To the point: curse or blessing?

Some lament the loss of privacy, others welcome the creation of transparency. Cultural pessimists rail against shallow tweets and irrelevant status messages along the lines of "I'm going to eat a sandwich," while extroverts delight in witty posts and share their party photos with friends. Uninformed tweets have already ruined some politicians' careers, and others have led to a shitstorm because of moral apologists, who also exist in social media.

During Hurricane Sandy, countless social media were used. On the one hand for mobile communication, because there was no more electricity, but then also for prevention. Alarm messages and notices from the rescue forces were disseminated in this way. But of course, voyeuristic disaster images were also disseminated. For a while, social media were the only sources of information. Curse or blessing?

The two rampage killers, who killed a soldier in broad daylight in London with a knife and a butcher's cleaver, asked passersby to record one of them's confused words using a smartphone - knowing that the hate tirade would also find its way into the classic media via social media. That's what it found, triggering discussions on media ethics. Curse or blessing?

The organizers of the "Tanz dich frei" rally in Bern "successfully" called for participation via Facebook. The result: violent confrontation with many injured and large property damage. The Bernese police do not rule out an Internet manhunt. At the same time, however, Bernese security director Reto Nause wants to take legal action against Facebook. Curse or blessing?

While thousands of demonstrators in Turkey take to the streets and fight street battles with the police, Prime Minister Erdogan rails against the social networks. He says that only lies are spread there. He says they are the "worst threat to society." But the traditional media in Turkey, intimidated by rigid legislation, carry little to nothing about the demonstrations. Most of the information runs on Twitter. Meanwhile, Turkish police have apparently already arrested dozens of Twitter users. Curse or blessing?

There are countless more examples. Social media can be a curse or a blessing, but we can no longer avoid them; they are part of our networked society. We have to learn how to deal with them.

Pierre C. Meier, Editor-in-Chief pc.meier@werbewoche.ch