Blogging the Arsonist – Citizen Journalism and Social Media Responsibility
February 18th, 2009 by Jonathan Crossfield
So where should the line be drawn between social media and accountability?
Citizen journalism is on the increase and it is now possible for anyone with a connection to broadcast highly controversial views or prejudicial information to millions with one click, seemingly without any legal come-back should there be an impact to those words. People have been heavily fined or locked up for less than some are getting away with online, yet bloggers and community members continue to hide behind the idea that anything goes in social media.
It has always been necessary to prevent the publication of information likely to prejudice a jury against a defendant. Media outlets understand that certain information needs to remain privileged until a court case is completed. When newsrooms breach these restrictions, the law has always reacted strongly and fines have been handed down. Previously, cases have been overturned as a result of over-zealous pre-trial publicity affecting the chances of a fair trial – most recently in the trial of accused Queensland paedophile Dennis Ferguson, although this decision has since been reviewed. Ferguson is due to stand trial again this year, but there is no doubt that the extensive media attention delayed and interfered with the legal process and opened avenues for future appeal.
How an Arsonist Set Fire to Social Media
This week, the finger isn’t being pointed at the newsrooms but at the social networks. Accused Victorian arsonist Brendan Sokaluk has become the subject of many vicious social media postings and blogs, some revealing personal information that poses a risk to the presumption of innocence and the possibilities of a fair trial. The spreading of Sokaluk’s address and image – in contravention of the court order – has concerned the police and the courts. Threats have since been made against family members and his ex-girlfriend as the community bands together online link a wild west lynching party, convinced of Sokaluk’s guilt before a single piece of evidence is heard in a controlled court.
Laurel Papworth debated the issue of social media breaching the court order with criminal lawyer David Galbally QC on Channel Seven’s Sunrise program. It is available to view over at Laurel’s excellent blog for those that missed it. Sadly for such an important issue, I feel both sides put forward flawed arguments that failed to understand the inevitable need for the regulation of citizen journalism, as well as public hate-mongering through social media.
Yes, I know it isn’t cool to be a social media advocate that suggests regulation or responsibility, but there is no avoiding the truth that blogging is synonymous with journalism and social media synonymous with public broadcast. To deny the need for similar standards would be to advocate anarchy and the destruction of online information under the weight of misinformation, personal agendas and mainstream unethical behaviour.
But I’m Not a Journalist?
How often have I heard that defence when bloggers breach the journalism code of ethics. If you are behind the wheel of a car with your foot on the accelerator and the car is moving, you are the driver – even if you protest that you don’t hold a licence. In the same way, if you blog about a news event and provide new information or insight that adds to the story in a format that broadcasts it to a wide audience of readers / viewers, you are producing journalism – even if you’ve never collected a pay packet under that title.
The desire by many bloggers and social media participants to absolve themselves of responsibility for anything they write or upload is ridiculous and open to abuse. These words cause damage. No one else is responsible for creating, publishing and broadcasting those words except the writer. Bloggers and social media users need to understand that using these platforms comes with rules – currently vague and assumed, but in light of recent events don’t be surprised if the written version isn’t soon enshrined in law. You want to talk the talk online? Prepare to walk the walk.
Aren’t Facebook and the Social Network Providers Responsible
Galbally argued that Facebook should be held to account for the content uploaded by its users. This argument is dragged out often when discussing illegal online activity. Either the entertainment industry is trying to sue ISPs for the downloading activites of their customers or YouTube is attacked for the content uploaded by its users, by those with little undestanding of the framework of the online space.
If a politician were to use a speech to incite hatred or break libel laws, should the sound guy controlling the microphone be deemed responsible for not switching it off? Facebook (and Twitter and MySpace and YouTube, etc) is the microphone. Making Facebook responsible for the potential breaches of the court supression order by its users would be tantamount to absolving the users of any responsibility in making the comments. In fact, social media sites have behaved quickly to limit the damage. Wikipedia pages have been pulled down, MySpace removed Sokaluk’s profile page and Facebook cracked down on the hate groups that had begun to form.
It isn’t surprising that some critics see the networks as an easy target to stomp on – particularly as critics are almost universally outsiders with little experience of how these communities function. Yet it is sad to see Facebook dragged through the mud again because of something that is ultimately beyond its control and rightly so.
Private versus Public Conversation
Laurel argued this morning that human nature dictates people will discuss this information in their own social circles anyway. Someone in the office will talk about how they know the guy. Friends at the football match will swap information and opinions on the topic. She put forward that these same conversations are now going online because of the huge take-up of social media. People want to behave in the same way and are largely unaware of the wide-reaching ramifications of doing so in a public, not private medium.
This, I feel, is the flaw in the argument. It is one thing to chat with the mates over a beer. People will always gossip, spread rumours and vent frustrations in their social groups. These are definitely private conversations with no real impact. Social media is definitely public. Absolving people of responsibility because they somehow don’t understand that Twitter or Facebook or blogs are a public medium is a weak argument. I find it hard to believe the majority of users don’t understand the distinction and aren’t, in fact, completely aware that they are broadcasting their message to the widest possible audience. Blogging, just to take one example, is designed to attract public traffic and a story revealing information on the Victorian arsonist is definite ‘headline-grabbing’ material. Denying that is to deny the very nature of social media as a content sharing medium.
So, just as it is illegal to incite violence or hatred by publicly addressing a large crowd with calls of vigilantism or threats, social media vilification of Sokaluk should also be enforced as an offence.
It’s Too Hard to Police
Is it? A Facebook profile can’t be traced back? A blogger can’t be identified? An IP address can’t be tracked?
Social media isn’t anonymous, even when users think they are being clever hiding behind fake names and doctored avatars. Sure, there are IT geeks out there that can sit in their basement for hours to find ways to completely cover their tracks, but that 0.01% or less of the social media audience is not really the threat here.
Laurel Papworth suggests online regulation or policing is insurmountable, as described in her post following up on her Sunrise appearance today.
“So everytime Facebook delete anti-Fan pages, they go right back up. Wikipedia had to delete pages on the suspected arsonist, so have MySpace and other social networking sites. And the more they delete the more they will pop up. I just noticed another 5 have been created this afternoon.”
Sure, people are very good at quickly throwing up content. webmasters and mods are very good at bringing it down again. Should we throw our hands in the air in the face of spammers who do the same thing to our social networks every day? Of course not. If a post or comment doesn’t belong, it needs to be removed and action taken against the user behind it where appropriate. Why should we treat those who are hate-mongering or posting trial-sensitive information any differently from anyone else who abuses a social network? Yes, you read that right. This is abusing the network. This behaviour brings communities into disrepute, forces additional moderation, provokes argument and name-calling and transforms networks into distinctly unsocial media.
Certainly, the internet is a big place with millions of pages and billions of comments swimming through the ether. But the most serious and damaging breaches are not hard to find; social media is very good at getting itself noticed, after all. The issue then becomes investigating and tracking back the sheer number of offences that would be revealed.
Don’t make any mistake – if any other illegal activity were to happen on blogs or within social networks, the net would tighten very quickly, regardless of how many pages were deemed offenders. Try sticking child porn or terrorist material on your blog and see what happens. The issue isn’t whether social media is too hard to police but when the policing will start once bloggers find themselves held responsible under the same court orders.
If the law is changed to cover social media under the same guidelines as journalism, including court suppression orders, it won’t take long for a few cases to deter future online witch-hunts. If a clear line is drawn in the proverbial sand, undoubtedly the message would start to permeate the social media culture and the number of offenses would drop.
What about those sites located on foreign servers, I hear you cry. Sure, issuing takedown notices can’t always be effective. A server located in Turkmenistan could still host a blog from Melbourne that carries just too much information. Yet that doesn’t mean the writer of the blog still can’t be traced and action taken at the root.
Time For Citizen Journalism to Come of Age
Increasingly, journalists are becoming bloggers. In the US, SixApart launched ‘The TypePad Journalist Bailout Program‘ aimed at journalists laid off in the downturn and helping them to become successful one-man blogging operations online. The line between journalism and blogging will continue to blur and bloggers will find it harder to hide behind the outmoded and naive idea that the two are seperate. This recent debate indicates that the time for social media users to grow up and accept responsibility for their own actions is upon us and no amount of users sticking their heads in the sand will avoid it.
(Further reading: Silence in Court – Five Internet Legal Myths Dispelled)
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Tags: arsonist, blogging, Laurel Papworth, social media
Kimota, this piece certainly puts all of the concerns on the table, which is A Good Thing. One important nuance, though. Your phrase…
…suggests that social media (an unhelpful term, but I’d be fighting a losing battle there!) isn’t covered by current law . But it is. The term “publication” is defined in a way that includes mentioning it or writing it down and giving it to just one person.
A letter to a friend, even if intended to be private, is still publication to an audience of one. A loud conversation in a pub is publication (or maybe we should say “broadcast”), if only to a small audience.
Sending a single tweet on Twitter is publication. However I suspect very few think of it in those terms when they blurt out “Restaurant X has crap food, I got food poisoning. Don’t go there.” Even though that’s actionable defamation.
Laurel is right when she says that gossip is “only human nature”. Robin Dunbar suggests that gossip is a core element of primate group bonding. It ain’t going to stop.
The current law worked (most of the time, anyway) when only “professional media” could have a wide impact. Gossip was local, small-scale, invisible and ephemeral. While everyone muttering “It was Fred smith what done it, you know” was breaking the law, it had virtually no real impact upon the judicial process and could be ignored.
Now those ephemeral conversations are in public, much more visible, faster-spreading and so on. They also cross political boundaries which in the past were easier to manage. And there’s a whole middle-ground of blogs, Facebook groups etc etc. None of these people are professionally trained to think about their conversations as publication, and very few will have encountered these issues in school — though perhaps civics classes are starting to cover them? And yet what they say now can have a major impact.
Journalism and blogging are the same thing,and always have been: writing about the news (small-n) and views of the day. It’s just that Journalism (with a capital N) was a specific job title in the industrial-age media factories. Now, someone can “do journalism’, whether they call it that or blogging or whatever, without the factory.
Human nature versus black-letter Law. What is the best way to deal with this radically different new situation? Presumable something else must also change radically to preserve the balance of Justice. It won’t be human nature. So what changes, and how?
I do not have an answer…
You’re right – the law does cover online publication – but it has never to my knowledge pursued citizen journalists outside of the official media industry.
There is an education issue here – most people don’t understand how a Tweet or a blog post can count as publication and open themselves up to serious repercussions. Sad to say, but I don;t think realisation will really set in until there are a couple of publicised cases of bloggers being sued for defamation or Facebook users hauled in front of the courts for incitement to riot or whatever the case may be. Until there are repercussions, even if people understand the law, they will continue to believe it will never be enforced.
[...] Blogging the Arsonist – Citizen Journalism and Social Media Responsibility [...]
And, Kimota, even with a few high-profile cases, and even with education, people will still continue to be stupid and “break the rules”.
Witness speed cameras on the roads. The speed limits are clearly posted, every driver has heard of speeding fines, the locations of the cameras are clearly marked in street directories and sometimes there are even signs warning of the cameras’ presence… and yet the cameras continue to pull in revenue. Only this week there was a TV report that one camera in Australia actually pulls in $12,000 dollars every day!
Consider it a tax on the stupid, I suppose…
There will always be those that believe the rules don’t apply to them. Speeding cameras and fines are a perfect example of the ridiculous attitude that says enforcing the speed laws is somehow revenue raising and isn’t about reducing the impact of idiots at car accident black spots. If you believe it is revenue raising, then bloody well drive below the speed limit which is clearly posted and don’t give them your money!
Anyway, I digress… The question is about taking responsibility for one’s actions, something which many in the social media community seem loath to do. If I hear “It’s too hard” one more time I’ll have a seisure.
Might seem a petty point but I was involved in one of the facebook flame wars over this very issue. You chose the title for this article “Blogging the Arsonist”.
One of the things that so many people have a hard time understanding…he is not an arsonist – he is an alleged arsonist.
My biggest gripe watching the facebook discussion as its members swelled to 3000 and it descended into name calling, was watching the skyscraper ad on the right go from always showing paid ads to always showing facbook’s own skyscraper….suggesting that the increased traffic had filled all the ad inventory sold for that month.
Not only did FB facilitate the breaching of Australian law, they profited from it.
History shows only too well where human nature will go when it isn’t held to account. The anonymity provided by the internet is (perhaps) the last bastion of unfettered misbehaviour. The answer would appear to be quite obvious; every online presence should be traceable to a real human being with real-world credentials and online publisher irresponsibility should be penalised just as it is anywhere else. With these two simple steps in place you’d find accountability for actions takes on a whole new meaning for internet bullying under the guise of anonymity and genuine, intelligent discussion might rise to the surface building a productive community instead of an internet gangland.
[...] and citizen, is there a need for some form of code or restriction on citizen journalism? Jonathon Crossfield discusses this further, arguing that it is time for citizen journalism to make the next step: [...]