Verifying Viral Veracity?
Rajash Rawal and Paul Nixon Academy of European Studies & Communication Management, The Hague University, The Netherlands R. Rawal @ hhs. nl P. G. Nixon @ hhs. nl
Abstract: Rumour and gossip have always been part of political life. The pages of history are littered with incidents where rumours and half‐truths have changed the political landscape. New technologies, concomitant applications and the rise of the citizen journalist have exponentially increased the scope, reach and spread of such rumours. Viral messaging is maturing and we will give examples of how rumour based video clips made by individuals have affected government and political life. We will also examine the rise of social networks as alternative spaces for political discourse. How are governments and politicians to respond? The recent paedophilia scandal in British politics and the use of social media, Twitter in particular, to spread the gossip has brought the issue of journalistic ethics to the fore. Government and democracy thrive on trust. The advent of 24‐hour news and 24 hour politics places great pressure on institutions and individuals to manage their own image via structured information outputs. Rumour rebuttal is a key component of a successful campaign. This paper questions the root of our information sources. Social media has allowed rumour and gossip to take on new lives. Information can be spread( globally) at the click of a mouse. The danger, of course, is that there is no form of journalistic ethics or standards applied to such communication and this leads to a rise in misinformation. Journalists are forever on the hunt for a novel and exciting story, on occasion the source is the Internet and their verification of the story is debatable. We aim to explore the impact this has on government and democracy and stress the important of due diligence by journalists and society alike. Misinformation is a political tool like any other, and it ' s use must be carefully considered by all.
Keywords: rumour / gossip, viral, social‐networks, politics, and citizen‐journalism
1. Introduction
Rumour and gossip have always been part of political life. The pages of history are littered with incidents where rumours and half‐truths have changed the political landscape. New technologies, concomitant applications and the rise of the citizen journalist have exponentially increased the scope, reach and spread of such rumours. Such rumours whilst seemingly fleeting can have considerable longevity of life( Sunstein, 2009) and may, after a period of subsidence of interest, resurface as supporting evidence to subsequent rumours concerning the same‘ target’. This can be viewed as the modern day online social media expression of behavioural contagion, whereby a number of human beings can act together quickly even when they have very little else in common.”( Shibutani, 1966) It is what we know, in this context, as viral politics. Viral messaging is maturing and we will give examples of how rumour based video clips made by individuals, as well as other online material have affected government and political life. We will also examine the rise of social networks as alternative spaces for political discourse.
How are governments and politicians to respond? The paedophilia scandal in British politics erupted into the mainstream media in November 2012, following a concerted whispering campaign via social media platforms, whereby a senior Conservative politician Lord McAlpine was wrongly accused of involvement by an individual who had been a victim of said abuse at a children’ s home in Wrexham, North Wales. The furore around the allegations and the BBC’ s conduct in their reporting and editorial decision making processes relating to the issue led to the resignation of the BBC’ s Director General. The rumours were transmitted over varying social media both in terms as a news reporting mechanism but also as a touch paper for the development and exposure of multi media resources that sought to stoke the fires of public unease and disgust. As an emotive issue it is rife material for the rumour mongerers. A prime example is that of the you tube video produced by the far right British National Party which sought to implicate other political figures both at national and local levels in the wider context of child abuse( http:// www. youtube. com / watch? v = fQ5pUZ4RDds)
Such uses of social media, Twitter in particular, to spread similar notions of political gossip on numerous topics has, in this age of citizen journalism brought the issue of journalistic ethics to the fore.
Government and democracy thrive on trust and there can be no doubt that this dependency is amplified in an information age( Nixon, 2010). The advent of 24‐hour news and 24 hour politics places great pressure on
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