New Media Perspective

 What forms of new media do you use daily? How has new social media influenced your perspective of events? Are these positive or negative influences?

I have an account on almost every social media site it seems like. I am most active on facebook. My pinterest and twitter accounts are mostly abandoned because of how much I work. I get all of my news through new media. I follow a couple of news sites like NPR and Slate on facebook and will click through from there to any stories with an interesting tag line. I also follow some blogs such as feministing and friendly atheist. New media has changed my filter of information. As Kovach & Rosenstiel point out in Blur, newspapers changed what stories people were exposed to (2010). This is similar the ideas presented by Ethan Zuckerman in his TED talk (2010). Social media gives me the option to see only stories that I want to read. I do not have to be presented with negative opinions of people I like. I can avoid news that challenges my personal views. You can see how this works with a facebook feed. If I have a friend that constantly posts opposing political views, I can remove them. So, as I am currently using them, social media is isolating my perspective of events. It can leave people wrapped up in their own bubble of wrong information. This has really been highlighted by people who are anti-vaccine. They involve themselves in communities that further enforce their position and can drown out everyone saying otherwise. Every person who has strongly held beliefs will demonstrate the same resistance. Mostly, I would say that social media has a negative affect on our perspectives. Ethan Zuckerman showed us that a much better use of social media is possible. Our hashtag campaigns are an example of this. Social media can be a great learning tool and expose us to things outside of our limited scope of the world. But we do need to push for this positive experience to be the norm, because I certainly do not think it is this way now. 

References

Kovach, B., & Rosenstiel, T. (2010). Blur: How to know what's true in the age of information overload. New York, NY: Bloomsbury.

Socha, B., & Eber-Schmid, B. (n.d.). What is new media? Retrieved from http://www.newmedia.org/what-is-new-media.html

Zuckerman, E. (2010, July). Listening to global voices. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/ethan_zuckerman