Is the 'share' button innocent?

(Baonghean) - Not long ago, a false rumor appeared on social media but was presented in a form that could not be more convincing: A clip showing a person peeling mangoes - a specialty of the Southern region - with a fabricated comment that these are artificial mangoes originating from China, with a layer of plastic film inside the seeds. This clip was quickly spread by likes, shares and comments on social media, leading to increased fear in the community because of unsafe food originating from China.

And of course, the people who suffer the most are the farmers who grow this mango variety, when their agricultural products cannot be sold due to malicious rumors.

Illustration: Internet

This is not the first time netizens have liked and shared fabricated rumors on social media in large numbers. This situation has happened many times before with rumors about the Ebola epidemic coming to Vietnam, about child kidnapping, about eating grapefruit causing cancer, about the plastic wrapper of mangoes originating from Taiwan containing toxic substances, about durian soaked in toxic chemicals, and recently, rumors about people dying or being hospitalized due to eating sea fish after a mass fish death in the central coast...

Those rumors mostly cause fear and confusion in the community, creating serious consequences for those involved and for the whole society when causing psychological crisis and more seriously affecting the economy and social security and order. Many times, farmers who grow grapefruit, mango, fish... have suffered losses and hardship because of such false rumors.

According to the definition of Sociology, rumors are fabricated information, untrue or with very little truth, rumors appear and spread by word of mouth in the community due to information crisis (too much or too little information). Today, rumors have another channel of spread besides word of mouth, which is social networks. Social networks have a much faster rate of spreading rumors and cause much greater harm than word of mouth.

Vietnamese people have early and easy access to social networks, so the speed of social network development in our country is very fast, creating a large community called "netizens" (according to a study, there are about 40 million social network accounts in Vietnam, using hundreds of different social networking sites, of which the most popular are sites such as Facebook, You Tube, Zing me, Google+, Webtretho, Lamchame, Vatgia...).

However, the social media usage skills of Vietnamese "netizens" have not kept up with the speed of development and expansion of this technology application, leading to both tragic and comical stories and unpredictable consequences for society. This is because the level of awareness and sense of responsibility of social media users towards themselves and the community is still low, leading to a lack of consideration, judgment, and distinction between right and wrong in the types of information they like, share, and comment on. As long as the rumor is about issues they are interested in, are upset about, or are current events, they will carelessly like and share without thinking about the consequences.

They cannot distinguish between false rumors and true rumors, so they are easily swept away and contribute to creating waves of rumors on social networks, causing harmful consequences.

Illustration: Internet

Because Vietnamese netizens' use of social networks is still immature, they are easily lured by bad people who spread rumors and lure them into sharing sensational information, with the purpose of attracting likes and views, to destroy opponents, and even to oppose the government and the Party.

Many people think that a like, a share, or a malicious comment under a rumor will not have any impact, but in fact, it can change the truth, create unnecessary public pressure on authorities at all levels, and then have other unpredictable consequences. In recent years, it has become almost common for authorities and government agencies at all levels to struggle to deal with media crises caused by rumors originating from social networks.

Social networks are a product of scientific and technological development, they are not at fault in themselves, the fault lies in the awareness and consciousness of users. If the majority of netizens use their social network accounts responsibly, with understanding, consideration and thinking, it will certainly create a civilized and useful network environment. On the contrary, it will cause consequences that even they themselves can hardly imagine. The "like" and "share" buttons are not as innocent as they think!

Bao Ngan