A neutral platform for the good, bad and ugly

NET RESULTS:ARE THE internet's social networking spaces - discussion boards, e-mail lists and profile sites - examples of closeknit communities created across distances that enable friendship and contact? Or are they harsh and cold environments that nurture cyberbullies?

Two much-publicised recent cases, both deeply tragic, suggest the latter. In one, a 19-year-old died by suicide live over a streaming webcast on webcasting site Justin.tv, egged on by viewers.

In the other case, a 49-year-old mother went on trial, accused of causing the suicide of a teenager her daughter disliked by duping her on networking site MySpace. The mother, Lori Drew, created a fake teen boy persona who first flirted with neighbour Megan Meier, then dumped her. Meier took her own life shortly afterwards.

Drew was convicted of three misdemeanour counts but cleared of three felonies by the jury.

The cases are distressing and disturbing. How could viewers watch someone die by suicide and post comments on the site goading him on?

How could it take 12 hours before someone notified police, the man's body was found and the webcam turned off?

How could a middle-aged mother seek revenge on a 13-year-old child - a girl she reportedly knew was emotionally fragile - by so cruelly fooling her into believing she was first adored, then rejected, by a cute teenager? Even if, as she claimed, the girl was unpleasant to her own daughter?

Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur, in which he pillories what he sees as the social networking web's empowerment of the mediocre, wrote in the UK Independent: "That Justin.tv viewers proved to be so heartless about such an awful tragedy speaks, I think, to the emptiness of the much vaunted conversation, community and collaboration on the 'social' web."

But some perspective is needed here. As tragic as these cases are, why is the technology on trial? Bullying and human nastiness have been with us always. Not long ago, entire communities, including women and children, used to watch public hangings in downtown Dublin. There will always be those who are fascinated by what disgusts the wider community.

Yes, the internet and its possibility of anonymity enable morons and the morally bankrupt to surface easily in social networks. But surely live mobs serve the same purpose? It is easy to jeer and encourage violence from within the anonymity of a crowd, wherever it is located, however it is construed.

We read all the time of the indifference of people on the streets to suffering and violence - cases where no one calls the Garda, no one intervenes, no one notices that a slumped body is actually a dead body.

In real and online life, people choose not to intervene, or to intervene in disturbing ways, sometimes in innocence. Sometimes we simply suspect we are being duped and ignore what is happening before us. Other times, we are callous - witness the beachgoers in Italy who ignored the bodies of two Roma teens laid out after a drowning last summer.

Sometimes people do not believe what they are watching. More than 650,000 individuals broadcast all types of live video on 90,000 channels on Justin.tv. From the reported comments, some viewers, probably even some hecklers, thought the video was a hoax. One person posted this comment on a story about the case on Informationweek.com: "I watched the video over and over again and talked with a popular guy on Justin.tv about this and we were thinking it's fake . . . but after the video on Justin.tv got deleted I started to think maybe he did kill himself, maybe it was true . . . Now that I see this [story] I know it's true and my heart goes out to his family."

Many users of the site say they did try to notify police, some from as far away as India.

While the use of the internet to bully or encourage violence or self harm is worrying, the internet is just a platform. It is just one more way of doing things that have always been done - good things and bad things.

I've read of many examples of web communities intervening to help distressed people, including to stop suicides. In one case, a robbery in Liverpool was reported to police after it was seen on a webcam being viewed in Texas.

I've used discussion boards and e-mail lists and other networking technologies for more than two decades - since they were text based, before the web. Through them, I've established large networks of friends and contacts. I've learned from them and helped others to learn.

Social networking connects not just the people who can easily mix with the "real world" but it also offers an important resource to those who cannot - people with disabilities, elderly people, isolated people, the housebound.

Networking technologies do much good for society. They democratise by making information widely available in places where it may be controlled by repressive governments and they help human-rights advocates campaign in places where their lives would be at risk.

Yes, there are unpleasant, even appalling, people and websites. And yes, people may not be who they seem. But we hear about awful cases because they are rare, not because they are common.

Set on a scales, the internet as a means of positive connection and learning far outweighs its misuse for abasement and attack.

klillington@irish-times.ie

Blog: www.techno-culture.com