reporters huddled in college rooms or near the scene who were sending frantic emails to friends and media organisations such as CNN.

CollegiateTimes.com, the website for Virginia Tech’s student newspaper, filed up-to-the-minute online dispatches.

Students were using Facebook and MySpace, social networking sites, to express their responses to what happened, sharing their shock and grief online as they might have done coming face to face in a crisis. ABC News reported these comments from students writing in Facebook:

~ If you are okay! Please update your status in facebook to say something like “I’m okay”

~ We need to get a facebook group started to keep this news story factual and not sensationalized.

~ I too started getting messages from people from different countries wanting more and more info about the incident. Some even went to the extent of asking me to record my reaction over a video cam and send it to them. Disgusting!

Suicide Video

Later, it emerged that the killer, Cho Seung-hui, had compiled a suicide video and digital photo album which he sent to NBC, a US television network. The Guardian reports that following the TV broadcast, the tapes were “rebroadcast instantly around the world on TV and online represents the sinister side of user generated content….The NBC video is the most visited story on the BBC news website and dominates the front page of the Sky News site.”

Plays posted online

Cho was a literature student and wrote plays which centred around murder, paedophilia and revenge killings, according the London Paper, which also reports that two of Cho’s plays “were posted on the internet by Ian MacFarlane, a former classmate of Cho’s.”

Two sides of the media

In this one terrible event, we see the two sides of the media, both traditional and new. The two forms of media can be a source of news and information - and also, a prompt to voyeurism and the unsavoury desire “to know all the gory details”. Social networks can be a place where people can support each other and talk about what happened on the path to healing - or a place for gossip, rumour, hate postings and dark rantings. We can gain fame or infamy by the mere fact of being on TV or online alone. It is hugely disturbing that killers such as Cho can become celebrities overnight for one heinous, savage act and their poor creative efforts pored over like great literature - where they might otherwise trudge on unnoticed and uncelebrated in their lonely lives if they had done nothing at all. For people like that, there is no reward in being good and a huge reward in being evil.

I was in two minds about writing this post. I didn’t want to this post to be yet another space where Cho and what he did is noticed and given airtime - “rewarded” with attention. Yet, it felt important to discuss the role of traditional and new media in this event - in reporting it and also in some ways, being a part of the story by being a means in Cho’s mind to air his grievances and justify himself.

Remember the heroes

So I don’t want to end this post on Cho. I want to end it talking about a hero. Liviu Librescu was one of the professors in the room that day. He was 76 and a survivor of the Holocaust. He blocked the doorway with his body and bought precious moments for his student to make their escape. The Guardian reports “Messages were posted on the web praising the professor. “No act could be more selfless.” one poster wrote.” Let’s remember Professor Librescu and celebrate him. Let’s remember and celebrate the 32 people who died at Virginia Tech.