Confessions of an angry netizen: My reflections about a recent experience on the Facebook page of Mediacorp Channel 5

I'm one of those endangered species who is more at home in front of a television set than a tablet streaming Netflix. But not so old-fashioned that I won't take to Facebook to complain bitterly when the TV network does something I don't like.

On 1 May 2019, Mediacorp, the only free-to-air TV broadcaster in Singapore, killed off one of its channels called Okto. It used to screen children's shows in the daytime and sports at night.

The children's shows and sports programmes were moved to Channel 5, the only other English channel besides the pure news station CNA.

This entailed some rearrangement of the existing schedule on Channel 5. Large swathes of daytime programming were cleared to make way for the children's shows, and a few nighttime programmes had to make way for sporting action, mainly from the local mixed martial arts startup ONE Championship.

I was unhappy that a series I had been following, the hit American crime drama NCIS, disappeared suddenly and got replaced by ONE Championship magazine shows, which are recaps of past events and special feature stories. I'm a fan of ONE Championship too, but I only want to watch its live events, not old stuff!

Kerfuffle

So I went to the Mediacorp Channel 5 Facebook page to air my grievances. To my delight, others were also unhappy about the merging of Okto content into Channel 5.

In particular, two angry mothers pointed out that, as Channel 5 is not a specialist children's channel, they could not feel safe letting their children watch the TV unattended while they were busy with household chores.

I gleefully tagged onto their comments, berating Channel 5 for the merger.

But first, I questioned the disappearance of NCIS under a separate comment. It started with another fan asking for more locally produced shows and fewer imported ones:

The administrators of the Facebook page responded with this:

I seized the opportunity to ask where my drama series had gone...

The administrators didn't respond to this for quite a while. In the meantime, I was busy pursuing a different angle of attack:

Yes, it's ironic that the Top Fan badge is displayed on such a negative comment. The algorithm that awards the badges only looks at the number of times a person interacts with a page. It cannot discern the nature of the interactions.

The administrators responded with this:

But almost immediately, an angry mother appeared...

I added:

The administrators responded:

At the same time, a second thread was started by a different angry mother.

Wanting to pile the pressure on Channel 5, I contributed:

The second angry mother replied:

And then the administrators said:

Suddenly the administrators gave me this gem...

I suspect they took a while to come back with this because they had to ask the programming department for the future schedule plans. But better late than never. This was exactly what I wanted to see.

Appeased, I stopped the negative comments and rounded off my interaction with the following:

The Like on that last comment is from the administrators, who must have been quite relieved at the cessation of hostilities from me!

Sorry

I'll readily admit that I was so civil in that last comment because I felt guilty. My initial rush of frustration at the merger and the resulting damage to my daily TV viewing pleasure had clouded my judgement, and it had only belatedly occurred to me that I am also in the public relations field and could very well be the one facing angry netizens one day.

The golden rule of "Do to others what you would like others to do to you" has always been a principle I try my very best to uphold since my form teacher in primary school inculcated it in me. I realised that my emotions had gotten the better of me in this case and I had given the administrators a hard time.

I put myself in their shoes. If there's one thing that all tactical-level communications practitioners understand, it's the feeling of helplessness that comes with being merely the messenger. The administrators obviously didn't have any say in the decision to merge Okto into Channel 5. That decision was made by people way above their pay grade and in a totally different department. But it was their job to announce it... and deal with the fallout. If I had been one of them, and had to face this pesky "Jonathan Tiong" character, I would not have been pleased at all.

In short, I had broken the golden rule.

That's why I wrote that last comment the way I did. I was genuinely appreciative and even slightly awestruck at the patience and diligence displayed by the administrators in taking the effort to reply to every comment, and I wanted them to know that I recognised them for it.

PR done well

On a professional level, I also realised that their quick and consistent replies was exemplary in terms of best practices in social media public relations. When dealing with an unhappy public, the worst thing an organisation can do is turtle up and refuse to say anything. Okay, maybe there is indeed something worse: wielding the "ban hammer" and deleting all dissenting opinions! Unfortunately, many organisations adopt such uninformed approaches to their social media use.

There will always be a small group of what my social media lecturer calls "angry pyjama people" who will attack your organisation no matter what you do. Don't bother with them. For the vast majority of people, all they want from you as a social media administrator is for you to show that you have heard them. And you can only do this by actively engaging with them in the comments, or through private messages if discretion is necessary. After all, social media is supposed to be authentic two-way communication. This is what people expect when they use social media. So if you can meet those expectations, you immediately gain an advantage over the many other organisations which treat their social media pages as digital bulletin boards.

This works even in peacetime, that is, when nobody is upset with your organisation. In fact, by interacting regularly with your fans, you build brand loyalty which will come in handy during unhappy episodes as it makes your fans more likely to forgive you. The administrators of the Mediacorp Channel 5 Facebook page have done this well too, as can be seen from this comment thread on one of their normal day-to-day posts about the local soap drama serial Kin:

Note: The dialectal phrase "guai lan" means belligerent.

Summary

The key takeaways from this article are:

1. I let my feelings control me, and I wrote a barrage of passive-aggressive and outright aggressive Facebook comments against Channel 5 that I really shouldn't have.
2. When I calmed down, I realised what I had done and felt ashamed because I had made the lives of the social media administrators at Channel 5 unnecessarily difficult.
3. I tried to make it up to the administrators by writing a complimentary comment.
4. Reflecting on the incident from a public relations perspective, I realised that the administrators were doing a good job.

Kudos to the social media administrators of the Mediacorp Channel 5 Facebook page! Thank you for putting up with my nonsense and giving me the opportunity to remind myself to be more conscious of my conduct on social media in future.

Because behind every organisation's Facebook page is a real person with real feelings too...