Despite its positives, social media can be used to spread falsehoods

Social media messaging has its positives but, being far faster than traditional ways of communication, it can be used to spread destructive falsehoods and distortions

The apparently leaderless unrest in Hong Kong is a classic case where social media has been primarily instrumental in mobilisation, and even to counter this movement. Social media was also effectively used in the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong in 2014, and in other movements worldwide in the recent past.

As an epic milestone in this direction, in 2011, the scent of jasmine from Tahrir Square was indeed initiated by the Facebook post of a 29-year-old Google marketing executive named Wael Ghonim. However, it is not only social and political movements, but numerous cases of rumour-mongering, propaganda, riots, social unrest