I feel passionate about how social media gets potrayed in the media when an awful event happens. The headlines around the London Riots are about how social networking 'caused' the riots.
Sure bad people will abuse good things. Sure lazy employees will abuse the time spent on Facebook. Etc etc
But the answer is not to restrict social media. That to me is the equivalent of removing all phones because you often get a crank caller! The answer is to address bad behaviour and use social networking to organise the good citizens to defeat the bad!
Instead of allowing social networking to be owned by the bad guys, why not good citizens reclaim it. There has been many great uses of the web during the riots - calling out rioters, organising street clean ups, informing people.
Social networking is a community - we can choose whether it is used for good or evil. I would love the governement to say
"We are not going to let the bad guys own social networking, we need to think of ways that we can use social networking to thwart the bad guys, to help rebuild our communities and to bring government closer to the people"
The interesting thing is that the rioters say 'the don't feel listened to', political speeches aren't going to change that...but twitter, facebook etc just might!
