After our unit on social media I gained insight on how powerful
and influential these resources truly are. Not only do they give us a more intimate view
of people’s lives, but it also serves as a source of current events in today’s
society. It shows that we don’t need to
conform to traditional methods for finding news. Whether it be Twitter or Facebook (two of the
more popular social media sites), these two sites have been fostering a more
concrete and direct approach to circulating trending stories that have
historically only been able for viewing on a major news channel, or a
newspaper/magazine.
A prime example of this easily-accessible information would
be in relation to the supposed gunman at the Student Wellness and Recreation
Center. It may be just me, but I became
aware of this event through Twitter a half an hour before I noticed I had
received an email from the school telling me the same information. Not only did I access this information sooner,
but I also saw a series of pictures and other possible leads on the story that
were otherwise unavailable in an email. Though
the claims of said gunman were false, it still shows how fast and how easy it
is to be kept up to date on current happenings.
I know that a handful of these popular news channels have
their own websites so that people can access the same information on the go,
but I think that social media sites offer a better interpretation of these
stories. The reason I say this is
because most of these channels are politically affiliated and may alter the
story to coincide with the beliefs/ideas of their particular political
faction. I feel that social media-goers
offer a less stifled story than those found in the news. I’m aware that these users are bound to have
a political stance; however, I feel that for each current event, there are
equal posts/tweets from each political party.
With that being said, a single person could search a hashtag that
pertains to a particular story/event and see multiple views on the topic.
No comments:
Post a Comment