The Impact of Social Media

One of the difficulties individuals will experience as a consequence of an enhanced ability of individuals and organtions to communicate directly in Social Media is that misinformation, deliberate and unintended, will only be restrained by an informed public capable of rejecting falsehood and illusion. The danger is that stand alone individuals are incapable of resisting the pressures of conformity, fashion, and recieved views.

Social networks offer great potential for connecting individuals with common interests. But it is not clear that they will contribute to the quaity of the information communicated. Twitter has already been accused of facilitating the exchange of vast quantities of trivial non-consequential messages. The profiles shown on social networks may be, or become, similarly loaded with illusions and trivia. And the popularity of one network over another may not in itself be an indication of quality.

The majority is rarely a good guide to media quaity or veracity. The speedy spread of false rumours, calimony and propaganda go hand in hand with the rejection of science based knowledge, the propogation of fanaticism, and religious bigotry. The risk is that the expression of these weaknesses in human nature will overtake the virtues in the absence of editorial boards and trained experts reviewing the quality of the information posted. Yet the importance of a social networks for circumventing illegitimate authority can also be considered, in the right circumstances, as its greatest strength, as for example in Iran or when used by socially valuable whistle blowers.

There is, however, a need to recognise that social networds and the games evironments combined with the use of avatars increasingly permit individuals to create a virtrual identity and experience a virtual reality that has little to do with their real pesonalities, their work, or their real life. Social websites provide another, and possibly more intense
way foir individuals to avoid facing up to the social and economic consequences of thier own choices.
One thing is certain, henceforth we operate in a stucturally different social environment. Communication across the planet, open access to vast quantities of information, much of it hopelessly useless, uninformed, and manipulative are changing the nature of the world we see and experience. Our perceptions of the world are changed by the nature of the media available, and we are confronting a jugernaut of exposure to self-described individuals. Self-serving individual or brand descripotions may or may not improve the human being and/or his society. That is, in itself an interesting question.

Unless individuals can be induced to be sufficiently informed, skeptical, and cynical, their viewa, tastes, and the expression of their personalities will be unduely influenced by self proclaimed prophets and those who seek not to inform but to manipulate.

Unfortunately individuals, advertisers, and propagandists have one thing in common. They seek the means and information that Social Networks offer to enhace their ability to influence others. They are rarely interested in propagating the whole truth, rather they seek to manipulate. And Social Networks may well, on balance, strengthen the hand of the ill-informed and manipulative rather than the considered expert or honest. Nor is it clear that Social Media favour rational argumenr over emotive prejudice. Social Media are shaping our experice and perception of self and our percieved environment, whether for good or ill remains to be seen. Our only protection against the effects of Social Media is an enquiring mind backed by scientific skepticism. Fortunately the rise of Social Media has also led to the diminished influence of some of the worst sources of misinformation, just as it has also strengthened others. let us be optimistic. The struggle with and within Social Media is is a prolongation of the age old struggle between good and evil, education and ignorance, rationality and prejudice.

Posted by Rustylink