‘Wild, wild west’ of social media: Can it be tamed?
Coping with new media
‘Wild, wild west’ of social media: Can it be tamed?
PACHICO A. SEARES
Sept 20, 2013 ( CJJ8 )
TAKE a quick look at social media’s upside: storage of vast information, immediacy of access wherever the location, instant circulation of “unli” text and images, and abundant freedom to communicate.
But view the downside too: in social media, it’s tough to hold authors of content accountable; easy for offenders to dodge liability; impossible to remove (once it’s there, it’s there forever); tempting to be petty, unfair and mean; and herculean to pin down the truth.
Debates won’t end on the boon or bane that is social media. What is not disputed is that the internet media is stronger than ever, threatening dominance, profitability, and existence of regular media.
Social media operates on platforms speedier, more mobile, and more pervasive than print, radio, or television. And a lot more prone to abuse and impunity in the name of free speech.
New frontier
That’s not this article’s task, which is merely to ask if the “sense of order” in traditional media can also come to social media, whether what a telecom official called in a 2011 Press Freedom Week forum “the wild, wild west” can be tamed.
Before netizens bristle over any suggestion of thought control, let it be said:
[ ] We’re not for curbing social media’s free spirit, spontaneous response, and refreshing irreverence, which are often found wanting in regular media;
[ ] We deplore smearing of other people’s reputation, using profanity and obscenity, bullying the meek and their privacy, peddling falsehoods with no evidence and no reliable source, publishing unverified slander, including known or suspected lies: journalistic sins most regular media shun;
[ ] We call for more careful use of information from social media where lines between news and gossip are blurred or totally non-existent, where accuracy or truth is often a casualty, where the true and authentic may be buried in a humongous heap of the trivial or the false.
Citizens’ concern
Social media is credited for toppling dictator governments, mostly by drawing mass support to protest actions. It has also provided tools in searching for the truth if one is diligent enough and knows how.
But it has also ruined private reputations, in smear campaigns and black propaganda.
Has driven victims of bullying to insanity or suicide. And has caused anguish to survivors of crime, disaster, or tragedy.
The Cybercrime Law was enacted to answer a legitimate concern of many citizens, not just practitioners of regular media: If they have right of recourse–complaining, suing–against newspapers, radio, and television, what is their remedy against libel or obscenity on Facebook, Twitter, or blog?
There’s the major problem of identifying the libeler or the creator of obscenity or pornography, the inciter to sedition or rebellion, or the hurler of contempt at court, church, or other hallowed institution.
Shield of anonymity
Often, the social media violator shields himself with false or fictitious name. Like the heckler or stone-thrower in a mob, whose lack of identity emboldens him to violence and contempt of authority and values.
While there are ways to put a name and a face to the social media violator (see separate article), that isn’t as easy as seeking redress in regular media.
In newspapers and broadcast stations, writers and commentators put their names and faces up front and managers and editors display their identities in the staff box or in TV/radio program credits. Sources are attributed and “blind” items are allowed only in gossip columns edited by senior editors who watch out for libel, bad taste, and offensive language.
But then isn’t anonymity what attracts users of the internet, where they can express whatever they want without fear of reprisal? How to curb excesses in social media without subduing its freedom seems to be the crux of the problem.
The law being questioned before the High Tribunal has strong constitutional flaws, notably the provisions on the state’s right to shut down an offensive web site or account and the jail terms stiffer than that provided in the Penal Code.
Objection to disparity on prison sentence for libel ironically highlights the uneven treatment of regular media and new media: if practitioners in regular media are subject to laws protecting people’s honor, upholding decency, and respecting institutions, must users of social media be treated differently?
But it’s not hopeless.
The wild, wild west in the metaphor was initially wracked with lawlessness but law and order eventually came to town, with sheriffs who shot straight, judges who jailed lawbreakers, and people who soon tired of the discord and embraced the new peace.
Regular media of the past wasn’t run the way it is run now. Yellow journalism in U.S. history and political propaganda thinly disguised as journalism in Cebu’s early newspapers and radio stations were horrors in media history.
On its own
Social media, with all its inherent and ever-growing prowess, may yet come on its own, as regular media did.
Its writers may adopt standards that preserve the new media’s best qualities and practices without being recklessly licentious or criminal. Its consumers may soon learn how to mine nuggets from the mountainous rubble of misinformation.
Not to be diminished is the influence of regular media that’s now wading in social media waters. Much regular media content can be found online although junk and poison fill a large part of internet space where few editors oversee. Regular media’s principles might soon spread to social media. A marriage of old journalism standards and new media’s free spirit and vigor: is that possible?
Respect for truth and other values, which regular media espouses, and fusing old skills and precepts with new technology may produce better journalism on these complex and daunting platforms. 
Tearoom in wildwest saloons?
” (The internet) is a medium in which professional and non-professional writers mix together, freely and exuberantly. Why argue for decency, civility, style and grace in the internet? In a medium which, by its very nature is free to all comers, talented and untalented, cheerful and enraged, pure and impure alike. Why would anyone set up a tearoom with linens and silver in the middle of the saloons of the Wild West?”
David Denby wrote that in the book “Snark: It’s Mean, It’s Personal, and it’s Ruining Our Conversation? (Simon & Schuster, 2009).
What those wishing to see some changes in the internet dont’t wish is to fetter it’s free and exuberant spirit or insist on grace, style, or even civility in it. It’s all up to individual writers, whether they want to speak with dignity or to rant.
But what the law regulates in mainstream media must be regulated as well in social media. At least, Denby didn’t mention libel, slander, contempt, inciting to sedition, and similar offenses the internet writer may commit. Laws punishing them must apply to all writers, be they in in a sedate tearoom or a rowdy saloon.