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Nilvia Ramos

Professor Fong

English 1T .01

21 Mar. 2018

The “New” Media

Social media. A platform and technology in which has brought greatness and new

developments to humankind around the world. Many will agree that social media has brought

potential to the online community when bringing awareness to a subject or having the strength in

numbers when fighting for something. On the other hand social media has the strength to spiral

in the pitfalls of the dark web and drag false information from one person to another. When

talking about the topic of social media helping people spread information, many will be sceptical

of trusting the internet to provide them with true information and news. This tendency seems to

be seen with older generations who only see the internet as a form to be unproductive and just

spread rumors to whoever uses it. Even if this can be true in some instances, social media has

proved the growth and influence it can have in society. Despite all positive attributions being

said about social media it has shown over and over again that it always finds a way to have a

negative impact on society.

Let’s start off with the go to saying that everyone uses to defend social media. Their

sayings go along the lines of, “Yeah social media had a downfall but look at all of these positive

actions and hashtags that people have been using.” Many will give in and just go with what that

person just said because they obviously provided proof that social media has helped in someway.

But look closely and read between the lines of that saying. “Hashtag” what is that? What exactly

does it do? Look it up on google and it will give you, a word or phrase being used to identify
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messages on a specific topic. Great. Now we know what that is but what good does a “hashtag do

then to just look up or identify certain topics? Yes, it might bring awareness to a topic, Yes, it

might bring people together, Yes, it might make a topic trend or go international. But a hashtag

will not bring a solution to a problem. Many fighting for the authentication of social media will

always bring up how without the media a topic is not heard of or will not bring attention from

across the world. This is just one tiny way that internet activists will try to persuade the audience

that social media is trustworthy to use.

The internet, a complicated, confusing and terrifying place to go on, on one side you have

purely factual and informational articles for everything and anything, while on the other hand

you have people trolling here and there on anything. Needless to say it is a complicated server

that we are offered in our everyday life. Now with the new technologies and everything being

processed it is impossible staying away from the internet. Even those who have never used social

media before are becoming more familiar with it. Because it is hard to stay away from social

media, it is easier to put certain information in the platforms that people will know others will

see it.

For instance, Facebook is a platform where many go to keep up with their so called

friends and acquaintances. Along with checking up on them many forward posts containing

specific information and catching our eye and we click forward as well and keep the chain going.

We tend to look for more of the same information to become knowledgeable of the typic and

also we tend to friend those who are on the same age as us or have similar views. This type of

relationship is known as “weak ties” as explained by Malcolm Gladwell in the article “Small

Change,” “the platforms of social media are built around weak ties [...] Facebook is a tool for

efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not
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otherwise be able to stay in touch with” (5). As said by Gladwell Facebook is a platform to keep

up with acquaintances and we all know that acquaintances are just people you greet and then

move on. There is no emotional connection with them making it even more of a weak tie if they

share a post or their opinion. Everyone has experienced weak ties in their lives but are blind to

see it because they are all focused in the ideas that they are friends because they have them on

their social media’s.

The group of friends we hang out with is also another crucial part about social media.

Networks is the name they call the group you associate yourself with. Now you must be

wondering, type of friends? As in good friends bad friends? No no, I mean what type of posts or

feed are you seeing on your social media platforms. Are they all swaying one way or are they

saying another or are they looking fairly equal to all types of news? Now it is hard to keep up

with every single event happening on your feed and this is where your networks come in. When

talking about networks they are generally people that have the same views as you and they don't

necessarily have to be your friends be they common thing is that they are. When one of your

networks reposts certain information and it seems to fit your own belief or their opinion on that

information made you make it fit into your views; we tend to continue looking for the same

information so we feel confident and knowledgeable when asked about the topic. In the article

“War Goes Viral” Emerson T. Brooking and P.W. Singer state, “For all the hope that comes

from connecting with new people and new ideas, researchers have found that online behaviors is

dominated by “homophily”: a tendency to listen to and to associate with people like yourself, and

to exclude others” (2). The problem with having your networks become homophiles is that you

will all be sharing the same ideas back and forth until the topic dies out and by excluding others

you are shutting out outside information that could change the conversation.
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How does one know that the information your your network is legit? How do you know

they have not altered the information because then know itg would fit in with other people's

views and collect new people. Consequently this can lead to a preferred reality as explained by

Brooke Gladstone, in “The Influencing Machine”, “Every new digital development enables us to

better edit and augment our preferred reality” (131).Truth is you can never always assume the

information online is correct all the time which is where you need to be careful picking what to

continue following on your feed. Everyone at some point has altered their own life to make it

sound more cool or fun for other people but this same mistake should not be done when taking

about a crucial topic. If this mistake keeps happening it just further show that people are doing it

on purpose and you never know what else they have altered making them very untrustworthy.

Many factors play in with trusting the internet for the sake of social change to happen but what

we should all have for certain is that with technology now a days we can only expect an increase

in the usage of social media.

On the other hand many will agree that social media has brought many positive attributes

to the world. For one social media and technology has had the power to change a whole countries

status with tech. Secondly social media has brought attention to a lot of important topics that we

could have missed without the work of the people. All in all media has had the power to change

from the most minimal to the most greatest potential in its kind. For example, David Hoffman in

“Citizens Rising” opens up his chapter with, “ [media] can be used to save lives in a

humanitarian disaster, lift people out of poverty, and reduce conflict” (163). Right off the bat

Hoffman opens up with a statement that has been proven to be done by people who come

together on social media as one to make a change. Though change can take a long time to happen

but with people being persistent and not letting things get away that easily change comes at a
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much faster rate to those who need it. The good side to all of this is that even of you not

physically there you are still following and being kept up to date to know that change is actually

happening.

A major event that has occured that proves social media has helped with a political

change is that of the introduction of technology in Kenya. For the longest time Kenya was in the

dark when it came to any type of technology, let alone social media. Once a brilliant man by the

name of Bitange Ndemo introduced Kenya to a new world of technology and social media it was

all up hill for them. Hoffman states, “Almost overnight, information and communications

technology became the fastest growing sector on Kenya’s economy” (132). This shows the

growth of technology and society that has over a country that had not seen media before are now

getting up to date rapidly. With this constant growth being seen in international countries it gives

off hope that other countries can do the same too and get in touch with the outside world.

Not only does it stop there but Ndemo continues revolutionizing Kenya by introducing it

to cell phones that have access to important apps and has help to create certain websites for the

people to visit and check in on what the government is up to. “Ndemo’s plan to build a

government open data portal [...] Kenya now design their products for the mobile phones rather

than computers” (133). This comes to show that not only were they providing the people with

necessary materials to get on the internet but they were also building a new community with trust

by letting them have access to a government open data portal. Hoffman later states, “You can no

longer hide information and must now tell people the truth. If you don’t, the people won’t follow

you, they won't support you, they won't obey you” (172). This shows how the government

understands that with no trust in either party there will not be a successful new rise of the

country. Giving the people access to the same information as the government the people will
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trust the government and follow them with multiple supports. This type of support and trust

would only be accessible with social media being intact, which it was making the strength in

numbers even greater.

If this was not a major event to prove that media is powerful enough to change a

country's status, then another similar event that happened will strengthen the power of the

internet. An event called Bouazizi’s Rage also mentioned in Hoffman’s reading and explains

how this event came to be because of a young man who commited suicide for how the people in

his own village were treating him. The police force would harass him for a vendor's permit or to

find him, it got so bad that a female police and her partner beat him and when he asked for help

he was denied. After that Bouazizi decided to take matter into his own hands and took his own

life. This type of action typically happens often and it was not until Bouazizi’s cousin uploaded

the incident to facebook that it become nationwide (164); and action was taken to settle that

matter.

Although social media is seen to just attack political or social change it also has an effect

on how it affects economy. After years of China being dragged behind by their opposing

countries they decided that that would be no more and started building their empire back up.

With the new technologies that were created really pushed their countries economy through the

roof ;“The economic reforms he instituted in 1979 transformed China into three fastest growing

economy in the world” (210). This comes to show that not only has new technology helped

countries rebuild themselves but also increase their economic growth to the max. Without having

the internet to spread the word about technology then countries like China or Kenya would never

evolve from how they were before.

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Many will pose the question, what happens next? What happens after one has shared a

certain post or opinion on a subject? What happens after many have come together to make a

change? Will there be action taken to make an improvement or did we all just do it to share our

opinions on a subject we saw trending? Ideally people would want to be “google-known” as

stated by TED TALK speaker Michael Patrick Lynch. Meaning they would want to know every

single detail and fact about the issue instead of having experienced through other means. He later

goes in depth as to how we could all adjust our way of thinking of media and on media, with

three simple steps, “Humanity, Daring to understand , and Believe in truth”. These three steps

seem to be common sense looking at them here but once inline you forget and just go with

whatever everyone else is saying. Instead of being an independent mind we are so dependent of

each other opinions and most of all acceptance that will prove you have done your part as a

citizen. With the three steps in mind of everyone one will find that the internet is actually not a

bad place it is just what we do to use it for.

Needless to say the media and all it has to offer can be controversial at times but by

having a clear understanding of what it is meant to be it can reach new levels of positivity and

trustworthiness. Though trying all the efforts to have it positive it is unlikely to hold because of

the malliciant people out there trying to diminish the imagine of a powerful tool. Powerful tools

like social media should be treated in a way you are able to consider other people's opinion, but

not manipulated, give your own opinion and keep an open mind for everything else.
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Works Cited

Lynch, Michael Patrick. “How to See Past Your Own Perspective and Find Truth.”

Ted.com. TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, Apr. 2017. Web.22 Jan 2018

Hoffman, David Citizens Rising: Independent journalism and the spread of democracy.

CUNY Journalism Press, 2013.

Gladwell, Malcolm. “Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted”. New

York.com. Conde Nast. 04 Oct. 2010. Web. 09 Jan. 2018

Gladstone, Brooke and Josh Neufeld. The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the

Media. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2011.