This week was big for Periscope and Facebook Live. Earlier in the week, the Democratic sit-in over gun control was not able to be filmed via C-SPAN, the usual filming mechanism for House of Representative sessions. C-SPAN can only be filmed when the House is in session and when it was adjourned, the cameras were shut off. Instead, C-SPAN leveraged the Periscope and Facebook Live accounts of two different representatives who were filming via their feeds. Folks throughout the country could see what was going on “behind the closed doors” of the House of Representatives. The news reports are saying that this coverage was educational for many folks in the country who had never heard of these apps, increasing visibility from just celebrities and younger generations to the broader nation.
While I was at the gym yesterday, news broke on a gunman in a movie theater in Germany. I watched MSNBC report on it and try to give as much information as the event was unfolding. Like many breaking news stories these days, information they were receiving was from non-news sources, one of which was again Periscope. What was interesting to me about this coverage though was the emphasis put on the Periscope footage not being live. MSNBC stressed that all footage was previously aired footage and that they would never air live footage because like the folks watching at home, a gunman could, too, have access. Airing footage of security being set up outside or specifics could potentially give away information that would end up hurting the folks inside. While obvious after they said it, the point being made by MSNBC was not one I had thought of, and I’m wondering if I’m not alone.
Transparency is all the rage these days and while I can see the benefits of live video, I wonder if we are smart enough to handle it. Stories have popped up the past couple months about live streaming gone bad which is an obvious risk of any live show, like news. What’s not quite as obvious is when live filming could reveal too much and the short and long term implications of it. In the past, the folks who have access to live streaming are trained and limited, i.e. reporters, film crews, etc. While I do think the filtering of what people see has gone too far in some news publications, the risk of information getting into the wrong hands is at least less likely. Terrorist organizations would love to continue violence against Westernized nations who tend to be the most technologically connected and potentially the most likely to overshare. Filming harmless events may prove to just be that, but could they also be used to find out information that, in the past, was harder to find or impossible to know in a given moment? I think the MSNBC coverage proves it has that potential. I don’t necessarily have the answers to whether live streaming apps should be limited. We’ve seen the harm in different news sources picking and choosing what to report so filtering these apps might be worse. But I do think our generation needs to at least think before they stream… Who has access to the information you are sharing, and what might they do with it? What secrets might we be revealing in the moment that can be used then or down the road to lead to more violence? What information is better left a mystery to the broader world? Food for thought as we approach the holiday weekend next week and you are tempted to share all with the world.
Leslie Delery 