Over the next few weeks I will be making a return to blogging – this time with moderated comments “on”. After having spent the last 10weeks in Thailand investigating a number of storylines I have a few new blog posts ready to go and a number of interesting interviews with key figures, including several of the lese majeste prisoners, waiting to be published.

To kick things off I will be speaking next week at the World Bloggers’ and Social Media Summit in Kuala Lumpur. The theme of my talk will be on Social Media v Old Media and I will be drawing, in part, on Evgeny Morozov’s excellent critique of cyber-utopianism, The Net Delusion and also my own experiences of social media in Thailand and beyond.

The thrust of my debate is to explore the possibility that we are now entering a time where the “social” aspect of information dissemination is supplanting veracity. Being “popular” is becoming more powerful than being critical and analytical. Fact-free “rumour”, driven by those who have “social capital”, drives out fact-checked “accuracy”. Group-think and conformity within “social” media spaces replaces the practised distance and evaluation of “old” media. As late 20th Century French philosopher Jean Baudrillard once said “We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.”

The case study for my talk will draw on the reaction by English language Thai social media to my story on former Thai PM and present leader of the main Thai opposition Democrat Party Abhisit Vejjajiva’s luxury holiday to the Maldives that he took slap-bang in the middle of the worst natural disaster to have hit Thailand in decades.

In short, en masse, the English language social media community driven by personal antipathy towards myself dismissed the story as complete and unfounded garbage.  A mini-campaign to attack the story ensued yet no facts were checked by these people as their personal feelings and group-think mentality held sway.

Of course, placing “feeling” and “group think” above rational thought is everybody’s right, even if the result is large amounts of egg flying into your face. And so, the “campaign” started to gain traction until, in a highly amusing turn of events, the “old” media stepped in.

At that point two prominent Thai daily newspapers, Khao Sod and Matichon “fact-checked” my story and put questions to Abhisit and the Thai Democrat Party leadership.

The result? Yes, Abhisit DID travel to the Maldives during the flood crisis.

One of my stories on Abhisit’s trip to the Maldives was then translated into Thai and published by Khao Sod while Matichon gave my work plenty of coverage as well.

So is social media a vehicle of progressive politics where the technology, according to the cyber-utopians, supposedly determines socially just and democratic outcomes? Or just a space where conformity and reactionary thought is taking a new shape? Or does “old” media still maintain practices and methods that the cyber-utopians can’t compete with and utterly fail to address?

Needless to say I remain “unpopular” with members of the “social media” community. Vive le difference!

Andrew Spooner’s public Facebook page is here.