Facebook questions

So, a Facebook page dedicated to Raoul Moat appears; it attracts controversial comments; gets a mention in Prime Minister's Questions; and is condemned by all the usual suspects.

Downing Street said it hadn't asked Facebook to take it down, but that didn't stop the Mail and Tory MP Chris Heaton-Harris.

Facebook refuses to take action - nonetheless the end result is the same. The page, with 30,000 supporters, is taken down by its creator, who 24 hours later is traduced by the popular press.

We've all been here before and we will undoubtedly go there again. But before we do it's worth considering some of the issues that this - familiar - hullabaloo raises, in the hope of more sophisticated discussion and appreciation of the role of social media next time.

Firstly, as a contributor to the Mail's own discussion board succinctly puts it:

Not being funny, but welcome to the internet Dave the tribute page is just a bunch of trolls get over it already. (Alan Jones, Glos,).

This is a sentiment taken on in a more scholarly fashion, though not specifically about this story, by social media thinker Clay Shirky when he said:

"Those conversations were always happening. People were saying those nasty things to one another in the pub or whatever. You just couldn't hear them before. So it's a change in our awareness of truth, not a change in the truth."

So what should we do and how should we respond to future Facebook furores? How should we interpret the significance of the conversation that social media enables and makes public?

The media storm around the Moat page achieved the required result of the page being removed for Mr Heaton-Harris, the Mail, and others. The creator was 'shamed' into action without her critics having to resort to more drastic steps.

But if, as Mr Jones says, they're "just a bunch of trolls" - apart from the fact that it's an easy story for some news organisations - why don't we just ignore them? By creating the row, is it not simply raising the profile and weight of these (relative handful) of comments beyond their value?

On the other hand, if, as Clay Shirky says, people are having exactly these conversations in the pub, don't they have a right to be heard and do social networking platforms not provide a valuable democratic service in allowing that to happen?

After all, if politicians are happy to consult the public about what public services should be cut, don't they have an obligation to listen to what they have to say about other things? As Emily Bell, outgoing director of digital content at the Guardian, said at an event earlier this week, politicians are failing if they don't engage with their electorate through social media.

But there's more to it than this primary-coloured discussion about what was once private (or at least unheard) and is now public - because social media platforms are having a more subtle impact on public life by redefining where the line between public and private lies.

A BBC colleague was this week caught slightly short when he Tweeted interesting news from a meeting that had not been openly declared private.

And I was slightly surprised to discover that an event with a handful of quite senior newspaper editors I was addressing was being Tweeted - no-one had said it was a private meeting not to be made public, but the gathering had a behind-closed-doors air about it.

For many comfortable in the new world of social media, the assumption now is that everything is public - unless otherwise declared. It's an assumption that is not always shared.