I've been using the internet
since the day where you had to go deaf in order to get on via dial up, since
the days when a phone call would ruin the entire internet connection that took
ages to connect to. So naturally, I know my way around the place.
I know of the sites not to consider even going to (along with the search words)
as well as those with only high-quality content. I also know the culture here,
from Memebase to Facebook to Tumblr to YouTube. And let me tell you: it’s a
dog-eat-dog (or in this case, troll-countertroll) world, especially for the
more prominent subjects. And what year is it? That’s right.
Election year.
Election years have always
been big – that’s no different from before. However, since the 2008 election,
the use of social media has expanded. Since that time, I've joined five social
media sites, and no matter where I go, there’s some sort of political content.
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| …and sometimes I get involved. |
Is that a problem? No. The problem is the politician’s
raging fanbase going keyboard to keyboard against each other, caps-lock
shouting things like “UR POLITISHUN IS LAME” or “PSEUDO INTELLECTUAL INSULT
NUMBER 2301,” or in some cases, “Ron Paul 2012!”
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| You do know he’s out of the race, right? |
This doesn’t matter too much.
People will be people (meaning they’ll throw insults at each other just to make
each other mad – aka trolling). Where it gets bad, however, is when the bias
becomes so overwhelming, or the “rhetoric” gets so simple, you don’t get a
valid viewpoint – instead, you get a massive amount of people completely
overwhelming one side. That Romney related post up there? Yeah. On Tumblr, it
has over 9,000,000 notes (meaning over nine million people have either reposted it or liked it). There are about 9,000,000 Tumblr users. I think my
bro and I are the few – if only – Romney supporters on Tumblr.
To show the power of social
media (namely Tumblr), recall the first Presidential debate. That’s okay if you didn't watch it. All you need to know is that many people and sources (including
CNN) agreed that Mitt Romney won. Tumblr didn't like that.
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| Those last two are me and my brother. Sorry to show my bias. |
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| Obama used to be at 60-ish%. But that was a few weeks ago. (Taken on 10/27) |
Remember, this is Fox
News. Fox News readers are essentially the opposite (politically) of Tumblr
users, and are about as biased. These results weren't the original: they came
from social media. What does this mean?
Social media is a very powerful thing, and not one to be underestimated. A swing voter could cross his way to a heavily anti-Obama site and change his views - and his vote - on the spot, whereas the same could happen on an anti-Romney site. Sometimes it's because of the views; other times, this change in vote comes from the fear of being unpopular for one's opinion.
Point is, just as almost every news site has overwhelming bias, so too do social media sites. They are not the place to find a good opinion; quite the opposite - although if you want to start a flamewar (bouncing mostly unbacked opinions at each other over the internet), any social media site is a good place to start.
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| (This is social media for you.) |
Generally everybody would agree this post to be true. To me, trolling has a certain time or place on the internet but definitely not on politicians’ websites. I agree with you that this would cause some people who are on the fence to decide on a candidate for the wrong reasons. It would probably be beneficial to your argument if you posed some solutions. I like that you brought awareness to the readers of your blog the dangers of the social media, but people already agree with that. Try finding a new unique approach about this subject.
ReplyDeleteSocial media is a war zone when it comes to politics. People need to realize that there are biases on Social networking too which is why I agree with your post. There is no way to end this bias and so the only way to fight against it is to inform everyone to be skeptical of what they read. Another thing that needs to happen is people need to calm down on the social media fights because it is just dumb to try and convince someone who loves a candidate to change their minds.
ReplyDelete@Lauren: In doing my research for the issues paper, I've found out about an internet plugin known as "Fact Checker" or something similar. Powered by a special team, the plugin rates the validity of various sources considering the political facts within the source. Perhaps if this became a standard feature on browsers, the amount of unfounded bias would go down. That's one solution I can see, anyways.
ReplyDelete@Daniel: I like that idea, and the Fact Checker plugin would be a great help to this. Flamewars (almost any heated back and forth "debate" online) are quite deadly, and only strengthen the bias and anger, so in order to help calm people down, we'll need to get some way to inhibit the flamewars.
@E-mailer: Unfortunately, most discussions on the internet do turn into the long, biased, and mind-numbing posts that you're smart enough to avoid (whereas I, for some reason, seem to pay some attention to them). Perhaps these things are part of the reason there's so much hate - as I read them and some (likely) misinformed opinions, I myself get fired up.