Code of Conduct for Social Media Campaigners

From leaked video of Seth Riaz talkshow conducted by Mubashir Lucman & Meher Bukhari, to highlighting the crisis in Burma and Gaza; from questioning the authenticity of claims of OBL assassination, and Malala assassination attempt, to exposing the duality of USAID agenda; from broadcasting news about some militant gangs cum political parties to exposing the hypocrisy and double standards of various TV Channels and Anchors; from reminding public about the anniversaries of great personalities from our past, to highlighting the efforts and contribution of many patriotic social figures. You name it, every miss fire or silence of main stream media is picked up, questioned, criticized, ridiculed, discredited by the social media campaigners in Pakistan. But it also has some shortcomings which needs to be overcome in order to increase its effectiveness, these are:

(a) social media is reactive,
(b) most users are immature, hence its intelligence, farsightedness & wisdom is to the extent of its users,
(c) it cannot be regulated, the best govt. can do is to block it,
(d) Its not made in Pakistan, & western intelligence agencies can surely monitor the local trends ...

Perhaps due to the point-b, stated above, its is quite unlikely that its over all behaviour would be improved unless its user gets mature... how its going to be, at least I don't know, perhaps the social media users themselves have to do something about it. They need to create a list of guiding principles for themselves for the sake of the effectiveness of social media which may include, but not limited to:

(a) do not forward anything without confirmation,
(b) Always give complete reference of a news, poetry and hadith or anything
(c) learn to respect divergent views; disagree with logic instead of using abusive language; comment as it the person is sitting in front of you
(d) Not to leave an issue unless a conclusion has reached...

Please share if you agree, as thats the only way to social media works... please also add any before sharing so that the list would become more comprehensive.

Author is a philinthropist, academic researcher, author, social entrepreneur, trainer, mentor, holds voluntary positions of Sr. Ed Critic Mag, Vice President GEAR (www.gear.org.pk) and tweets @javaidomar