Facebook instead of Newspapers!

By Nermeen Kamel
For JRMC 270 (Online Communication)
Dr. Rasha A. Abdulla
The American University in Cairo
Journalism and Mass Communication Department
Fall 2008

Less than a week ago, two young girls, Nadine and Heba were killed in an apartement in El Sheikh Zayed, El nada compound. It was Nadine's house and Heba, her friend, was sleeping over. The News about this incident were everywhere, people telling each other, rumors came up, fabrications about what happened to them started to spread and the incident was the subject that everybody talked about.

However, what I noticed is that many people did know about the incident through Facebook, not from the newspapers, TV or word of mouth, but Facebook. Their source of news was this social networking website, that became very popular and obssessed over that every single thing happens in the world would be found in it somewhere.

Through this website you can easily know who got engaged, married, divorced, who delivered a new born baby, who died and how, who travelled where, who is working where and so many other personal information about people who are in your friend list or even if they are not. Through facebook, people know what are the latest news about the world, when Obama won the United States elections, facebook was all flooded with groups about this incident, statuses of people who are either happy he won or angry he did and discussions about the subject and so on.

Going back to the incident of the two girls who got killed. Some friends told me that they didnt know anything about it until they one day, like everyday actually, they were checking their facebook account, and they saw in the News feed the following statement " ....of your friends joined the group "SHOCKING...Nadeen and Heba got killed!!!" ", another group is "RIP Nadeen Khaled and Heba. We love you. Pray for them." So being curious, which is the case for anyone who uses facebook, they enter the group and get the news. Others knew from their friends' statuses or events created for the wake or funeral.

Facebook made it very easy for news to spread over and it sometimes is a source for people to get the news. However, because the murder of these two girls is very controversial and until yesterday they didnt know who did it, rumors came up on newspapers as well as facebook, people started making up stories about the two girls, that they were drinking and doing drugs before the murderer broke into the house at dawn and killed them both. Some said that the violent and aggressive way they were killed with showed that it was clearly and obviously for revenge. Others said it must e a theif or something. Also, one of the rumors was that that Heba was married secretly and Nadeen was not a virgin.

That was all proven wrong when the autopsy or the medical examination of the bodies proved that these things are just made up and are not true. Today, the police arrested the murderer and announced that he killed them because he wanted to rob the house but when they tried to resist him he killed them. The killer is of a very low social class and he was suffering from terrible financial problems and he wanted to get married but he hadnt got enough money so he decided to go steal some money from any randomn apartement in a compound in El sheikh Zayed that he used to previously work at. He only stole 200 pounds and a cell phone.

However, after announcing the news tonight on TV shows, (still not yet in newspapers) and on facebook groups which are all swamped by people writting strange assumptions on walls, some people think that the police faked this whole thing and they just got anyone to arrest to close the case and put an end to it. On facebook groups, people started posting discussion boards about who might be the real murderer and how the police is trying to fool everybody, which I think in my humble opinion is stupid. I cant actually believe that people has so much free time to waste on trying to find who the real murderer is and post it in some discussion board in some group on facebook! That is just lame! And, why would the police do that anyways, they have eligible proofs that proves that the one they arrested is the criminal.

Facebook gives such people the chance to talk about two girls who are already dead ( May they rest in Peace) in a bad way, initiate rumors about them that really are disgraceful and accuse the police of being unethical and the whole thing is none of their business. They should just pray for the girls or remain silent.

This is one of the negative aspects of Facebook; and I think such website shouldnt be anything more than a social network that friends talk to eachother through and not a ground to discuss such controversial incidents that are very sensitive, especially in this case where any fallacious information would affect the reputation of the girls and their families. I also think that Facebook should not be a source of news for anyone because simply it is not credible at all and it is full of blabbering and shallow opinions of people. Facebook has recently been more negative than positive in affecting people and they should be more cautious in using it.