Communication Not Prevalent In Social Media
I posted a little while back about how I thought Facebook might lead to mis-education or dis-education due to the fact that we tend to associate ourselves with like-minded, and similarly educated people. Though this effect is not currently a huge problem, it seemed reasonable to me that our ever increasing online lives might take us to that point. In the comments it appeared that everyone who bothered to write something, wrote that I was crazy.
Well, maybe I wasn't so crazy. Take a look at this video:
Zuckerman is very much about connecting the world using the internet - but his presentation is all about how right now, even with our Facebooks and Twitters and realms of blogs, we are failing to communicate our ideas, information, and philosophies outside of our like-minded bubbles. In fact, we are currently worse off in the area of international news then we were 40 years ago.
The internet and social media certainly offer us the opportunity to create a global community, but its just a tool. As long as we continue to see language, culture, religion, philosophy, ideology, race, etc. as dividing walls, those tools will not help us accomplish anything in the area of communication or education.
Comments
Kyle- I think you had some extremely gullible people in that class, and you'd think that if they go to UF they'd be smarter and more skeptical to a KFC rumor that has been circulating since I was in high school. Aside from it being illegal to serve genetically engineered animals to consumers, wouldn't it be MORE expensive to do that than just buy real chickens?! haha
@kyle- Genetically engineered or not, the double down is the best 'sandwich-like' invention.......ever.
It doesn't matter what Facebook was intended to do [If it was even intended to do that. I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be a way for college students to keep in touch]. The fact that communication among like-minded individuals is mostly limited to LIKES and posts on pages [Do people even read those?] means that most information will come from the friends you pick.
Plus, with Kyle's example, that could've easily been spread without social networking. The media's susceptible to this too; the Sherrod incident was a great example of that. It just depends on what you choose to believe at face value.
@Lindsey & Copper_Ca$h001 - you're giving people in general WAY too much credit. Theres no more blindingly obvious example of human stupidity than the quickest look at our own government's effectiveness via the democratic vote. Shouldn't people understand that we need taxes to pay our debt? Shouldn't people understand that no serious problem is solved in 4 years (let alone 1)? Shouldn't people understand that parties don't matter, just the policies? Shouldn't people look up the vaguest list of policies before voting for a politician?
Obviously, of course, absolutely the answer to these questions is YES - but whats the reality? The reality is that the majority of this country is too stupid to take on that responsibility...whether a result of actual IQ or just plain apathy.
@Copper_Ca$h001 - you said "FB is only a instrument of communication and nothing more"
There are a bunch of reasons why this statement says nothing about the Facebook effect:
Based on your logic one should rhetorically ask: so the iPhone hasn't changed our culture? the TV hasn't changed our culture? newspapers didn't change our culture? These are all instruments of communication and nothing else.
Digital media is all about becoming more than the sum of their parts. Therefore, the intentions and the mechanics of a system like Facebook tells us very little about what effects it could or will have over our society.
Finally, it is a communication problem that we're discussing here. Therefore an instrument of communication is exactly the kind of device that could be involved with a communication problem.
Also you mention that people choose their friends, not Facebook. Thats again part of the problem itself. Most people - especially very young people - are far more likely to choose to communicate with someone similar in education, opinion, and culture....not someone with conflicting religious, political, or social views. In fact, if Facebook forced certain friendships then it wouldn't be such a problem - after all, the reason many of us grow culturally is because our geographical location forces us to become friends with different types of people (like Lindsey's mention of high school friends - you only have so many choices).