Today I listened to “The Point of Twitter” and “The Moment When Social Media Became the News.” I am reminded of a class I took in 2008 for my undergraduate degree where I had to create a Twitter account, and I didn’t quite understand why. Twitter was just getting going, and I didn’t know why I needed to be able to see what a bunch of celebrities were doing all the time. In my mind, Twitter was nothing more than the “status” portion of Facebook, and at the time, it was composed mainly of popular celebrities tweeting their new tattoos or a picture of what they had for dinner (not that all that much has changed).
Five years later, I yet again created a Twitter account for a class, and it is a whole new playing field. It is unbelievable the amount information that can be found on Twitter. Honestly, I’m not entirely surprised that Twitter has become a primary news source for many (particularly young) people. I myself look to Facebook when I get stuck in traffic to find out how long I’m going to be waiting. Speaking of social media as news: this HuffingtonPost article describes the widespread use of social media as news- even in the wake of a major account hack that lead to the AP posting, falsely, “Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.”
This article highlights one of the pitfalls of social media as news: security and verifiability. Aside from account hacks, the amount of false information that spreads like wildfire is ridiculous. The day after the Boston Marathon bombings, I saw on my Facebook feed photos of no less than four separate people who had died in the initial bombings. At the same moment as I was scrolling through FB, verifiable news sources were on television confirming only two deaths so far. I would say what we all have to remember is to take social media with a grain of salt. Most of this “news” is rooted in truth somewhere, but many times it’s hard to tell fact from fiction.
No comments:
Post a Comment