What's Good for Social Media Culture?

I wander around social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, Renren (Chinese version of FB), Weibo (Chinese version of Twitter), blogs, etc. almost everyday, feeling the unprecedented media impact from social media ever to our lives. Social media provides a brand new way of networking and living, offers a different platform for doing commerce and business. In addition, its power of changing the way the society develops is another fact that really matters.

Recently China has experienced many crises, I am talking about one of them in this post -- the crisis on China Red Cross Fund. The story stemmed from a Weibo page of a 20-year-old girl Meimei Guo. Weibo is the most popular Chinese micro-blog, similar with Twitter, it has a verification system which verifies the identification/position of an individual, if it's factual, the title will appear on the person's profile officially from Weibo instead of being edited by the person him/herself. This young lady got her title as "Manager of Commerce in China Red Cross Fund." However, it was her lavish lifestyle and the content of her micro-blog that attracted public's attention: She has a Maserati convertible, more than five Hermes handbags, lots of luxury possessions, access to many up-class events, and unperturbed attitude towards public's questions and critics. 

Public is curious, eager to find out the story behind such a girl with so much unmatched to her age, and the most important, people need to figure out whether there is any corruption in China Red Cross, the biggest non-profit organizations in China. Public doubts about corruption in China Red Cross Fund has been out for a while. Therefore, research were done by millions of people, they communicate through Weibo, more people paying attention to this incident help spreading every news out by re-twitting. Despite that China Red Cross Fund had made several announcements claiming the Fund is out of business, people would rather digging deeper into the hole by themselves because many facts indicate there are problems exist. The stir was huge, even Meimei said she had never expected it to be such a social issue. Attention and communication among public through social media has turn this incident into public's distrust to non-profit organizations in China. 

The issue has been on for more than three months and it will never end.Even though the public cannot reveal all secrets hidden behind, people empowered from social media are able to declare their right to know the truth, to investigate into a problem by themselves, and to reveal evils in society. As it turned out there are indeed corruption and many other management problems inside the China Red Cross Fund, the exposure of scandal will not only help to regulate the Red Cross Fund, but other non-profit organizations in China. Social Media has open a door of more freedom of expression and media monitoring.