Social media, real time trending, and it's effect on today's world

This has been an interesting week for the world of social media in the UK (and the rest of the world). Two high profile events have been moved by the overwhelming volume of vocal protest on Twitter, Facebook, and traditional blogs.

It doesn't really matter what these events were this week. Next week there will be others. However, a quick look at them will serve as a good starting point.

The first of these was the seemingly crazy move by the solicitors Carter-Ruck to put a gagging order on the Guardian newspaper. The news, for me, was broken by the Guy Falkes' blog of parliamentary plots, rumours and conspiracy in this entry. Not only does the post list the question that's being suppressed, it links directly to the report that they are trying to suppress held on the wikileaks site.

Have these people not heard of the Steisand effect?

By morning the twitter stream was swamped with the outrage of this event. The documents on wikileaks were being freely linked to, many online blogs were writing about the injustice and the removal of the freedom of speech. The company behind this, Trafigura, became the highest trending topic on Twitter, and could be tracked around the globe on trendsmap. By mid-afternoon, before there was even an appeal hearing on the event, Carter-Ruck had backed down, the injunction was lifted, and the story was front page news.

----

Today Jan Moir made a mistake. Apart from writing for the Daily Mail that is.

She wrote an article headlined "Why there was nothing 'natural' about Stephen Gately's death." (since renamed as you'll see if you click on the link. The problems with the article are satirised here, here and here, and dealt with brilliantly by the fantastic Charlton Brooker here.

More is covered in those links than I need to go into here. However, all of that information, plus links to the Press Complaints Commission (and to a dedicated site they had to setup because of overwhelming volume!) came from Twitter.

----

In the last month I've learnt about excellent TV programs, environmental movements, campaigns against the abuse of science, the list goes on, all because of Twitter. Being plugged into this new social network allows an immediacy of information, and a vocal condemnation of injustices far quicker than at any other time in history.

However, is it all good. Taking the example of today; Jan Moir's article was clearly crap of the worst order, and highlighting that, complaining about it, and, hopefully, getting her reprimanded for writing it (and an editor somewhere for publishing it) is right. At some point today, all the advertising around the article was pulled. M&S and BT who were there initially are no longer there. That's going to hit the Daily Mail where it counts. However, at the same time, people were attacking Jan Moir herself. Name calling and personality attacks as bad as anything she had written. Her home address was also, allegedly, published, but wasn't actively re-tweeted. This is wrong! It was jested, partly seriously, that Twitter's icon should be replaced with a pitchfork illuminated by torchlight.

Where is all this taking us?

It was famously quoted that "A lie can run around the world before the truth can get it's boots on." Today the truth has some pretty fast boots!

Tweets that are incorrect, or downright malicious, can get posted and forwarded in just the same way as the good ones, but they are just as quickly stopped, refuted, and removed by the same mechanism. Twitter is at least as fast, and sometimes faster, than the "wire" that newspapers get their stories from. The problem with this is that, as with the wire, the stories are part formed, speculation, rumour, lacking in detail and fact. Yes, all that comes later, but in the early stages, the wrong information can be more dangerous than no information. Are we getting to the point where our own network could be used to instill fear and panic? Could it be used against us for disinformation? At the moment the network cleans itself. More sources appear, the story is ratified, details emerge. But, what if the story was too big, co-ordinated, the real sources may not get the truth out before there is lasting damage. Could the very networks that empower us, also lead to our destruction?

OK, that's probably going a little far! At present, the network is not all encompassing enough. Most people today will have passed the day in blissful ignorance to the Jan Moir story as they do to most events. They'll read a version of events tomorrow in their morning paper, or hear a cut down TV version on the evening news, but they're not aware of the events as the unfold. The network is fantastic, but inertia pulling on the old form of information is too strong foremost people at the moment. Give it 5 or 10 years, a lot more smartphones, and a slightly younger mindset coming of age and there may be something to talk about. Until then, a few of us can stay ahead of the pack, and make sure that the small (or large) injustices in the world don't go unnoticed.