A flutter about networks
The growth of the social network is an unstoppable phenomenon. For the third year running, Facebook, the clear leader in the world of new digital media, topped the Internet search charts in the US and elsewhere in the world, followed by the video website YouTube.
In the momentous news year of 2011 the social network, including the microblogging site Twitter, had a facilitating role to play in the Arab Spring while groups communicating on the seamless BlackBerry Messenger were blamed for using the service to run the logistics of the London riots.
While such an explosion of facile means of communications among restive people must be a worry for despotic regimes, what irritates an open society like India is the kind of unwelcome and outright demeaning content that can be loaded without checks and balances.
By no means are unduly sensitive politicians and “holy cow” figures of India the only people to be protected from depredations of unfettered free speech and expression. It makes sense for a society to seek safeguards against its people being pilloried for no reason other than their being public figures or celebrities.
But to serve legal notices on them, as a Delhi court did, to try and badger them into falling in line with censorship by the regime is not the answer. The approach of a meaningful dialogue with the digital media by the ministers Kapil Sibal and Sachin Pilot is the far better course of action. To cut the excesses, the media must also show a sense responsibility lest they become a detested haven for renegade or crazy opinion.
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