Internet & the world

I think it's accepted by all that the internet and therefore social communities like Twitter and Reddit (urgh, but Reddit is definitely a ubiquitous presence on the internet) have a huge power to spread information and inform others about the world and what is happening in it, particularly events which are either misrepresented by the media or simply not talked about at all. But while we all (should) accept the power to inform, to what extent does social media shape common thought? To what extent does it shape events, as opposed to informing of them?

@ pinkie-dawn

I'm of the opinion that social media is just like regular big media only more specialized and decentralized. Instead of millions of people watching Fox or MSNBC they're tailoring the kind of news/media/infotainment they get from Facebook friends, who themselves got it from someone else, etc. etc. There's certainly more voices in social media, but the problems of accuracy are still there (possible worse). So while you might hear more about, say, police brutality on social media than you would on TV news, you're still getting someone's spin (and you might not even know whose) and you're probably more at risk for an outright hoax.

So, basically, I don't think social media shapes us any differently than big media does, at least when it comes to information.

Social media is just people talking. You may as well ask "how does people talking to each other shape common thought and events?"

I think it's less like traditional media like Esper suggests and more like an impromptu meetup to discuss things with your friends and their friends and anyone who was already in the room or decides to wander in off the street.

While it's true that at the end of the day it's easy to manipulate people through misinformation, the internet and social media provide many more ways to get information than just the media itself. While it is, in a sense, very similar to the mainstream media, it also provides MORE options. Whereas we used to have CNN/Fox/MSNBC/etc, now we have tons and tons of online sites. Of course, there are going to be those biased sites and misinformed people who follow them, but that doesn't mean it's bad to have more options.

> Implying that Fox, CNN, and MSNBC are non-biased.


WAT.

CarcharOdin said:

> Implying that Fox, CNN, and MSNBC are non-biased.


WAT.

Click to expand...

Were you talking to me? Cause I wasn't implying that at all.

Pokemon Game Fan said:

Were you talking to me? Cause I wasn't implying that at all.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I misread your post.

Still, that doesn't change that they are biased, but you are also right in that there are certainly a lot of biased news websites as well. In fact, let's just be honest....most news sources have some kind of bias to them. Liberal media, conservative media, and everything in between, most sites are going to be slanted in some way.

CarcharOdin said:

Sorry, I misread your post.

Still, that doesn't change that they are biased, but you are also right in that there are certainly a lot of biased news websites as well. In fact, let's just be honest....most news sources have some kind of bias to them. Liberal media, conservative media, and everything in between, most sites are going to be slanted in some way.

Click to expand...

Oh yeah, definitely. That's one of the points I made too. I just mean it's better to have MORE options. Having 3 biased options isn't as good as having hundreds of biased ones. It gives more options.

The more I lurk through other parts of the internet such as other forums like Reddit, the more I feel like this website is isolated from what's currently going on within the internet community. It allows people to fully express how they truly feel on certain brands or products and sometimes try to convince others to join them to make a difference and begin some internet riot. For all we know, a petition to cancel a game they never played yet is more important to them than another police brutality, which is why I feel fan outrage on entertainment media should have the same treatment in news as politics.

Pinkie-Dawn said:

The more I lurk through other parts of the internet such as other forums like Reddit, the more I feel like this website is isolated from what's currently going on within the internet community. It allows people to fully express how they truly feel on certain brands or products and sometimes try to convince others to join them to make a difference and begin some internet riot. For all we know, a petition to cancel a game they never played yet is more important to them than another police brutality, which is why I feel fan outrage on entertainment media should have the same treatment in news as politics.

Click to expand...

Well, I mean, this website is isolated from the Internet Community. It's on an increasingly lesser-used medium (forums in the classic sense, unlike Reddit) focused on Pokémon, with a very small subset of the community having any real inclination to post about things that attract the focused attention of bigger communities i.e. the aforementioned Reddit.

And uh.... no, fan outrage over idk, the cancellation of Silent Hills should not receive the same level of coverage as say, the Sandra Bland case.
Human lives over theoretical pixels, sorry.

Pinkie-Dawn said:

The more I lurk through other parts of the internet such as other forums like Reddit, the more I feel like this website is isolated from what's currently going on within the internet community. It allows people to fully express how they truly feel on certain brands or products and sometimes try to convince others to join them to make a difference and begin some internet riot. For all we know, a petition to cancel a game they never played yet is more important to them than another police brutality, which is why I feel fan outrage on entertainment media should have the same treatment in news as politics.

Click to expand...

As far as this website goes, it is highly isolated in truth. The people here do so due to lacking an appropriate mechanism to handle unedited outside opinion, but that's really beside the topic.

The way I see it, social media is a hyperpowered version of talking. Unlike in real life things can happen, as twocows said, impromptu, and it requires very minimal effort to get your opinion seen. It's quite democratic, if the powers in charge of social media don't decide to corrupt that. I think it's powerful... for now.

I agree conceptually with the people that are saying social media is like talking, but I have a few comments on it specifically.

1) Saying social media is like talking on a big scale misses a lot of the complexities we encounter when looking at data. I'm not an expert on social media but I'm confident a million people talking about something on Facebook is not a thousand times bigger than a thousand people talking by themselves. What I mean by that is that it's probably going to be either exponentially more (by reaching an expanded network every time they talk) or exponentially less (people set shields to bullshit and ignore it). I'd personally bet on it reaching more people but like I said not my area of expertise. But what I can tell you is that differences of scale are not 1:1 (i.e. straight lines) except for very short periods of time.
2) Another comment is on the nature of social media vs broadcast media. The social media environment is very different from the broadcast environment. You've got more sources by well over a factor of a thousand but almost none of them know a thing about journalism. You could accuse the broadcast media folks of the same thing and be correct but I'd point to the sheer scale of junk quality fluff you see online everyday. It's a completely different beast.
3) I've always thought it's funny how people talk about how they look for news without a bias because a) it's impossible b) it's more effective to splice different stories together to remove the bias. Discounting a news story because "it's biased" doesn't mean there isn't something of value in it. It may require a bit of critical thinking to find it, but the story has something of value in it. If it's the CCTV saying "absolutely nothing is wrong in Tianjin let's go home now guys" the value is "Something is up in Tianjin." You can then couple that with screengrab from Weibo saying "Explosion in Tianjin" and... Bam. You now know there was an explosion in Tianjin that was serious enough state media felt they had to address it.