Considering the success of Facebook it's unsurprising that it keeps popping up in the news, as it's such a large part of people's lives, editors know they can instantly connect with a larger audience by mentioning it. Potentially all eleven million UK Facebook users could be effected and pick up the paper to find out more.
The big tabloid story of the day is a seventeen year old girl who was allegedly kidnapped and murdered by a man she met on Facebook. The Daily Mail, Daily Mirror and the Sun all led with it, the story is a natural progression from the chat room pedophile scares that arguably became a moral panic earlier this decade.
The Sun has taken it a step further by plastering the Facebook logo on the front page and is stronger for it. The striking blue, recognisable logo stands out amongst the red tops and is sure to draw more eyes. Rupert Murdoch is notorious for taking an active role in the editorial process of his papers whenever the fancy takes him, and being the owner of Facebook's biggest rival Myspace I'm sure he took the opportunity to stick the knife in.
The connotations of placing 'Facebook' right before 'Sex Killer' are pretty clear. The only way they could have made the implication that the social networking site is directly responsible for her death stronger would be by inserting the words 'is a' in there too.
To be honest I'm surprised there hasn't been a social network witch hunt already, it's absolutely perfect moral panic material: it's popular, successful and lots of grumpy old people don't understand it. The Mary Whitehouse brigade must be napping.
When Murdoch attacks, he never does so half heartily and journalism is often his medium of choice. I think we'll see many more column inches on the subject this week.
No comments:
Post a Comment