Last week I visited the UBC Biomedical Branch Library and talked with Dean and Dan about various social media tools. I mentioned that I get my news almost exclusively from social media sources. I like using RSS because it allows me to essentially build my own newspaper (including comics!). I tend to avoid a lot of mainstream media because I find that it lacks depth and can be quite negative and one-sided. Customizing my RSS feed lets me pick sources that give me information relevant to my interests.
Dean suggested that the problem of one-sidedness in the news we see isn’t automatically solved by the use of RSS feeds and social media. It is entirely possible to load your feed with one-dimensional information sources. Most people love to read things they agree with after all, and may be less inclined to go out of their way to select sources that differ from their own point of view.
It becomes important to filter carefully, but this need not be an individual task. This is social media, after all! My friends have shown me a number of great sources that provide information and opinions from different perspectives than I tend to gravitate toward. With social media we actively create our networks and improve their diversity and quality by exploring and collaborating.
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The idea of developing a pluralistic view in library collections is also applicable to our social media reading.
I sign up to all kinds of things to see what the ‘fringes’ are saying.
Dean
You bring up a very relevant issue in the world of media and news in general. The biases that exist in all forms of media do not exclude social media by any means. When watching the news, reading the newspaper, or reading our favourite magazines, everything is written from a certain point of view. The great advantage social media brings to the general media world is the aspect of democracy. In that, all the exisitng biases and one -sided view points can be argued, agreed upon, or questioned by anyone. Traditional media sources have never been able to capture this range in outlooks, and that is one reason I believe social media is here to stay.