Category Archives: Facebook

English translation of my column at Hardware.no, where I regularly comment on social media issues. 

Nothing spreads faster than a juicy piece of gossip. Some local politicians in eastern Norway were recently reminded of this, after it became known that a mayor in the region is being investigated for sexual abuse of a minor.

The majority of mayors in the Gudbrandsdalen region were by no means associated with the issue. The name of the one under investigation, hadn’t even been published. But then came some blog posts, and later some Facebook updates: If it was a male mayor, and he is currently absent from work… well, it just had to be either Rune Øygard in Vågå municipality (who is in fact the suspect, but that was not yet public) or Dag Eirik Pryhn in Sel municipality.

And bam! Dag Eirik Pryhn fell victim to an ancient mechanism of society: We just love discussing other people. Gossiping, if you will. There’s nothing new about this, except for the speed at which rumors are spread, and how public they get.

Do you really “like” this?

Something happens in your society. Somebody searches on Google, or asks around the neighborhood. Some piece of information indicates who may be involved. The suspicion is published on a blog, a Facebook profile, a newspaper comments section, or as a Tweet. And then it spreads: The average Norwegian Facebook user has 230 “friends”. When we click the “like this” button, it goes a bit further than to the next door neighbor.

Good, old-fashioned gossiping over the garden fence isn’t dead, by no means. It has simply sprouted an online offspring. It’s a question of extreme distribution.

This is most commonly associated with criminal investigations. Rumors about who the suspect might be – maybe, possibly, imaginably – start spreading. Like they did after the terror attacks in Oslo on July 22; Anders Behring Breivik’s name was passed around on Twitter and Facebook hours before police officials had confirmed the identity of the accused or any official media had published the name.

But online gossip-mongering is a problem also in less criminal cases: Private pictures go AWOL, some kid’s party gets invaded, a teenage girl’s reputation is ruined by abuse of the school’s chat rooms.

All about distribution

We have always gossiped. We will always gossip. And gossip has always had really bad consequences for those affected.

However, two factors makes the problem greater than ever:

1. Google’s immense library of all kinds of information
2. The incredible distributional power of social media

While working on this column, I got a lot of great advice from my Facebook friends. Several of them believe that we actually behave better online than in the physical world, since we have begun to realize that all the stuff we post, is public. And noone wants to be seen as a bully.

This is probably true – as long as rumors concern someone we know, it’s a bit safer to pass them on in private messages or across a kitchen table. But all the rumors circulating about those we don’t know, spread faster and wider than ever. Distributing a rumor worded by someone else, isn’t as hard. It seems harmless enough, as long as it doesn’t concern somebody we need to look in the eye the next morning.

When the web pressures the media

The worst part is when the online rumor mill gets intense enough to manipulate the mainstream agenda. In the sexual abuse case I mentioned earlier, media just published that “a mayor” somewhere in Norway was a suspect.

Of course, journalists knew which mayor, they simply elected not to publish that information. Journalists have ethical guidelines helping them remember that there are others than a mayor or a celebrity to keep in mind: The young girl. The mayor’s family. Their loved ones. The political governance of a small community.

Ordinary people don’t have formalized codes of conduct. We aren’t trained to recognize possibly harmful information. The gossip mongering became so intense that the administration in Vågå were forced to confirm that yes, their mayor Rune Øygard was in fact the mayor in question. The online gossip forced the national agenda.

Chastisement by law?

The other mayor in this case, the one who was wrongfully accused, is contemplating a lawsuit against the blogger. Maybe that’s what it takes. Most people don’t realize that what they write – or distribute – might just be libellous. Honestly, most don’t know what libel is.

In our time, freedom of speech is cited as an excuse for the most everyday things. Maybe it’s time for a public campaign on where freedom of speech ends and privacy begins.

In principle, a libel lawsuit concerning distribution of rumors on Facebook, Twitter, or blogs would be really interesting. This not-so-contemplated distribution, the one we think of as harmless, is perhaps the most dangerous kind of gossip-mongering.

We’re not likely to see a lawsuit of this kind anytime soon. So in the meantime, let’s practice: Think first. Think again. Now go ahead and click “like”.

I do apologize for not blogging as regularly as usual these past few weeks – I’ve been incredibly busy, and my blog has been suffering for it. Thankfully, it looks as if I’ll have just a little more time on my hands in the next few weeks, and I promise to be better for you.