Invasion of privacy?

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Students and family were not the only ones turning to social networks in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings. A recent Pew study showed that more than two-thirds of journalists use blogs and social networks to gather story ideas. In their frenzy to learn as much about the shooter and the student victims as quickly as possible, many in the mainstream media hopped right into what they perceived as students' preferred medium of choice: social networks.

As many of the victims' social networking pages were not set to private, journalists from papers large and small were quick to use photos, information and comments from the pages in their reporting. Unfortunately, respect and taste were shoved aside by reporters in an effort to find juicy hooks and angles in their stories.

For example, in an obituary for the first victim, Emily Hilscher, the Washington Post reported, "On MySpace, Hilscher lists her home town as 'Crappahannock,' (instead of Rappahannock, Virginia) in the way teens do, but says she makes the best of living in the rural county of 7,000 residents with no fast-food outlets and only one stoplight."

Does anyone really think Emily thought that stray comment about her home town would find its way into her obituary one day? Facebook's spokeswoman Brandee Barker condemned similar practices in an April 19 Boston Herald article stating that users should give the permission to any media organization for that information to be used.

So what is to be done if the user is deceased? Again, it seems that taste and decency took a back seat to deadlines and immediacy. After all, it is much easier to cut and paste information off a MySpace page than track down more than one person for comment, isn't it? (Only one source was quoted in Emily's obituary, and the only other quote was taken from a press release by her high school's superintendent).

Even more troubling was the mainstream media’s ham-handed use of social networking sites to locate subjects for interviews. A Facebook posting from ABC’s "Good Morning America" read, "Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the horrific tragedy at Virginia Tech. In our ongoing coverage, we want to speak with people that knew Cho Seung-Hui. We have anchors and producers on campus that would love to meet with you."

NBC's "Dateline" even set up a dedicated Facebook page looking for friends of Cho Seung-Hui. According to Barker, many users complained of receiving multiple private messages from reporters, and Facebook shut down not only the "Dateline" Facebook page, but also several reporters’ accounts. 

Surprise and criticism around the mainstream media's poorly executed tactics is indicative of the fact that, despite the "let it all hang out" ethos of some social networks, many expect a certain level of privacy or at a minimum some respect within these networks. Additionally, many feel a certain amount of ownership of the pages and information and that their profiles are their own property, despite the fact that they are technically in the public domain.

We as an interactive industry recognize the importance of being respectful of the context, tone and sentiment of online communities and social networks as we engage consumers with brands and products such as movies and cars, let alone addressing something as emotional, personal and tragic as what happened at Virginia Tech.

But will the future bring about commonsense rules of the road to govern the mainstream media's use of social networking sites, or do we need to get used to the fact that nothing, no matter how personal, is off limits anymore? 

The open, casual and real-time qualities of social networking sites, which attract users by the millions, are like honey to journalists who see social networks as a unique window into our society. And in many ways, they unquestionably are. While journalists will utilize information from social media platforms more and more in the future, they would do well to remember that reporting, in any medium, requires them to respectfully stay within the bounds of good taste and decency.  

Pete Snyder is CEO and founder, New Media Strategies. Read full bio.

Co-author Kaitlyn Wilkins is project manager, New Media Strategies.