In a globalized world where stories are increasingly being sent through “global circuits” (Schaffer & Smith 7) such as the publishing market, and news sources such as BBC, and CNN, a new competitor has joined the scene: Facebook. As seen within recent major events, such as the shootings and bombings in Paris and Beirut, Facebook seems to be at the top of the game in delivering news to its audience, instantly. Though Facebook itself is not the creating articles in regards to these traumatic happenings, it acts as a blank canvas for individuals looking to speak out about their own experiences in regards to these traumatic events. It is interesting to examine the role of this new form of media delivery, which in part acts as an orchestrator of voices, and also acts as a tool for individuals to share their version of the story.
Facebook is what I like to think of as the newspaper of the 21st century. It acts as an orchestrator of many voices, just as newspapers provide articles written by a variety of storytellers. The big difference is these storytellers no longer need to be professional journalists, but rather are the general public, serving to produce material that aids in the forming of their own personal life narrative. Individually, they use the format of Facebook to format what could be thought of as their own individual newspaper, sharing articles and photos related to their life, interests, political views, etc. As traumatic happenings occur throughout the world, these events hop to the top of the newsfeed, serving to be cases of front page articles sharing what the biggest events are in news right now.
While looking at the composition of the material I most commonly see on Facebook, I have noticed an increase in the amount of trauma narratives filling my newsfeed. For example, as I write this blog post, I decided to check what was happening on Facebook. Within a minute of scrolling through my newsfeed, I found a video displaying military attacks on ISIS, a picture of an ambulance rescuing individuals in the midst of a massive blizzard, and this article by BBC, bringing news to millions about anti-Islam rallies going on in Australia. Another example lies in the attacks that occurred in Paris that on November 13th, which instantly filled my Facebook newsfeed with images, videos, and stories displaying the horrible atrocities that had taken place. Here is an interesting article regarding how and which items arrive at the top of each persons newsfeed. These stories seem to both come in the form of narratives by individuals, and in the form of professionally produced works by major news sources. From seeing all of these trauma narratives, it seems to be that Facebook is no longer just a site for the developing of ones own life narrative, but instead has become a leading source in delivering narratives of trauma to world audiences.
In “Conjunctions: Life Narratives in the Field of Human Rights”, by Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith, they bring light to Kirby Farrell’s “post-traumatic ‘wound’ cultures of postmodernity” (13), and the idea that Western culture has become desensitized to suffering. It would be interesting to investigate the role of this “desensitizing” to trauma in relation to Facebook, and trauma narratives being presented on the social media platform.
Works Cited
Schaffer, Kay and Sidonie Smith. “Conjunctions: Life Narratives in the Field of Human Rights.” Biography 27.1 (2004): 1-24. JSTOR. Web. 2 Oct. 2015.
I thought Blakely’s idea of Facebook as the “newspaper of the 21st century” was an interesting concept for a few reasons. First, because even though most people our age and older have Facebook, a lot of people only a few years younger do not. I have a 14 year old sister who recently reported that “Facebook is for old people”. Although her experience is obviously not representative of all 14 year olds, it still shows that Facebook may not be reaching a large audience and calls into question who Facebook is a newspaper for. Second, I find that the news on my Facebook is largely controlled by what my friends decide to share. While, for me, this seems to create a fairly diverse spread of articles and political persuasions, for some, it may not. This presents an issue of what news people are receiving. For example, a friend of mine posted an article about the attacks in Beirut shortly after they occurred. However, I witnessed many people on Facebook claiming these attacks got no media coverage. This demonstrates one of the dangers of using Facebook as a newspaper— it could limit the content available to different audiences, providing only a small portion of the information available from news sources.