Japanese earthquake and reactions to it on social media

One of the most talked about issues these days is Friday’s devastating earthquake and its consequences. Social media are not an exception – recent events in Japan are one of the most common issues mentioned on these sites. I found an interesting article on Mashable about how Facebook users reacted to the news about the earthquake and events happening afterwards.

As the article states, on March 11 there have been 4.5 million status updates from 3.8 million users from all around the world including words ‘Japan’, ‘earthquake’ or ‘tsunami’. On the site is also an interesting animation showing the map of the world and animation on when and where postings about Japanese natural disaster were published. Beside being the platform for sharing the most recent news and reports on the events, expressing condolence and sympathies with the affected, was Facebook also among the quickest tools to use to get in touch with people in the areas affected by the natural disaster.

Source: mashable.com

 

Also days after the earthquake many posts on Facebook include Japan and topic’s related to it. Beside the above-mentioned reasons people now use Facebook also for making donations for the people in devastated areas.

Similar situation was also on Twitter where reaction the earthquake was immediate and rapidly trending – not only around the world but also in Japan. There have been around 1200 tweets per minute coming from Tokio. Twitter played even more important role – in the published tweets were posted estimated times of when the tsunami was about to hit the US coast. The estimations were published even before the official government warning was released.

In the event of the Japanese earthquake social media played prominent role – not only for sharing news and reports on what is going on in Japan, but also for getting in touch with people affected by the disaster after phone system knocked down. And they may play even greater role in following what is going on these days and the following days after the consequences of the earthquake are still about to reveal. General public worldwide seems to be doubting whether official governmental reports and reports coming from the nuclear plants are true and honest therefore they might trust more postings on social media coming from people being in the middle of happening.

Facebook, revolutions and traditional media

Yesterday I read a comment from Sandra Bašić Hrvatin on Facebook and its role in revolutions in Africa. The topic and her comment closely relates to one of the issues we had the last week in the class online discussion. As Ms Bašić Hrvatin points, Facebook, nonetheless its clear effectiveness in spreading the word and mobilizing people to join revolutionary movements, shouldn’t be glorified. Facebook is, as Ms Bašić Hrvatin states, only a technology and revolutions are not started by technologies but people using these technologies. To this or at least similar point came also our last week’s discussion. New media are only tools. But how these tools are used and for what purposes, is up to the person controlling and using them. My point is that we shouldn’t understand new media as something omnipotent but look at them with a critical eye and transfer this criticism also to our usage.

Another interesting point in the abovementioned comment is, how traditional media portray only one interest – the interest of their owners, the capital controlling them – and Facebook offers platform for expressing wide range of interests and images. Basically any Facebook user can portray his/her own perspective on world and interpretation of current events. And this enabled nations in oppressed countries to see different picture of current situation than is presented in traditional media.

Even though I agree that this is a positive side of Facebook and other similar social media, it still doesn’t allow large segment of people to portray their own reality because they don’t have access to technology or required knowledge/skills to use them. So despite offering possibilities to participate in reporting on current events and situation, also new media perform some sort of gatekeeping, which may not necessarily be their own fault. Inaccessibility of technological infrastructure and certain degree of knowledge and skills required to use these tools still leaves out vast segment of people.

 

Pretending to be someone else

If you want to create a Facebook, Twitter, etc.  account you don’t really need to be super intelligent or put huge amount of effort in it. All you need is name, valid e-mail and in some cases birth date. And as easy as it is to create an account for yourself, it is for someone else. It’s not exactly hard to get someones name, create an e-mail account and come up with a date of birth.

Especially easy is to get this information about publicly exposed people. This is probably the reason why Angelina Joli and Brad Pitt have almost countless Facebook profiles, Tom Cruise and George Bush are not far behind. Also Twitter accounts can seem to be something they really are not. Dalai Lama’s Twitter account raised some controversy when claiming “Welcome to the official Twitter page of His Holiness the Dalai Lama–administered by The Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama,” when it really wasn’t.  British actors Emma Watson and Ewan McGregor had problems because of information published on allegedly theirs Twitter accounts.  They both denied having the Twitter accounts and publishing any information on them.

This probably doesn’t cause much of a problem to these people, they might not even know about all of the profiles and accounts created on their behalf. But does this make it acceptable? Can you just take someones name and photo, and pretend to be someone else?

I would say no. I still consider this as a way of identitiy theft. Even though it is not as damaging and serious as e.g. credit card identity theft, it is still nothing else than an identitiy theft. The availibility of information and different technological tools doesn’t mean they can be exploited in a negative way. And creating social media profiles and accounts on someone else’s behalf are not an exception. Even though the intents are completely harmless, it is inappropriate and unacceptable to use someone’s personal information, pretend to be someone else and deceive others.

Writing? Video? Photo?

Do you think you are not good at writing? And because of that you don’t want to actively use various social media? Well, this is not a problem at all. The beauty of social media is also their multiformity. Instead of writing blog, twitting short thoughts, writing notes on you Facebook page, you can grab your camera and take a photo that tells all. Or even better, you can make a video. Is not that difficult. With all the technology available nowadays is actually really easy. You can even edit it with several different programs enabling that. Using photos and videos can make social media even more appealing – it’s hard to resist a funny video or an interesting photo.

And my theory in practice

Overcoming fear of the New

It’s in human nature to be afraid of unknown. This is probably very good and much needed defense mechanism that prevents humans from thoughtlessly jumping in unknown situations. But this same fear presents huge barrier for every new technology. Radio and television, two media so common and widespread nowadays, were not greeted open-handed. People were afraid of the influence they might have and loss of their privacy. And the some fear rises nowadays with regard to social media.

Social media are facing with concerns about privacy and security issues. Besides the concern of revealing too much personal information, there are also problems with spreading viruses through social media applications. The letter seems to be a real problem for some organizations – Maryland General Assembly even blocked Facebook and MySpace (http://www.juddlegum.com/blog/2009/02/maryland-general-assembly-bans-facebook/).  All these concerns might be just another moral panic accompanying new technologies. But I find it interesting and worth making some more research about. Getting to know different social media tools and learning how to properly and efficiently use them, seems a good first step toward overcoming these concerns. I started with taking a Social Media class. And now, there are several different articles addressing these issues waiting for me to read them.