WeMedia & Democracy - Social media and Hacking

Intro: In today’s connected world, many of us are members of at least one, if not more, social networking services. The influence and reach of social media enterprises, such as Facebook (more than 600M active users per month) and Twitter (more than 140M active users), is staggering and as communications tools they offer a global reach delivering almost instantaneous communications to huge multinational audiences. HOW DOES HACKING AND SOCIAL MEDIA CROSS WITH DEMOCRACY?: Social media is attractive for hacktivists because it is a forum for people on the Internet and where big discussions take place. Hijack a forum like this and you have an effective soapbox to get your message across. Hardly a day passes without news of another high profile breach by hacktivists and social media influencers are in the crosshairs. Are social media and hacktivism two ideas that are made for each other? Let's explore some thoughts and ideas and you can make up your own mind. HOW CITIZEN JOURNALISM CAN HELP SOCIETY: The ability of social media to spread news quickly is powerful, and obviously, has great potential for positive use but, like many things in life, it also has potential to be abused. In the case of the recent tragic events in Boston, the tweets started almost immediately and helped keep people informed and also warned people away from the area. Many of the tweets came from “citizen journalists” who were actually on the ground as the events unfolded and were able to describe first-hand what they witnessed. Even in the aftermath of that event, social media played a major part in helping to track down the suspects behind the tragic event. Law enforcement issued a general plea for information and the public gladly did what they could by publishing information, pictures, and videos of the event on the public forums provided by social media sites. Law enforcement was able to utilize this information available to put the pieces together. THE NEGATIVES: The downside of this highly visible means of public participation when looking for suspects in a highly charged situation, such as this, is that individuals may be wrongly accused. This is exactly what happened on certain social media sites where, notably, the Reddit service drew the most criticism. On their site users took the role not only of citizen journalist, but as citizen investigator too. Users began to look at the details and photos posted on the site and pieced together their own—and, as it turned out, incorrect—conclusions on the matter. False information and allegations began to circulate and took on a life of their own. POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA & CITIZEN JOURNALISM: The business of news is all about influencing people and social media provides a large audience to be influenced. Influence is such a fundamental concept in social media that there are even services which attempt to measure how much influence a user has in the social media space. Services, such as Klout, are designed to address how much influence a user has by using algorithms to measure a person’s “clout,” reflected by a number between 1 and 100, with a higher score indicates a higher level of influence. The news industry has long recognized the power of social media, not only for influencing people but also for gathering information. Today, just about all news outlets have a social media presence to receive and broadcast news to interested audiences. Twitter is the default choice to quickly get information out there. The 140 character limit on tweets forces users to be succinct and focus on main points when communicating. Since many Twitter users use the service on their mobile device and people generally have their mobile device near them all day, information can quickly reach people and be shared again (retweeted) propagating throughout the service's user population (“going viral”). Indeed, services like Twitter reach mass audiences and in turn hold a strong level of influence. Then when trusted media brands enter the social media space, their power of influence and reach is further magnified. We have seen how big news stories often drive follow-up events. Major disasters or terrorist acts have an immediate impact on stock markets. For example, the stock market crashed immediately following the September 11 attacks in 2001—and that happened before the advent of modern day social media services. Recently it was reckoned that the next market crash will be tweeted and given the role social media now plays in society there is no reason to doubt that. What is to stop criminals from perpetrating "pump and dump" stock market fraud by spreading market-moving rumors in social media which cause wild movements in stock prices? This is particularly true as professional trading systems are now even designed to “read” news headlines and react to news autonomously. CONSIDER THE ROLE OF HACKTIVISM IN A DEMOCRACY: Hacktivism is a modern-day evolution of traditional activism brought about by a confluence of technology, politics, and people power. While traditional activism still has its place, activist activity is increasingly being conducted online. There are likely a myriad of reasons why this is the case but one thing is for sure, activists have caught on to the powers of social media and the Internet as tools to further their cause. Many of them actively use Twitter to communicate and coordinate worldwide activities. Ultimately, hacktivists aim to draw attention to their causes which, naturally, makes big influencers their biggest targets. With so much power and influence under the control of trusted brand’s social media accounts it is not too difficult to see that hacktivists would try compromise these accounts and leverage some of the influence for themselves. We have all heard of various celebrity, politician, and corporate social media accounts being hacked, bogus messages being sent, and much of it relatively harmless. But what if a highly influential account is hacked and a plausible but fake message about some disaster or terrorist attack is broadcast to a nation? The possibility for causing panic and disruption is clear. Unfortunately, this type of activity is set to be become an increasingly common phenomenon. While much of the hacktivists’ attention is focused on the perceived injustices of governments and big business, along with global issues, they also zone in on local issues too. As some commentators say, it’s a bit of a wild west in the social media space right now, freedom of speech and civil liberties is hugely important, but so is the responsibility that comes with it. Source: http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/social-media-and-hacktivism-two-ideas-made-each-other