This is incomplete and a lot of the more important bits are still unwritten, but I'd love your feedback. Specifically, I'd like to know where you might want to hear more. Is the event itself clear? My goal is to begin the dialectic with dialogue, yes, but also to establish the context for a discussion on how to respond to social media related panic. I may even extend some of that conversation to this panic in school-aged children, like those affected in this example. Also, if you have read anything about social media benefitting in disaster response or enacting panic, I'd love to hear your two cents. I will be diving into a new book by Liza Potts this weekend to see if she can shed some light and help me generate some ideas for the meatiest part of my dialectic. Thanks!
Because this event took place over several days, I have
chosen to break the dialectic into stages. Each stage represents a dialogue
that could have taken place during that time. Together, they function to
provide context and lead into the problem-solving area of the dialectic between
the scholar and the high school principal.
Wednesday September 3, 2014
Student/child: I
can’t go to school tomorrow. Something bad is going to happen.
Parent: What? Why
do you say that?
Student/child: I
saw it on Instagram. Those guys, the ones who call themselves The Merry Men, tagged our campus. It was
all over Instagram.
Parent: The Merry Men? Aren’t those the people
who tagged the Catholic Church a month ago with antiestablishment propaganda?
They tagged the school?
Student/child:
Yeah, two nights ago – on Tuesday. They were bragging all over Instagram. Now
everybody is freaking out on Twitter because somebody is saying they are going
to shoot up the school tomorrow!
Parent: Okay.
There is absolutely no way that I am letting you go to school tomorrow. With
all of the school shootings over the last few years, we are not risking this
for one day of class. Plus, I would be a nervous wreck all day. I wonder how
the school supervisors are going to handle this?
Thursday September 4, 2014
Principal: After
last night, I didn’t think this week could get any worse. First, our campus was
tagged by The Merry Men. Then, there
was tremendous social media chatter about a shooting today. This isn’t the sort
of thing I take lightly, especially not with the rising wave of school
shootings. Bullard High students must remain safe, but at what cost? We cannot
live in fear. We cannot forgo education in light of panic. That is why we went
on high alert. Although I don’t believe that guns are the solution to our
problems, these guns held by highly trained officers of the law might prevent
these insane antiestablishment Merry Men from
instilling more fear, harm, and possibly fatalities here on our campus. And if
guns in the right hands on the right days will prevent that, then I am an
advocate for guns. Bombs are a different story.
Late this morning, around 11:00 am, I felt hollow after
reading an email stating there was a bomb on my campus. A bomb. On my campus. The panic generated by last
night’s Instagram threat was enough to cause too many students to avoid school
today, and who can blame them? Now, I have no choice but to close the campus early
even though we have swept the campus and found that both threats have been false.
The panic was too widespread. Students didn’t take it seriously enough and
parents overreacted. It seems that the days before social media prevailed were
simpler times, but there is no going back. So how can we mitigate or even
circumnavigate this kind of event in future?
In Reflection
Scholar: The
events at Bullard High School were eye opening, but thankfully not tragic. Did
the principal and other leadership make wise and rational decisions? Yes. Although
closing the campus early did not remove the panic, it did eliminate possible
risk and acknowledged that the fear was too extreme for the educational system
to function properly.
Principal: But
over 800 students sacrificed both their freedom and education that day.
Scholar: This is
true; however, keeping them in the classroom would not necessarily have
alleviated those losses. When the mind is occupied with another subject, be it
pleasant or fearful, other focus is lost. If these children had remained in
their classes, they would not have retained the lessons taught. Their minds
would have been on the possible risk involved for themselves and their friends.
And there was also the small chance that physical harm would come to pass on
the campus. Unfortunately, violence has become an increasingly common
occurrence in educational settings. Releasing students was the best decision
for you, your campus, and everyone involved.
Principal:
Although it was a difficult decision, I agree. It was the best option of those
available. But this may not be an isolated event. With social media growing, it
is easier for any threats, real or fake, to incite panic.
Scholar: This may
be true, but there was panic before social media. You may have heard the saying
that people are smart, rational beings, but crowds are stupid and emotional
beasts. Sadly, this tends to be true. But we used to think of these crowds in
the traditional sense – people gathered in one centralized location to picket
or rally torch-and-pitchfork-style against a common fear. But times have
changed. Now, crowds can be virtual. Panic can be shared internationally. What
was once considered a local issue can now be viewed nationally or even
globally.
Principal: Yes,
but social media has added to this, and has changed it. Virtually all of my
students have some sort of social media profile. While Instagram is the most
popular right now, Facebook and Twitter are still contenders. And because so
many people use social media and because they are so intertwined, information
travels at light speed. When young people decide something is worth sharing, it
goes viral immediately. Often times, that information is simply pop culture – a
cat video, someone doing something stupid who got caught on tape, a bit of
celebrity gossip – but now I have seen how a threat can also go viral. What may
start out as an act of goodwill – of sharing knowledge – easily snowballs into
mass panic. And these young users don’t have the power to make real changes.
They have the power to share information,
but not to make sure their school is safe and their friends are protected. No
matter how inspired or enamored they may be by superheroes, most cannot and
should not take a stand in these sorts of situations.
Scholar: That
fact has not changed. Most people are not destined to be heroes, for myriad
reasons. So the real issue is twofold. First, can we remove panic? The answer
is unequivocally no. The news tells us on a daily basis what we should fear. In
2001 it was Anthrax, then it was West Nile. In 2005, the Bird Flu. A few years
later, the world was going to end because of a bad economy. Obama Care carried
the torch in 2011, and now it’s Ebola. Any of these issues may legitimately
warrant concern, but were they worth widespread panic? Probably not, but the
fact remains that panic ensues.
This was the case even before social media, and even before
modern technology as we know it. The Internet has simply made it easier for the
average person to share what she knows, be that opinion, fact, or a melding of
the two.
Principal: Yes, I
used to think that was a good thing. Students had all sorts of information at
their fingertips. If we didn’t have funding for additional library books, it
didn’t matter; we had computers. Although students did not always know how to
find the right information, the
information was there for them to find.
Scholar: But that
is the crux: we must find the right information.
Within the last twenty years, information transitioned from being generated by
experts to being generated by anyone with a blog. We used the peer review
process to make sure anything available was accurate and well grounded, but
that is no longer the case. This is not to bemoan the old days; it is simply to
examine a reality. Once, not long ago, readers knew they may not agree with an
author, but the information within the article would be sound. Those articles
still exist, but they are now nestled amongst ungrounded rants and unqualified
statements presented as facts, which makes distinguishing truth from hearsay
significantly more challenging.
The cause of this new kind of panic is rooted in this:
uncensored authorship. Not only has uncensored authorship allowed any
uneducated – and I do not mean this simply in the formal sense of the word –
person to make a statement about any given subject, it has driven a shift
towards sensationalism and relevance. The news, once a trusted source for
accurate information, has shifted its gaze towards stories and presentation
that garner increased audiences, not informed audiences. Therefore, when
there is a small outbreak of salmonella poisoning, it becomes a pandemic, with
or without warrant. Social media has taken this to the next level. This is most
evident in parody websites, like The
Onion. Blatantly fallacious mock news stories are posted on these sites and
are often shared via sites like Facebook and Twitter. However, many users are
accustomed to trusting whatever they see and they, therefore, take the article
as truth. With the best of intentions, this misinformed user shares the article
with friends, family, and often strangers, accompanied with words of excitement
or caution, until someone (hopefully) sets the user straight. If such an
obviously falsified document can be mistaken for truth, imagine the erroneous
beliefs that are generated through the sharing of misguided rants and new
stories.
Principal: Yes, I
see that on this campus every week and hear the teachers complaining about
students who use faulty or untrustworthy sources as their research. And
clearly, panic can be generated from these false and sensationalist sources.
But then the question is what can we do about it?
Scholar: Excellent
question, and it brings me to my second point. If panic cannot be eliminated,
then we must establish methods to monitor and deescalate it.
Principal: My
sentiments exactly! But how can that be done? And more specifically, how can I
enact this for my student population?
Scholar: Despite
the additional pathos involved with the safety of minors, there are several
strategies that could be put in place to nullify potential issues before
complete panic ensues.
