My take on social media’s role in the cat-bin-lady-cctv thing

Hey, it’s one of those posts where Pete starts of wanting to make a quick point, gets bogged down in the details and then struggles to come to a snappy conclusion! Enjoy!

Okay, here’s the tweet I was expecting to see.

Not picking on Digital Maverick as I’m sure the sentiment is being echoed all over. Here’s another which echoes the disquiet people in the West Mids have felt having seen it emerge from our patch.

If you’ve somehow missed it, or are reading this in the future when it’s all been forgotten, a lady threw a cat in a bin, was caught on CCTV which was put online and is currently under police protection as the world goes mad. It’s a nice little perfect media storm as on the one hand it’s really quite odd and on the other it’s really not very odd at all. You can be outraged while also understanding how to be outraged.

(BBC News | Boing Boing)

What I don’t want to do is address the rights and wrongs on throwing cats into bins or posting cctv video online or any of that. What I do want to address is the unease people are rightly feeling at the role social networks and online environments have played in the identification and hounding of this woman.

As with all things to do with The Internet it’s more complicated than you’d like to think, although the world is more complicated than most people would like to think which explains the Daily Mail, but I digress. There’s a reason people like me show pictures like this when we’re talking about the social internet.

It’s to drive home the point that when everyone is potentially connected to everyone else things get very complex indeed. So whenever you think of some simple explanation for why something happened because of the Internet picture that image in you head.

The same applies when someone tells you they can guarantee amazing results using “the power of social media” or some rubbish. They can’t. All they can do is amplify what’s already there by applying tools and strategies in intelligent ways. How successful these are depends on the people in the network and people, if you hadn’t figured it out yet, are complicated and weird.

So you’ve got a complex system connecting complex individuals in a complex world. But there’s more.

One thing we know the social Internet does well is help to amplify human activity. If you’re part of a matured network, whatever platforms it exists on (Twitter and Facebook are just dominant aspects of social activity), information will spread across it much faster than it would have 10 years ago. And since the networks are predominantly bonded through conversation a byproduct of this information is action which in turn is accelerated.

For those who’ve been working with this stuff for a year or more this isn’t news. But the way it’s been communicated has been generally positive. Social Media will help bond communities, boost news dissemination and generally make the world a better place. And, despite my tendency towards misanthropic pessimism I would agree that online social tools can make the world better. People tend to do good things. This is how we’ve developed this thing called society.

But, of course, people also do bad things. And, because good and bad are subject to interpretation and such, people who do bad things often think they’re doing good things. And, of course, some people are just dumb. This also explains the Daily Mail and countless other things that big media exploit and serve, but again I digress.

I’m rambling. In case you’ve forgotten what we’re talking about, here’s a picture.

So, my point. Let’s break it down.

People are complex creatures who work together to achieve mutual goals.

The Internet is a complex system which amplifies human communication and activity.

While the medium does affect and inform the content of the message and the manner in which it is processed (cf anonymity on 4chan) the starting point or source is people. The online/offline difference in environment is analogous to the difference between meeting in a lunchtime cafe or a Friday night bar.

In short, then, social media doesn’t hunt down and demonise people but when people hunt down and demonise people using social media it’s a lot quicker and louder.

The good thing is this sort of phenomena doesn’t happen that often, or at least no on this sort of scale. This was a perfect storm that hit all the right buttons. I mean, the message was communicated via the template of a funny cat video and everyone knows what to do with a funny cat video.

But if you’re of the opinion that “social media” is exclusively a tool for positive, constructive action then you’re going to be horribly, brutally disappointed because we’re talking about people.