I chose to respond to question seven, as I’m probably addicted to social media by any reasonable definition of “addiction.” I think that people of our age, who were born in a time without social media and watched it develop, are acutely aware of what changes social media has made/continues to make to the way we communicate, the way we gather information, the stories we hear and share, and so on, almost ad infinitum.
The first major change I can point to is one touched on in the question itself, and that is the ability to publish without publishers. I see this as a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the lack of a physical medium on which one relies to disseminate the story means that the cost of entry has been radically reduced. It costs next to nothing to publish and spread one’s work. Sites like Medium allow aspiring writers, journalists, and political pundits to publish their thoughts and stories for free and without any editorial oversight. Platforms like Facebook help writers find an audience and build a community around their work, allowing projects that might not otherwise have been published to gain a potentially massive amount of attention. A perfect example of this is Humans of New York, a project dedicated solely to the spreading of stories and voices that would have gone unheard had it not been for the technology at our disposal (ironically enough, a collection of HoNY stories has recently been published the old school way, becoming a New York Times Best Seller). The low cost of entry, the ease to which stories can find audiences, the speed at which quality work can spread, all contribute to the growing number and diversity of stories that we are able to read/hear.
The other edge to this double-edged sword lies in the fact that there’s no need for one’s work to grace the editor’s desk. While this is one factor in the lowering of barriers to entry previously discussed, this also means that it’s never been easier for lies and fictions to spread, and it’s been shown that false information spreads faster than the truth. The widespread dissemination of false information is something that has only relatively recently begun to gain attention, therefore it’s difficult to say just what the ramifications of this will be. Speaking to my personal experience, among myself and my friends it’s lent itself to a feeling that nothing online can be trusted, that there are no longer any unbiased sources of information, that there is no ability to discern objective truth from falsehood online, and that everything seen and read on the internet should be treated as being false or being manipulated in some way. This attitude, even though it’s my own, strikes me as being almost as dangerous as believing everything you read on the internet. It introduces the possibility that, even though it’s never been easier to spread a story, allowing for voices that would have previously gone unheard to be heard, the fact that these voices are being heard through the medium of social media means that they won’t be believed.
The last aspect I want to touch on is the famous comments section. The optimistic among us might have thought that the unique structures of social media that allow for news outlets, writers, authors, etc. to publish their work essentially for free, and then to be able to interact with their audience in a way that resembles the Greek and Roman forums of antiquity, would have lent itself to a strengthening of what those same Greeks and Romans would have called “republican virtues.” That it might have allowed a more diverse, open, and honest communication between author and reader, between speaker and listener. That it would have allowed for the readers and listeners to challenge the authors and speakers in an open forum, inverting the relationship between author/speaker and reader/listener, blurring the distinctions between the two and creating opportunities for dialogue that allow greater truths to be revealed. Unfortunately, a cursory scroll through basically any comments section would leave anyone who held those optimistic views feeling a little naïve.
To summarize (or tl;dr, for the other social media addicts): social media, and the internet as a whole, has allowed for the widespread dissemination of stories and voices that would have gone otherwise unheard. This diversification and multiplicity of voices is almost certainly a positive thing. However, the low-to-nonexistent cost of entry has caused the widespread dissemination of false information as well, lending itself to a growing cynicism about what one encounters online, potentially leading to a silencing of those very same stories and voices. In addition, the unique structure of social media has blurred the lines between author/speaker and reader/listener and opened up opportunities for greater dialogue between the two. However, those opportunities often fall at the wayside to be replaced by trolling and arguing, with the participants shielded from the consequences of their actions by a veneer of anonymity.
Works Cited
Bogomilova, Alexandra. “How reading online comments affects us.” Social Media Psychology, https://socialmediapsychology.eu/2016/10/05/onlineandsocialmediacomments/. Accessed 16 Jan 2020.
Fox, Maggie. “Fake News: Lies spread faster on social media than truth does.” NBC News, https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fake-news-lies-spread-faster-social-media-truth-does-n854896. Accessed 16 Jan 2020.
Humans of New York, https://www.humansofnewyork.com/. Accessed 16 Jan 2020.
Hi Cooper,
Thanks for your interesting post – I also addressed question 7, but we wrote about different aspects of the question so I appreciated reading your post.
The two articles you linked were really interesting and added additional support to your arguments – the article about comments particularly resonated with me in how it described that part of the tone of comments depends on the platform. I think a part of this could be that some platforms are more anonymous than others (i.e. you might be completely anonymous on Reddit whereas, on Facebook, you are “friends” with everyone you know, perhaps making you comment differently on the platforms), what do you think?
I am wondering what you make of Chamberlin’s comment (http://writerscafe.ca/book_blogs/writers/j-edward-chamberlin_if-this-is-your-land-where-are-your-stories.html) that stories give us where we belong, and when we interpret story wrong, this can lead to confrontation, in relation to the “comments” section that you wrote about?
Thanks!
Katarina
Works Cited
Chamberlin, Edward. “Interview with J. Edward Chamberlin”. Writer’s Café. Web. 15 Jan. 2020.
Hi Katarina,
I agree that anonymity on social media platforms changes the way in which people behave on them. Reddit is a great example, 4chan another. Even on Facebook you can see the difference in behavior between fake and real accounts, or even real accounts that are commenting in private groups vs their public profile. It’s an interesting phenomenon and I’d like to see more research done on the subject.
Thank you for the link to this talk, it’s a great resource. I agree with his comment, it’s well said. I think that stories are really the fundamental way in which we make sense of our lives, the world, the past, really everything that makes up our experience. And yes, when two people have different stories, different ways of making sense of the world, then there’s bound to be conflict.
Thanks,
Cooper
Hi Cooper,
Thanks for your response and additional thoughts.
Nice blog post! I feel like your post can be related to Indigenous language revitalization. I took an anthropology class at UBC about culture and communication with Dr. Patrick Moore at UBC and he talks a lot about how internet and social media can help Indigenous language revitalization. Back before the internet when people wanted to document and study dying Indigenous languages there was no easy way give all of the documentation to the members of the community and the documentation often just got archived and was not able to be used to help revitalization. But now things are different as an anthropologist can now upload their work online and give people in the community access to their documentation. With this documentation community members now have a platform and access to materials and recourses to further learn their own language and teach their language to others. Here is a platform that has done just this https://www.firstvoices.com/explore/FV/sections/Data/Secwepemc/Secwepemctsin/Secwepemc/learn .
citation
First Peoples Cultural Council. “Secwepemc.” FirstVoices, 2000-2020. http://www.firstvoices.com/explore/FV/sections/Data/Secwepemc/Secwepemctsin/Secwepemc/learn.
Hi Sidney,
Great link! It’s a little serendipitous, just yesterday I was listening to an interview of a man who’s working on a project called the AGES Initiative. I’m Eastern Orthodox, and one of the difficulties the church has is that it’s spread out across a number of different ethnic groups and languages. This isn’t a huge problem in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, etc. where the native orthodox communities live, as everyone in those communities speak the same language, but in the Americas where there is a large orthodox diaspora it has created many challenges, especially between new immigrants who speak the old languages and the second/third generation children who have grown up with English as their primary language. What the AGES Initiative does is collect all the texts and songs the church uses, in all the different languages, and make them available to the local communities. Right now it’s just English and Greek, but will soon include the other main languages (Arabic, Russian, Aramaic) as well as the less-spoken but still important languages (Ethiopian Amharic, Farsi). It also includes the local styles of music used.
It’s literally in no way related to the topic of this course, but it was on my mind this morning and your comment reminded me of it. It’s incredible some of the things that the internet has allowed us to do, and the preservation and spread of beautiful pieces of history and culture is one of the greatest.
Thanks for your comment!
Cooper
Citation
“AGES Digital Chant Stand.” AGES Initiative, http://www.agesinitiatives.com/dcs/public/dcs/dcs.html. Accessed 21 Jan 2020.
I really enjoyed reading your blog post. I also addressed the same question. I agree with you how internet (particularly social media) has become a means to spread false stories or what we it calls today “fake news” but I have a different take on it. I think there have always been false stories told way before the internet. The only difference between now and before the internet is that the storied told were controlled by few people then.
Political leaders influence publisher to write their version of the truth and policies and education determine which stories are told in a country. I think that is why we have so many contradicting stories when it come to be events such as the world war. In Chamberlin’s interview in the Writer’s Café the reoccurring point is that how there are contradicting stories and how both parties believe their story is the right one. So, according to Chamberlin, the goal is not finding a literal common ground, but it is to reconcile. So, my thought is, there will be false stories always, but the internet gives everyone equal opportunity to present their story. It puts the power in people’s hand to determine which one is true story which one is not. Tech giants like Facebook, Google and Twitter incorporate features and algorithms to allow people to upvote stories and detect false stories. One thing for sure is that these companies are not working hard enough, and we have a long way to go. However, I believe that the internet has empowered many people to tell their story and create movements around the globe.