Clementine Ford's public outing of a man who said he would rape and bash her reveals the muddied way we deal with technology, media and "social media shamings", writes Jeff Sparrow.

"A South Australian man has been shamed nationally across social media for writing threatening and derogatory comments to a media personality on Facebook."

So begins a Sydney Morning Herald piece discussing the fate of one Ryan Hawkins, the 20-year-old man whose vile response to feminist writer Clementine Ford has now been widely publicised.

In public debates, look out for the passive voice because it invariably obscures exactly who did what to whom - as is the case in this rather curious description by the SMH.

Just to clarify, Hawkins sent Ford a message saying, "I'm going to bash and rape you stupid little ****. Lesbian scum." The suggestion that he was "shamed" by "social media" diminishes Hawkins' responsibility for a message that he wrote and published under his own name. He wanted his abuse to be read - just perhaps not by quite so many people who have now seen it.

The point is worth making because, in discussions of so-called "online shaming", people's understandable anxiety about technology often muddies what's at stake. In his new book So You've Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson chronicles a series of episodes in which so-called Twitter mobs have hoisted their virtual pitchforks and ruined the lives of individuals guilty of little more than a digital faux pax.

The most famous example is that of Justine Sacco, who, shortly before boarding a plane, tweeted an off-colour joke about Africa that went inadvertently viral. By the time she landed, she discovered that she'd become internet infamous - and thus ruined her career and, for a time, her life. Ronson argues that Sacco wasn't the racist that people thought her to be, that her joke had been misunderstood, and that the reaction was out of all proportion to the alleged offense.

Certainly, a tweet can circulate at astonishing speed, while the strange dialectic that plays out between public and private in social media probably does encourage trolling.

Yet it's fundamentally disorienting to analyse these episodes purely in terms of technology.

One of the more bizarre aspects of the SMH piece is that it reports on the publicity Hawkins is receiving without ever acknowledging its own role in that process. Fairfax's coverage has, one would think, taken the story to a whole new level, not just because newspapers still have substantial readerships in and of themselves, but because the article will now circulate again on Facebook and Twitter.

To put it another way, most "social media shamings" are also "media shamings", even though the latter phrase doesn't sound nearly as sexy. There's nothing new about individuals having their real or imagined sins publicised for all the world to see. It's just that, traditionally, such witch hunts were invariably led by newspapers and television stations.

Some readers might remember the Paxtons, briefly notorious in the mid-nineties after A Current Affair outed them as inveterate dole bludgers, unwilling to cut their hair and get a job. The humiliation dished out to the family was business-as-usual for the media. When, however, John Safran recruited Shane Paxton to visit Ray Martin's house to see what time he left for work, the avuncular ACA host went berserk.

Shamings are only supposed to go one way, you see.

In that respect, the innovation fostered by social media isn't so much about technology as social relations. Twitter and Facebook and similar platforms allow individuals to broadcast when once upon a time they could only listen. We shouldn't get that out of proportion - social media's still overwhelmingly dominated by the same people (and types of people) who dominate everywhere else. Nevertheless, they do facilitate a certain degree of public participation - and that's overwhelmingly a good thing.

Which brings us back to Ryan Hawkins. Hawkins sent sexualised abuse of the kind that's commonly made to women in all kinds of circumstances. Most of the time, they're unable to respond. Clementine Ford could - and she duly did. That's a good thing.

Hawkins hasn't lost his job or been thrown in prison or anything of that sort. All that's happened is that he's been forced to own up to his abuse - and, in the process, provided a public illustration of how a certain kind of male mentality works.

You can see the entitlement unfolding in the quotes he provides to the SMH, where he apologies (sort of, kind of) even as he reaches for the mantle of victimhood ("he feels Ms Ford could have messaged him, instead of sharing the message"). He said he would rape and bash her - and yet he feels she should have been more understanding?

There's no simple solution to our often-toxic public culture. Most of the time, the media gets used to kick down, silencing those who are already the least heard. But, every now and then, the process goes the other way - and, by and large, that's all to the good.

Jeff Sparrow is a writer, editor and broadcaster, and an Honorary Fellow at Victoria University. On Twitter, he is @Jeff_Sparrow.