Have you ever personally encountered cyberbullying challenges or online attacks on digital platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp or TikTok? The world is exponential as digital citizenship is one of the prominent skills today. Almost everyone in Nepal has access to the internet and digital platforms today. In this interconnected world, online behavior is the key strategy for our day-to-day context. Netiquette (Network Etiquette) is one of the skills and best strategies to behave online well. It is a vital skill for awakening respectful and meaningful digital communication. If we are not familiar with netiquette, we may be doing something wrong knowingly or unknowingly on your online platform. Therefore, understanding and applying netiquette is more crucial than ever. This article helps you understand netiquette and navigate it in your real-life digital world.
Today’s world is the age of science and technology. Many people have access to online social media. Many do not need any formal orientation for learning and using social media, as they learn by themselves or consulting with family members or other friends. With the increasing use of social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and WhatsApp, digital interaction and communication have become a daily routine or activity for many people. Many seem to lack digital etiquette while observing the comments and replies on the social media platforms. It is a very serious matter even among many high-class politicians, social activists, and human rights people. It is believed that everyone must have digital citizenship skill. Misinformation always spreads faster like wildfire and a single misleading post on Facebook can influence many hours. Online hate speech or content and cyberbullying have become a great threat in the Nepalese community. Such wrong practices have affected both individuals and communities. We all are an interdependent community. We need each other. We must keep a good social harmony in the community. Each person should be aware of our posts, comments and content writing. We have different political ideology, religious practices, and social norms and values. We should maintain our digital citizenship skill around us to maintain a good social harmony in our community. For this, it is important to behave with humility, ensuring that everyone has equal respect and honor. Active listening to the opposite views, being open and friendly with other cultures and values, breaking down all the stereotypes could be great strategies to pursue citizenship skill. Likewise dealing with others having supporting ideas like logic, careful reasoning, evidence, data to support the argument on the online platform could be helpful to maintain digital citizenship skill. Finally, humility is essential in both online and onsite platforms.
We all are responsible and accountable to follow good digital online platform standards so that we can maintain integrity in our communication. Similarly, we should not be a zealot as a zealot is a person who is extremist and very passionate and uncompromising about a religious, political or ideological belief. A zealot is often fanatical and unwilling to respect different opinions. Therefore, responsible digital etiquette is not just a choice; it is mandatory for maintaining social harmony in the community.
Two-day Huawei Digital Nepal Conclave 2022
There are many rules to follow for netiquette as we can respect others online. It is bitter to say that people are not serious on this matter. What is etiquette? It shows a good rapport of the people in the community. Everyone makes mistakes. If one makes some mistakes, another should help to bring them on track. But there are so many comments which make the person more hurt and painful. I sometimes see the Facebook posts of some political leaders, social activists, and the comments from many do not reply with constructive feedback or comments. Most of the comments are negative and painful for them. After reading all these comments, it can be said that people really do not have the network etiquette or digital citizenship skill. People do not have even sympathy for others' hurt. We should help each other to stay on track. We should journey together for the sake of community and nation. If we have destructive and totally negative interactions, it might harm individuals and the whole community. Today, it has become an issue in every corner of the nation. All institutions must educate the students about netiquette. People perish because of lack of knowledge. While we are hurt, if others do not show sympathy, how do we feel? How do you feel when someone mocks you in your hurt? Don’t you feel hurt? Imagine how you feel the same behavior happens in your community face-to-face?
Netiquette can be a good habit if we learn to follow this standard. Even high-class people have not maintained such standards in the day-to-day personal social media platform. And it has encouraged other common people to post without filtering the contents. Even we common people need to draft responses in a decent way, post the right educational and informational content rather than troll, bullies and inhuman content. We must be very careful about our contents and logics before sharing and posting. Therefore, we must be aware of our own context and must keep a good social harmony with online sympathy and social harmony in the country. We can also demonstrate good netiquette practice even to our political leaders, social activists and common people. They can follow the standards of netiquette. And then our community practices and sustains the goodness and maintains a good social harmony.
Words have power. A Jewish proverb points out that there is a power of death and life in our tongue. Are we serious on what we write, on what we speak, on what we share the content to others. If we are not following good standards of word choice, it may affect both the individual and community. It is better to use the words wisely as face-to-face in the digital space. Everyone wants to hear affirmative words, encouraging words, loving words and motivational content. Likewise, it is the same in the digital space. If you have some constructive feedback on some political, social or religious issues, it is also better to engage in constructive discussion rather than just spreading negativity. Spreading negativity does not bear any good fruits as what we sow, we reap. What are we sowing in the digital space? It is a crucial question for all of us. Similarly, it is better to think twice before posting or clicking on the digital space. We all need to verify before posting any comments or contents. All the online content may not be true. We should be very careful on the content shared and to be shared. While reading newspapers or watching TV, it is seen that there are many crimes because of false accusations and fake content posting. Do you share everything while you talk in person whatever you have heard? If not, let's not say it online.
Well-written content reflects your professionalism and respect too. If we want to earn respect, we should do the same. Using appropriate and respectful word choice reflects our professionalism and honors the communication. It can be said that using all capital letters, unnecessary abbreviations and inappropriate word usage do not maintain professionalism in the communication. Similarly, both personal attacks on others and protecting your own information is important too. Maintaining privacy of our own and others’ information is one of the respectful ways in our sharing. Finally, it is also ethical to avoid plagiarism to keep trust and integrity in our sharing. Copying other ideas is never as valuable as the original one. We should put our integrity and acknowledge others in our posts and writing if we have cited others in our writing. Moreover, in the context of Nepal, we can see a lot of challenges in implementing netiquette. There are many incidents of being cheated by other scammers and phishing. Even though there is a growing digital literacy, many online platform users are not serious and unaware of the ethical conducts. It may take some time to learn and cope with such challenges. But every citizen must be responsible to maintain integrity and accountability in the cyber laws. The Nepal government has recently pursued cyber law enforcement, but it seems to remain weak. All institutions and educators should incorporate digital ethics into their curriculum to create responsible netizens. Likewise, the concerned institutions leaders can conduct some enhancement activities, prevention education, awareness programs to make the students aware of digital literacy skills.
In conclusion, a respectful and ethical digital space starts with you. Netiquette is not just a law or following rules, it is about being a responsible digital global citizen. We all should create a safe and positive online environment for ourselves and future upcoming generations. We can master the netiquette skill by adopting it and by sharing. Will you share about netiquette to your family members, relatives or your connections? Together, let’s navigate digital space with netiquette.
