We are all big brother (aka – The Scarlet Letter Revisited)
Facebook and other social networks are a new tool for citizen-powered justice. See, for instance, Witness Hub, which focuses the tools of media – video cameras and web video – to document, draw attention to and underscore campaigns against human rights abuses worldwide. But social justice is in the eye of the beholder. Recently a U.S. college student accused of sexual assault was "outed" by an angry online mob, via Facebook. The story of online mob justice foreshadows an impending wave of conflicts between individuals – some expecting privacy based on old notions of legal process and personal space, others dispensing with those traditions in favor of new power expressed through digital networks and zeal. Media ethics suddenly applies to everyone, which means everyone can think about media practices in the most personal of terms: When do I name names, when do I use anonymous sources, when do I strip away your normal expectations of privacy? In the age of the digital everything, we are all big brother.
See: Sex Charges and a Facebook Frenzy in Newsweek.com
