Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Who's in Control?

We all have opinions. But how much of these opinions are being shaped by what we see on social media and the news? Did you know that Facebook automatically posts the articles and videos that are trending around the world? Which means, if Facebook is your main outlet and news source, you are only viewing the most popular opinions from around the world. This also means, you will be missing about 75% of the information that is needed to come to a valid and supported opinion. So...

ARE YOUR OPINIONS REALLY YOURS?


What is even MORE exciting is when you base your opinions on someone ELSE's opinion. Who's to say they were educated about both side? Who's to say they are correct? This goes into the subject of expert vs. amateur. YouTube is a popular site for DIY and how-to videos: thousands of vloggers and beauty 'experts' give their OPINION on how to do things. For example: how to correctly tweeze your eyebrows, how to bake the best pancakes, and my personal favorite- how to calm a crying baby.


My question today is, "Who is in control of our opinions: Social Media or The People?"

My answer: YES. We the people ARE the social media. We are continually being influenced by each other, and it is our duty to make sure that the part of society that survives off of social media, be clearly informed. 

TRUMP
I've noticed that one reason Donald Trump continues to gain popularity through the internet is because we keep discussing him. The way Social Media sites stay afloat is by how many clicks they get. This is why YouTube videos have advertisements, and why websites pay a lot of money to be in the top two spots on Google Search. This is why Facebook posts trending videos that are certain to get enough clicks. (You can take this as my opinion, but I saying this as a general observation. My opinion about this is that IT IS SILLY).


Stay tuned for more passionate opinions about these observations.

4 comments:

  1. i did not realize that they distribute the more popular information more. this answers my the question i posed to one of my peers the other day, "how do we all know the same youtube videos etc... if we are from opposite sides of the country? This amount of distribution power, like you said, can be a great infulence on opinion

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  2. I loved your use of cartoons as content! The first thing I did was scroll down your post to see all of them. Before even reading your topic I was interested because of the visuals. Good work! Your voice throughout the writing is what kept me wanting to read more. You have a great and relevant topic for our class project.

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  3. These points are very valid. I'd love to see how you better expand on this subject. It's very true that social media is dictated by things we have already viewed and what's popular. When you said that we are spocial media, it sets up any other question of the soft: Are we the news? Are we the viral videos? I don't know if I entirely disagree with social media posting things that are only relevant to us and our past searches, because that's why it's important to begin with. The reason news sites are struggling so much is because their news articles are so unimportant to everybody as a whole. When I go to CNN or Al-Jazeera or the Wall Street Journal, I only read about five or six articles. That's because that's all that interests me. The rest is unimportant to me. So if Facebook or Twitter can feed that to me, knowing that's what I want to read, then why not?

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  4. This definitely feels like a jumping off point rather than a whole post, but it is an intriguing premise! I feel that it could use some refining in that I'm not sure at the moment which of the 5 themes you were building this concept towards fitting into... At the beginning it seems to be building towards a 21st Century Literacy angle, like "let's be aware of what we're being fed and interpret it subjectively for what it is," but then it seems to start going towards maybe "Authority and Power" in that you're talking about experts vs amateurs and who control what etc.

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