20 April 2013 was the day where Malaysia 13th General Election officially start. Even though, it has been months, even years of campaigning by all political parties. Everyone was eagerly awaits the announcement by the Prime Minister in dissolving the parliament. The excitement was to the roof but not to the level of euphoria. That has to wait of course until the ballots been counted on 5 May 2013.
The excitement of campaigning had led to cyberwar between political parties and their supporters. The last election where the political tsunami occured, political analysts had agreed that the social medias have played their part significantly. The PR used the social media to reach out to the people. It is very effective because for the first time, they denied BN 2/3 majority. BN use the traditional media excessively and the impact was mediocre.
Now, with the overwhelming result in the last election, social media has become a must in political campaign. According to socialbaker.com, the provider of social media analytic and statistic tool, there are 13,376,060 total Facebook users in Malaysia placing it in the rank of top 20 nations in the world. That is almost half of the population in Malaysia. The top four popular political figures in Malaysia are Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohammad (2,074,114 fans), Dato' Sri Mohammad Najib Abdul Razak (1,610,194 fans), Dato' Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat (899,222 fans) and Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim (496,554 users).
With this large number of netizen, ethics in information shared in the social media should be observed. You cannat simply post or share news or articles that you read in the social media and share the information without verifying it. Furthermore, you cannot share the article without the consent of the owner of the information.
Verify the Information
The information should be verify unless it is from a trusted sources for example Reuters, AFP, Bernama and the like. These are the news agencies that have a very high reputation in providing news. You cannot simply share the information that you read in a blog, and later distribute the news by clicking the share button on the Facebook or Twitter. According to Patzakis (2012), there has been 689 cases in United States involved social media, MySpace (315 cases), Facebook (304 cases), LinkedIn (39 cases) and Twitter (30 cases).
A news or article that has no evidence or fact to support the allegation is consider as a libel. Libel is part of defamation in written or printed form. It is a tort and making it liable for civil suit for damages if the person can prove that the news or article is a lie.
Consent from the owner
You must get the consent from the owner before distributing or sharing the information. The article is consider to be the intellectual property of the author through the Copyright Act. Unless there is written clause from the author that allows the article to be disributed.
Can the Social Media be held responsible?
One should read the terms and conditons written before you click and wrap the agreement with the social media. For example, Facebook has a Statement of Rights and Responsibilities that specify the sharing of the content and information. It also has a clause on dispute that read:
"If anyone brings a claim against us related to your actions, content or information on Facebook, you will indemnify and hold us harmless from and against all damages, losses, and expenses of any kind (including reasonable legal fees and costs) related to such claim. Although we provide rules for user conduct, we do not control or direct users' actions on Facebook and are not responsible for the content or information users transmit or share on Facebook. We are not responsible for any offensive, inappropriate, obscene, unlawful or otherwise objectionable content or information you may encounter on Facebook. We are not responsible for the conduct, whether online or offline, or any user of Facebook."
By this term, the Facebook is disclaiming itself from user's action and conduct of sharing the content or information on its platform.
You are responsible for your own action
The obligation to answer or for the action and conduct done fall under the person who perfrom the action. You cannot simply click the share button with intention to distribute and then claiming that you are not responsible for it. You will be held liable to the action.
Be very careful when you sharing and distributing the information on the social media. Especially in this current situation within Malaysia. A lot of sensitive contents been shared in the social media. Be smart. Before you share, investigate the sources of the information. If you are confident that the information has not been doctored, then, just share it. But, be responsible. Why do you want to share the information if you do not find it useful to others?
References:
https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10151420037600301
http://blog.x1discovery.com/2012/03/14/689-published-cases-involving-social-media-evidence-with-full-case-listing/
http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/malaysia
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