Picture taken by Jonathan Acuña at Hyde Park, London, UK (2018)

The Social Fallacy of Social Media

Just an opinion

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

Head of Curriculum Development Senior Language Professor

Academic Department School of English
Centro Cultural Costarricense- Faculty of Social Sciences
Norteamericano Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Thursday, July 23, 2020

Post 348

Opinion Prompt
What’s your experience and opinion on if all media are social? Is your
local media outlet open to two-way conversation?

If a two-way conversation is a means to exchange news and ideas, social

media is not exactly meeting this condition. A conversation implies two
individuals (or more) ready to engage in sharing points of view or presenting
facts and opinions that can be discussed. Behavior in social media sites is not
directed to the underlying reason to have a conversation with someone; there is
a lack of engagement and sharing among users.

There are plenty of things happening on social media that users just shrug
their shoulders in an “I-don’t-care” attitude. This behavior just shows the lack of
engagement people in social media can have when someone is telling others
they do not even know what was eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner. If people
want to have attention from other individuals in this world, it can be simply
stated that others will not follow them behind in chase to know if what was
eaten had a burping effect on someone else. Sorry, but this type of social media
does not meet the principle of engaging people in discussing ideas. The
thousands of banal, trivial posts do not take people into sharing and discussing.

Is then social media “social?” The word “social” next to “media” can be
rather tricky when both are juxtaposed with one another. This combination of
terms is rather lumpy and boisterous when together: lumpy because the creation
of social media sites are much more but social, especially when users are
sanctioned for posting comments that, in the eyes of the social media site, do
not contribute with a sharing of ideas. This means there is already an imposition
to what the site believes a two-way communication should be. It looks like like-
minded individuals are paired with one another not allowing other users with
different ideas to disagree with the posting made by people who think alike. The
combination is also boisterous since social media sites are used across a full
gamut of reasons that are not exactly the sharing and discussion of ideas.

Is social media a place for collaboration and cooperative work? Now that I
think about this, it gives me the creeps … Let me be clearer, I am certain that
social media sites can be used for collaboration and cooperative work; I am sure
of this because in university courses I took before with Laureate Faculty
Development, social media was used for collaboration and cooperative work
among the course members, including the instructor. However, how many
people who are not studying do use it for the same exact reasons? Could it be
possible that these other users who are not studying are misunderstanding the
connotation and denotation of what these two terms mean? Is it this
misunderstanding triggering strange behaviors when “interacting” with people in
social media?

To sum up, my experience and opinion on if all media are social, I must
confess that I do not see it this way. Media sites exist but are not exactly social.
Media outlets do not exactly foster and strengthen an open two-way
conversation among users. First, social media people do not seem to be ready to
engage in real exchanges of news and ideas to discuss. Secondly, the fallacy of
like-minded individuals permeates the whole idea of social media. Web
archaeologist will tell us much more about this in the future when users have
met their ordeal with a duckface in a social media post.