Exercise 9 - Social Media & Me

I am a very sparse user of social media.  I have firmly resisted joining Facebook as I’ve absolutely no desire to share the minutiae of my daily life with the world.  Nor, rather meanly (I admit), do I wish to be updated with the boring daily details that I know my siblings post – enough is enough in my books.  I still prefer one on one conversations where details are shared between two (even if that does sometimes take place by text rather than phone).  

I’ve also resisted Facebook and the like as I am unwilling to share (or have shared) tagged photos of my children on the internet.  As they age, I know the time is coming when they will establish their own social media profiles, however, I think they have the right to create (and curate) these profiles for themselves.  They don’t need baby and childhood photos preserved in eternity for the world to view – they are more than capable of creating their own embarrassment without me starting it for them!     

I do however use the review functions of social media – for example I use and contribute to TripAdvisor.  I find this type of site very useful to filter and screen for bad experiences when booking accommodation in places I have never visited.  I also know its power – as I have a sibling who is in the restaurant trade and am often hearing of the consequences of a bad review, and the steps restaurants will undertake to mollify an unhappy patron BEFORE a negative review is posted.

I also have a LinkedIn profile, but only because a sibling bullied me into it.  I was informed – in no uncertain terms - that it was necessary if I wanted to be gainfully employed in the modern world that I have an online presence a potential employer could search, rather than being invisible!!  We compromised at LinkedIn as it is professional rather than personal.  Although I do admit that I rarely look at it, and have really only tinkered around the edges of the profile that I established when I started the LIS course in 2014…

Exercise 8 - Current Awareness Post

Both of these videos (Filter Bubbles and Privacy Matters)  drew a strong response from me – and my reactions to both issues over the years has already somewhat framed my answers to the next exercise entitled Social Media & Me.

However, in this post I will address the issue of the filter bubble.  To me this is one of the big social/civic issues of our time.  We live in a world which is constantly affirming us and our personal life choices; social media, through the use of filtering does not challenge us but holds up a magic mirror, so our choices, whatever their merits, are always reflected positively.  It’s easily tested - send out a post or group text to your friends decrying the driver who cut you off at the intersection this morning, and the responses will roll in empathising with you and supporting your frustration/angry response.   The fact that the incident wasn’t witnessed by a single person who responds won’t be relevant – it’s the affirmation from those around us – justifying our choices and role in a situation that will matter – the facts will be left lying, unexamined, where they fell.

At a larger scale, this filtering affects our sense of ourselves, our importance and our sense of social justice.  If all the news we receive is filtered to be either a certain type of story, or commentary slanted towards our own world view, then we will begin to see the world as an homogenous place, leaving open the door for scorn or mistreatment of those whose ideas, opinions and backgrounds do not match our own.  A whole, robust society supports diversity.  A challenge to an ingrained way of thinking can help a person to grow and create a desire to understand the full complexity of life and its myriad of choices.  Decades ago, this was firmly the role of the editorial or the opinion piece in the major national newspapers.  The reviews often examined complex economic, social or political issues in depth.  If they presented only one side of the argument, another journalist would present the alternative.  Together this created open, public debate. 

  Many in the western world today decry the censorship known to be imposed by totalitarian states, and are quick to present the negative consequences of both the censorship and the harsh regime needed to allow it to succeed.  Meanwhile, quietly but surely, corporations are achieving the same ends of social homogeneity by the application of filter bubbles. 

Here’s a great quote which neatly illustrates the nature of the world created behind those filter bubbles…

I've built a network that curates interestingness. In my universe, it encompasses thousands and thousands of filters and people, each person being a filter. So it's kinda cool. Like I've created my own utopia, removing the boring stuff and showing only the amazing stuff.  Jason Silva

Source: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/filter.html

These quotes represent the situation as it could be:

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.  George Orwell

Source: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3706.George_Orwell

Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost.   Neil Gaiman

Source: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1221698.Neil_Gaiman

And these last quotes indicate the consequences of a lazy acceptance of the censoring nature of filters:

Submitting to censorship is to enter the seductive world of 'The Giver': the world where there are no bad words and no bad deeds. But it is also the world where choice has been taken away and reality distorted. And that is the most dangerous world of all.  Lois Lowry

Source: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/censorship.html

The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion. In the long run it will create a generation incapable of appreciating the difference between independence of thought and subservience.  Henry Steele Commager

Source: http://www.goodreads.com/