Take a look at this story, excitingly titled on the BBC News site “Council Twitter users face rebuke“.
Councillors in Cornwall could face being reported to the authority’s standards committee for using social networking sites.
The trouble is, no they’re not.
Later in the article:
It follows claims that a number of councillors used Twitter during a meeting and mocked other members.
If a councillor is found to breach the code of conduct for inappropriate comments, they could be suspended.
So this is about councillors saying naughty things, and not about them using Twitter, or whatever.
Another example of the easy fixation on technology as being the story, when it isn’t. The story is behaviour: people and the relationships they have with others.
We really don’t need anymore Twitter scare stories, it isn’t productive and it helps nobody.
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
There are some serious doubts about how the original story was put together, as you can see from the TPA’s comment to my post at http://www.libdemvoice.org/western-morning-news-twitter-17750.html
I agree entirely that these scare stories are getting tiresome, but it’s also likely in a world where traditional media feels so threatened (wrongly, I think).
However, I think the only way to beat this is to join ‘em – but then to use social media itself against them. I know there’s a school of thought that says that by responding to stories like this we simply fan the flames of bad publicity, but I don’t think we’re at a point yet where people know that networks themselves are safe. In the same way that @polljack has used the Daily Mail’s polls against them by publicising their more stupid ones, meaning people skewing the result, we should combat the scare stories. Comment on the stories online, email the paper’s letters pages, tweet and re-tweet. I don’t mean to complain, but simply to point out what you just pointed out – that the networks are fine, it’s the people who choose to use them inappropriately – and offering support for people via things like social media surgeries.
That way, every story that gene
Shame I hadn’t seen that you had blogged about this, as one of the councillors in question was sitting only a few seats along from you in the afternoon session today! I did chat with him about it, and it all seems like a very silly story cooked up by the press who seemed affronted that councillors were on Twitter during a council meeting. The tweets were jovial, cross party, and no-one was offended.