Social media has been a huge factor on how information
spreads around, specifically Facebook. Most people today either have a Facebook
account or some similar social media platform that lets them access to the
trending news and “relevant” articles about topics that people should know. And
a lot of people these days often use Facebook as their main source of
information, which we know that is bad because information around these social
media platforms can be easily twisted or fake. With a simple click of the “share”
button on Facebook, information can be easily spread since even if you are not
following the trending news, one of your friends will share it and it will be
visible for you.
You might be thinking right that this doesn’t really apply
to you because you know that information from Facebook is very unreliable, and
you are right, this does no concern you. However, people who were born in the
Boomers generation, they maybe be familiar with social media and have access to
Facebook, they might not know that the information they are getting is not most
reliable. For example, one of my aunts told me an issue regarding the Deferred
Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) on how the undocumented people under the
program are actually not going to be deported at all. My aunt found the article
on Facebook; the only problem from this information during the time that she
told me about this issue, it was the time where DACA had only 5 months left
before it was going to get shut down, and there was a lack of information on
what will happen to the people under the program. This just shows that Facebook
information may somewhat be stating some facts but there more assumptions that
author/journalist is making in regard to this article that we read, which in
this case was the article that my aunt read.
The scariest part of this or the worst-case scenario is that
because of what we read in Facebook gets passed along to like almost everybody,
it is scary to think what would happen if Facebook was the “fact” that we
believed in just because everyone “knows” making it a “valid” fact in the
society due to the majority. In addition, since we hear and see that
information too much, regarding Facebook news and articles, we tend to accept
it due to getting too much exposure. It is scary to think how much power social
media has and how it can easily control information.
I personally don't watch the news anymore, but rather find information on Facebook and then investigate more about it in other new sources. Something personal that I went through, is the time I found that there was an car accident that happen on September 26, 2017 and there were two deaths of two young adults and one person who had no injuries. I found this while I was scrolling down my news, at first I didn't pay much attention, but later on I found out that those two teenagers, were my two high school classmates. I wouldn't find out if my two classmates' death weren't posted on my Facebook page, but been told by other source of communication. In a way Facebook is also a good source of communication and sharing information, although some information that is shared may not be all true or could be, it can be shared to people believe whatever the information is shared and beginning to spread it to other people, like a chain.
ReplyDelete