social media sharing and conversation

Conflict zones

Blogs
(Source: Stockfresh)

21 August 2014

BillyBlogMy Twitter feed is usually filled with a mixture of information, trivia and invective, mainly on the subjects of IT, politics, sport and music. On 19 and 20 August, with the news of the murder of journalist James Foley by the Islamic State (IS), a number of tweets appeared on my timeline urging people not to watch the video of his beheading or to share it but to remember him for his work instead. Many of the tweets included pictures of Foley before his capture.

I was heartened that a number of people were doing their best to convince others not to give IS the publicity it craves by watching the video. But I was also disturbed to read that some people were intentionally sending tweets with links to the video. Worse still, a number of news outlets were including links to it on their web sites. Why would anyone do that?

We know why IS posted the video. It’s a particularly revolting form of terrorist viral marketing. I don’t need to watch it to know that the video is barbaric, inhuman and horrific. Obviously, some people do. Quite a few of them. And for those who don’t, there are plenty of other people and media outlets very willing to do it for them and report the details.

What has this to do with IT? Well, there’s the obvious point that advances in technology have made it much easier to make and disseminate these types of videos to a very wide audience without having to go through ‘the gateway’ of broadcasting media. Not only has technology made it possible but it has also shaped our reaction to it. You can’t have a message if no one is prepared to listen to it. Technology has given us the means to listen to or to watch that message.

Of course, you can’t blame the technology for the way people choose to use it. That’s down to us. Yet if technology didn’t provide an effective way to advertise, promulgate or market, it wouldn’t be used for that purpose. The fact is that the Web, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, allied with PCs, laptops, smartphones and tablets is changing the way in which information is disseminated and how we access it.

Appropriated
You only have to look at the increased use businesses (and governments for that matter) make of YouTube videos, Facebook and Twitter campaigns to target customers to realise how things are changing. The extra channels of communication they provide and the means by which they can be accessed are increasing the scope for companies to reach prospective customers beyond paper and television and to target them wherever they are and whenever they can.

The other new element that technology has added is the ability to share. Many campaigns actively encourage (reward even) people to share links across social media channels. The difficulty is that this ‘sharing’ isn’t just confined to posts or tweets or to advertising for a new product or service, it also applies to those with more sinister purposes. The sad thing is that so many people are prepared to use the capacity for sharing that technology provides to indiscriminately link to something which should never have been made or posted in the first place.

That’s sad not just because of what people are doing but also because of the way technology is being used. We should be better than this. And James Foley, may he rest in peace, certainly deserved better.

Read More:


Back to Top ↑

TechCentral.ie