It is very easy for social media to twist and manipulate the minds of its viewers and followers. They control what gets put out in order to grasp the attention of viewers and to influence them to think or act a certain. This past presidential election has been a prime example of how social media has a grasp on society that we have no control over.
According to the article, a man named Eric Tucker posted a picture of several coach buses lined up, and continued to post " Anti-Trump protestors in Austin are not as organic as they seem. Here are the buses they came in.#fakeprotest#Trump2016#austin". Now although this post has nothing to do with the actual election (And were actually buses for a conference), it had over 10,000 shares and likes within the same day it was posted. It caught the attention of many trump supporters and Trump himself responded to the post saying "Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!". These type of posts only cause further division between the two major political parties in our country. Their jokes are being blown up far out of proportion than it needs to be. The media is encouraging this by creating new articles that question the decisions of Anti- Trump supporters The fact that something so small becomes the center of attention is beyond my comprehension. The post created was not only false, but irrelevant due to the fact that this is after the election, and trump has already won. Yet, some still feel the need to put in their two sense just because they are in favor of trump, and against those who oppose him. In class, we have talked about how the media controls what gets put out and seen by the public. In this situation, they knowingly allowed false information to be put out and cause more chaos there needs to be. We cannot stop people from expressing their opinions, but we can at least make sure that the information that gets put out is at least correct. Social media needs to monitor what gets posted and should take down posts that create unnecessary division.
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So are you saying that "fake" news needs to be monitored by social media platforms or divisive stories? Because they can be mutually exclusive. And if it is a post from someone that is not a journalist, does it create more restrictions on our freedom to express ourselves as we wish?
ReplyDeleteI see what you are trying to get at by saying social media should monitor its post. This may sound like a good idea but don't you think it will raise a lot of problems with social media if they were to carry out this initiative of monitoring post? By monitoring post they restrict what people can say which won't go well with those of us that like to go onto social media to speak our own opinion. Then on top of that do you really think social media WANTS to monitor what people say on their platforms? If people can go on Facebook or Twitter and say whatever non sense they want this just creates more controversy or more issues surrounding events like the election for example. This is what the media wants if as you said before they control whats gets put out for us to be sort of fully tuned to what is being shown by that specific source of media. So this idea of them monitoring post most likely won't be put into place or do anymore good than what we have now.
ReplyDeleteI feel like your ideas for monitoring and restricting what people say on the media would definitely be difficult to implement. While there are some merits, there are also a lot of drawbacks to even trying something like this. Yes, it could in theory help unify the country by decreasing the amount of controversy and dissension, but it also could be seen as a huge violation of privacy and rights. Freedom of speech/expression is the right to articulate one's opinions and ideas without fear of government retaliation or censorship, or societal sanction. Implementing something like this would, in a sense, violate this very right.
ReplyDeleteTo further build off of what Ms.Harris was saying and Isaiah as well, would it really solve the problem to restrict what people can share and say through social media. With the case of "professional protesters" being incited by social media post I believe that's more of a situation where one person stating their opinion caused a major uproar that had a ripple affect with like minded people who felt betrayed. These are not situations where people are arguing facts but instead a heated disagreement between opinions. By censoring what certain people say on social media you wouldnt stop people from having these ideas or sharing there views in a shared space it would only make it harder for people to organize and protest. In the end it is "social media" and it's just a space of opinions and propaganda where people can share there views despite criticism. The only way to stop people from sharing there opinions on a public media outlet would be to remove the outlet completely.
ReplyDeleteIf you were the president of the social media website that allows this to happen how would you handle these issues and stop them befor they get out of hand. Also do you think people who do this should be hold accountable for their actions. Maybe not not by law enforcement but something responsible to publicly shame those who take advantage of power of social media.
ReplyDeleteFake media can continue to be a problem in America if something doesn't get done. I would suggest that the government should monitor things like this so false stories don't continue to arise.
ReplyDeleteReading the comments above has brought different perspectives on the issue. While it is true that censoring social media is a violation of freedom of speech, sometimes it is done anyway. For example, certain words or phrases cannot be said, or anything considered inappropriate by other viewers can banned or blocked. This leads to two questions... is there a time when these boundaries can be overstepped, and if there are boundaries that can be broken, is this an acceptable time to do so.
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