The ugly side of social media? The woman, the t-shirt and the Tennis final

Unless you have been living under a rock/offline for the past few days, you’ll have been hard-pressed to miss the story about the lady who ‘stole’ the tshirt off a little girl at the Australian Open Final. The story quickly became a viral hit, after a clip from the final showed Djokovic throwing his tshirt to a girl in the crowd, before a lady leaned over and grabbed it for herself. While the original clip has been taken down by Tennis Australia, numerous versions have since been uploaded, gathering over 200,000 views collectively.

Now a few years ago, a story like this might have garnered a bit of attention in the news, but without the technology for public online discussion and video uploading, it would probably have died out already. Unfortunately, we’re witnessing a fairly ugly side of the story as the lady in question is being subjected to what can only be described as victimisation for what is, in the grand scheme of things, a fairly trivial act.

The mob mentality

This kind of behaviour is of course, not unique to social media and I don’t look to blame it here, but look to it as a catalyst for innate human behaviour. And as an advocate and defender of social technologies, the uglier side of this story is somewhat hard to take as it shows we still have a long way to go in our understanding of social media so that we’re able to effectively deal with an outcome such as this.

Whichever way you choose to view the woman herself, the psychological impact of something like this is still largely unknown. Being at the centre of a worldwide frenzy, subjected to hateful and obscene comments because you happened to be in front of a camera at the wrong time is no small thing, and it’s certainly not something we are hardwired to deal with. Yet.

Thankfully, there are some that are showing the responsible side of an online community. Despite a Wikipedia entry being put up about the woman…

…it has since been removed from the site:

And while some may view this as over-policing of content online, does this woman really deserve to have a permanent record in an encyclopedia?

As well as garnering video views, the story has crossed over into other social platforms, with Facebook hate groups already popping up. Unfortunately though, these go way beyond simple freedom of expression, which of course everyone is entitled to. In one particular thread (which I’ll not link to obviously), a commenter leaves not only the woman’s address, but links to the Facebook profiles of her three daughters, which appear to be genuine. It is difficult to argue, in this context, that we have got the regulations of social media right when this is going on.

The media responds

What’s perhaps even more worrying is the mainstream media response to this, which is serving to only fuel the hatred online. While it has been covered in national media around the world, the reporting is tipping over into the personal, inciting more frenzy amongst the ‘mob’. For example, take the headline from the Australian Herald Sun, which includes quotes from the woman saying she doesn’t think she stole anything and that she had as much right to the t-shirt as anyone:

Add in a rather nice juxtaposition of shots, of the woman smiling in a picture totally unrelated to the incident, alongside a posed shot of the sad teenage fan and the scene is set. In this case, should the media not have somewhat of a responsibility here, particularly given that the woman’s family are now being drawn into the saga?

Who’s to blame?

While it may be tempting to blame social media for fanning the flames, this would be to misunderstand the issue. As much as this is the ugly side of social media, fundamentally it is the ugly side of human nature. Mob mentality or herd behaviour is not new. Indeed, it’s been the subject of discussions by academics for centuries, and has always been present in societies.

It has long been observed that people will behave differently in a crowd than they would do individually, with the subject of crowd psychology coming to the fore in France in the late 1800′s. While the behaviour of the crowd may seem entirely justified to themselves – acting on behalf of the innocent girl – this can somewhat cloud the real situation. That is to say that we are focusing our attentions on someone grabbing a t-shirt, inciting hatred and abuse and even invading their privacy.

The question of who is responsible is a difficult one. Social media is not responsible itself, as it is simply the prevalent form of self-expression in our society today. It has not created the concept of mob mentality or victimisation, nor are the mob to blame themselves. While some are certainly taking it too far, it is innate within human nature that we will crowd together and rally round where we see that justice is needed, however far that concept of justice may have been stretched.

In this case, we can actually look to mainstream media as playing a big part here, for choosing to further the story and continuing to sway public opinion. There is a sense of responsibility required for those who, in an era when social media tools exist, are able to influence and reach the public en masse. What’s needed is balanced reporting to calm the crowds. The danger of doing otherwise is far too high.