So awesome that you bring this up because it can actually be world changing.
In fact, a project that Peter Gabriel is involved in has shown that atrocities in third world countries went down after people had ability to record events and share them with the world.
Keep on rocking the intertubes with the mashable effect. Use it for good, and not for evil.
@isfan
Suzanne Lainson
· 9 months ago
If anything, I think combination of a reality TV mentality with the ability to get attention online from doing something outrageous has encouraged more bad behavior. If people don't have a concept of shame or embarrassment, they don't worry about the repercussions. Worse yet, if there aren't any repercussions, they are encouraged to do whatever it takes for the fame/attention.
AngieErnst
· 9 months ago
We might play together more nicely but at what cost to free speech? There is so much political correctness already in the world that social media forcing us to be nicer to our fellow man would be a great thing in superficial interactions. But when it comes down to letting someone know exactly how we feel, how vulnerable we are, how expressive (or not) we can be, that's really the spice of life. It teaches us far more about ourselves than mere niceties ever could.
Suzanne Lainson
· 9 months ago
I'd prefer some civility/politeness to the bad behavior/poor taste/insults that I see too often online. I always try to be nice. It facilitates dialogue much better than rudeness. Obama is all about community building and that is something I very much respect in him.
Nate Rogers
· 9 months ago
The question is "Does social media make us better people?" With 'Social media' being defined, in this instance as: The immediate public scrutiny of behavior executed over traceable media.
My answer: No. It may inspire greater self-censorship, but ‘social Media’ won't inspire hearts to greater purity.
Mr. Cashmore follows his initial question with: “Might it actually make us…nicer to one another?â€
My answer: Sure. However, flattery shouldn't be confused with altruism.
Sanda Davis
· 9 months ago
Yes, Social Media brings more accountability, more awareness, more Paradise It already promotes rules of responsibility, respect and humor, it breaks secrecy, isolation and fear, it affects the collective without creating a Borg, emphasizing the value of individuality, communication and help...it already broke the chains of slavery by people being able to reach out to strangers. It broke the pyramid of control.
Sperry
· 9 months ago
Social Media makes us wonder. The question should be: Does it make us healthier?
Knotty
· 9 months ago
Coverage of celebrity behaviour and their subsequent downfalls doesn't make social media better any more than celebrity magazines covering the same stuff does.
Don't expect social media to make us better, it's just a reflection of real society. The same rules and behaviours apply. For example, a quick glance at YouTube will show you what people will say when given the cover of anonymity. The same goes for any other online forum...
mike fogelsanger
· 9 months ago
hey, i'm a better person because of it, at least i think so.
Agile Cyborg
· 9 months ago
Social media makes us more artificial than we already are simply because it broadens the reality of the extent of our failures, which most humans abhor.
So, the accountability, responsibility and awareness that many tout about the social media experiment duplicates the same superficial shit society has always been obsessed with.
In some ways it's worse than suburban fakery since body language cannot be read on Facebook.
Which is why social media is a wonderful thing to manipulate for fattening wallets.
Bert Decker
· 9 months ago
Yes!
Great post Pete...
Bert
Gus23
· 9 months ago
Someone once told me that nothing is ever new--just different. So with that said, I don't think Social Media makes us better people, it just makes us different. Not even two hundred years ago, 'social media' was basically pen and paper. Imagine when people realized that they could hear about Mrs. Smith's affair with her milkman by postal service in less than a week--crazy! We didn't learn to keep our mouths shut back then and we're certainly not changing anything now. If anything got better, it was our excuses for our actions.
Michelle
· 9 months ago
I'm not so sure about the notion that it makes us "better" people. However, I do think that it engenders a sense of community that does have a positive impact on our public and private interactions.
Rona
· 9 months ago
So funny that I should run across this (or be tweetdecked/twittered this) blog post tonight. I was literally thinking about this very topic sitting in church tonight (Fellowship Church of Grapevine, TX). My church pastor and our associate pastors Twitter, even during church!! They twitter the excitement, energy, current Word - really cool stuff. Anyway, I was realizing thqat will all the avalanche of EVERYONE jumping on the SNA trains, I think it has the ability to help us become more authentic and transparent. I think it also has the opportunity to help us knock off the constant human weakness of back-stabbing, back-biting, gossiping, letting our emotions cuase us to say stupid things about someone who hurts us. It takes a nano-second for something we say to reach round the world (kinda like that famous shot on April 19, 1775). I think it helps us take a deep breath and think twice realizing that we have no idea who may be reading our thoughts and emotions. Interesting times we live in today!
Agile Cyborg
· 9 months ago
Rona,
I would argue that human weakness IS authentic.
And the desire to control every single item one says and does is the embodiment of artificiality.
You become what you assume 'those' who may be reading your thoughts and emotions desire you to be, rather than a more pure expression of who you are which WILL include weakness.
Rona
· 9 months ago
Agile Cyborg,
No argument - you make a few excellent points, especially that human weakness is authentic! I cannot stand pretension and pretensious, pious, self-righteous "Christians" are the WORST!!
Let me make my point more clearly, I am bad about getting ticked off about stuff that isn't even a deal in the grand scheme of things and I'll go let out my anger and angst by telling someone who in turn will tell someone else, etc. It isn't ever worth all the excessive drama and needless pain it brings about. I guess it is fresh on my bloginion (blog opinion) because I just blew off some steam about a colleague in an SNA I belong to and before I knew it a mutual friend joined that network and the person I originally ranted and raved asked about the network and wanted to join it. For me, the lesson learned was that we live in a glass house society and I need to learn to keep my immature, impulsive mouth shut! It was a very self-centered need to go in and blow off steam in a room full of strangers. I could have received the same support and encouragement as well as professional growth advice without ever having gone into the details of the scenario.
Make sense?
In other words - IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL! (That was my favorite DisneyLand ride when I was a girl living in LA, you'd think I would have taken that as a prophetic hint for my adult life! LOL)
TotallyTea
· 9 months ago
Does social media make us better people?... Might it actually make us… nicer to one another? I don’t believe social media make us any better or worse than we are in the ‘real’ world. Yes, to an extent, there are those who try to disguise their characters to present themselves in a better light, but I don’t believe such a ruse is sustainable over the long term (the truth will out, as it were). IMHO, online behavior is reflective of who a person really is, illuminating positive traits and exacerbating negative traits.
People who are genuinely kind, outgoing, helpful, etc, will likely remain so on social media sites. Those who behave politely face-to-face but turn around and backstab no doubt will behave much the same way in the seeming anonymity of the Internet. That is, they may be courteous initially but revert to character. Then, there are those individuals who are nasty whether live or on the Web; however, the Internet provides a medium in which many of these latter people feel free to let their worst traits spill over, again because of the seeming anonymity.
Mary Walker
· 9 months ago
Human nature doesn't change. People will still find ways to be nasty to each other. ;-)
That said: I do believe that civilization advances over the long term. I believe that overall the world is a better, more civilized place than it was 1000 or 500 years ago. And yes the internet is a piece of that...but we need to take a realistic view of it.
The internet, and social media specifically, are a new powerful tool. People who are able to use that tool effectively will have a new way to defend themselves and their causes by bringing attention to their point of view -- they have a new channel for making their case.
However: social media is very susceptible (as humans are) to the issues of charisma, celebrity status, and image manipulation. Some people have a gift of communication online -- they can make sh*t look like gold. And vice versa -- people with legitimate issues and grievances can't get attention because they don't know how to do good PR -- they don't know how to make their issue "sexy."
So there's a risk that internet/social media will simply become another arena where style triumphs over substance, where important issues get ignored in favor of titillating trivia. Postman's still right: we're still very much at risk of entertaining ourselves to death.
That said: I love online culture and social media. But let's not get ahead of ourselves by believing that a new tool/environment is some guaranteed uplift for human nature. (After all, they thought that about television too -- see how that one played out?)
It's not that simple. Social media are changing the power dynamics. But that doesn't mean power issues go away, or that abuses of power and injustice go away or become impossible to perform.
BTW science fiction novels deal w/ this a lot -- sometimes I get the feeling that a lot of social media people need to read more sci fi. Nobody can read Rainbows End, Pattern Recognition or Spook Country and still believe that increased virtualization and ubiquitous communications will inevitably result in people behaving better towards each other.
Jenifer Olson
· 9 months ago
Good post!
While the Social Media platform encourages us to be nice to each other, I'm not sure this automatically makes us better people.
Some thoughts...
1) We're nice because we self-regulate: Social Media communities do a fairly good job of self-regulating user behavior, typically resulting in constructive communications. Put simply, the majority of responsible users effectively manage the few who aren't.
2.) We're nice because we adhere to social constraints: Most people are keenly aware of maintaining positive personal brands they would be proud to share with anyone, from employers to families. Thus, the negative consequences of poor behavior serve as deterrents.
3.) Some of us may be nice because we're afraid: People in closed societies are often afraid to offend those in control. Communication might be nice, but not honest.
So, no, I don't believe Social Media necessarily makes us better people because we're nicer to each other, or more polite. But I do think it has the potential to facilitate increased communication,which can engender increased understanding and tolerance. And that just might make us better people who also happen to be nice. :-)
Achim
· 9 months ago
Pete,
thanks for bringing this up, as I consider this to be an important issue.
Unfortunately I don't think that it will turn us all into nice people, at least not in the short-run. However I do think that it makes it more difficult to get away with not being nice, which is positive.
Furthermore the media makes it easier to find and follow nice people. This can also be positive, since it is part of human nature to follow (or be followed). Think about how much more successful Gandhi could have been globally, had he had a blog, Twitter, Facebook etc. at his disposal.
So in the long-run there is hope.
Prokofy Neva
· 9 months ago
No, what you are describing is an outsourced police state, with the state porting the function of monitoring and browbeating and punishing to people. I don't see this positive at all. The incidents you describe here of various public figures having their careers ruined actually show that this sort of outsourced hate isn't making people better. Those people did not deserve to have their lives ruined over one incident or case of bad judgement merely because of the amplification of social media.
The character of those anonymous judgemental types who can destroy others so malicious really is in question.
Social Media has it's own self-correcting policies. Everyone is so interconnected that the people who would want to abuse it are eventually shunned ignored. This causes them to eventually give up & quit because nobody is paying attention to them.
The other side of the coin is that some people will ignore the people who "break the rules", while other similar minded people will find each other and the group of "social outlaws" who do everything that breaks one group's rules will be totally accepted in another group.
There are no "rules" for using social media, but that's what makes it great. People can use it however they want to. They will attract the people that agree with those ways, or they'll simply ignore, de-friend, unsubscribe, or otherwise disconnect from people they don't want to socialize with.
Glenn Laudenslager
· 9 months ago
Great comments here. I agree w/ the statement that reality TV and the immediacy of social media -- combined with media coverage -- have led to an increase in outrageous or bad behavior by people in search of their 15 minutes. Yet the social media world also recognizes and holds people accountable, so there's good balance. And yes, there are groups for the "outlaws" just like there are groups for the "law abiders" -- it's all just part of any community, online is no exception to that.
Behind the Screen
· 9 months ago
I doubt that the human nature will change because of Twitter and other tools. Social media may, however, bring us closer to one another. A long time ago when people lived in small communities like villages, you didn't have a choice. Everyone knew your business and you knew everyone else's business. The question of privacy and publicity wasn't there at all. Social media may have something to do with this village idea.
Agile Cyborg
· 9 months ago
There is a lot of fudge fresh off the block here. And it's sweet and steaming but lacks vitality and reality.
Many seem to think that this kind of interaction CREATES respect, kindness, honesty and love when in fact it DOESN'T.
Social media merely creates aggregates of like-minded individuals who are intolerant of differentials.
You are artificially being led to believe YOUR group is precious and pious and consists of large numbers of changed individuals.
I don't believe this for one second. You have rejected those who rub wrongly, you coalesce around specific themes of conformity and by doing so you create a more perfect union of similarity not possible in neighborhoods of wood and plastic.
It is total bullshit to think social media makes us BETTER.
It makes us compliant and less than authentic, especially since most of society is pack-oriented and seeks acceptance.
(with all due respect, Rona) wink
adhansen
· 9 months ago
Twitter also had a lot of chatter and action on the godaddy.com SuperBowl ads, with @conniereece and others moving their hosting to other vendors.
Quick mob action isn't always a bad thing!
Adeline
· 9 months ago
I think the anonymity of the Internet gives people the time to craft an intelligent message out so it does not necessarily makes a person more artificial, but just better at saying something. Regarding celebrities, social media just speeds gossips up. Its just too bad for them, being famous. Overall, it adds knowledge to people with tons of information churning every second. Very remarkable phenomenon about sharing.
Mary Walker
· 9 months ago
Hey thanks Pete for this topic -- you inspired me to write a blog post on the first four SF books people should read, if they're working in social media -- and why fiction books can be useful for envisioning the future. Post is here: http://bit.ly/ncLBp
Colleen
· 9 months ago
Human nature will not change. What may be lost is the relative anonymity of being in a big city at least one's public behaviour. People should probably be wary of doing nefarious things in distant cities lest they somehow be captured on cam by some twitter follower who knows a little about them. How would you like @me what r u doing in Seattle and who iz that guy ur drinkin wif? >>link.to.pic from some stalky twitter follower I barely even track? People even in small villages where everyone knew everyone have historically found ways to get up to all sorts of stuff they would never admit to. The social structures might have enforced silence (e.g. everybody knew the parish priest was doing the town hooker but nobody talked about it for fear of retribution) or two way mutual (I won't tell anybody I saw you steal milk from Shmoe's cow if you don't tell anybody about the potatoes you caught me stealing from Foo.) And anyone who feels inclined to tweet or FB a picture of me with implications better watch out, because I might have friends in Seattle who could snap a candid of them in a strip club, then I could retaliate with @you feelin a little randy eh? >>link.to.pic
Richard Becker
· 9 months ago
No. Social media doesn't make people nicer. It only makes some of them act nicer for fear of retribution.
If you want real change, it happens from the inside out, not from the outside in.
So while we could argue that placing video camera inside everyone's home and place of work would make for a better society, all we really do is subject people to live in fear. Fear doesn't make people better; it steals away their freedoms. Good people don't act good because they feel they have to act good. Good people act good because they make it part of their nature.
Now, go be good because you choose to, not because you have to.
All my best, Rich
Roxanne
· 9 months ago
There is a reason that Socrates railed against democratic society - this article shows how democratic society often lacks intelligent decision-making processes. To post an individual's photo in national view, knowing there would be outrage, not only invades the privacy of those individuals, but puts them in harms way. This type of behave will continue to denigrate a society that already believes that it is smart enough to govern itself (it is not).
Agile Cyborg
· 9 months ago
So, Roxanne, who do you suggest is smart enough to govern this ignorant society you speak of?
Rona Davis
· 9 months ago
Staci J. Shelton - yeah!! Preach it!! You said what I was trying to say, only you said it in many fewer words - short and concise, to the point! Thank you for your post, that puts it in perspective for me and I could not agree with you more!
Agile Cyborg
· 9 months ago
Uh, Scott, People aren't HIDING because they prefer to avoid posting more personal information online than is already available.
Don't become comatose to the fact that many people still value their privacy, no matter how f'ing boring it is.
MY privacy, on the other hand, is rated triple X which makes it entirely unacceptable for many places online.
Lots of information should be left whence it came- boring or otherwise.
Alison Lowndes
· 9 months ago
I run a charity entirely opnline so have been working publicly online for over 3 years now. I recently had to do some PR on a closed forum where people hide behind false names. The experience was harrowing. There were personal attacks made on me for no reason except ignorance and exactly because they were anonymous. Should these (generally male) people have been on Facebook they would not have been so nasty. Its an absolute fact that social networking sites like Facebook promote civility, openness, honesty and friendly, good behaviour.
Consensus of opinion rules too e.g. Twitter .. if someones trying to hard sell you they simply won't be followed. end of story.
mike fogelsanger
· 9 months ago
i teach in a public middle school and this lack of civility mentioned on the internet is very relative
Sean Maurice Hunt
· 9 months ago
That is a huge leap to say that twitter makes us better socially. I think the opposite is happening people choose what to write on twitter and facebook. This does not change how they behave in real world situations. Seems like more propaganda from the tehcnocrazzi. Twitter and other services like it are actually another barrier to real and meaningful communication. Twitter especially is like a grand mass delusion where everyone thinks people acutally care when they are watering the lawn or taking out the trash or whatever. Its insanity. Reminds me of the game on stark trek that takes over the ship and everyone is walking around like a zombie.
TigerMunky
· 9 months ago
Pretty creepy me thinks, anyone remember T2... "Skynet", etc.?
People talkin about apps that know where you are according to your phone... Wait til they embed credit card chips in us...
How about Enemy of the State? ...and more recently... Eagle Eye?
The less "you are online", the better. ; )
RAF
· 9 months ago
Well said Prokofy Neva. Those who extol the virtues of small town life where everyone knows your business and has an opinion about it obviously never lived in one. Just imagine how much more swiftly common wisdom could have used today's technology to dispence "helpful" corrective action to the witches of Salem, the Jews in Germany or the misguided Blacks trying to leave the South. As always, technology is neutral, people are not.
Ian Hughes
· 9 months ago
Interesting question, I think Social Media will make a huge difference to the way people communicate. Everything is trackable, employers are looking at it and importantly people are utilising it to learn and to network.
Steve Heideman
· 9 months ago
I think that social media does make us better people because it is structured to have us listen to the conversation and absorb multiple points of view before we voice our own opinion. This allows us to have a richer and more nuanced conversation than we ordinarily would.
Jason Finch
· 9 months ago
Way back in 1992 the emerging social media of the time were bringing people together in all sorts of new ways with no rules - but they brought out all manner of human beings.
What social media may do now that marketers are becoming aware of them is make the conversations louder and wider, make the mainstream aware of what the 'geeks' have been doing for years - but it won't really change human nature; it may change society in terms of making us more aware of being watched, recorded, monitored.. but I can't see it really changing human nature.
Ultimately, humans are sociable animals, and in general I like to think that we're inherently friendly, trustworthy and honest people. The *principles* of social media are nothing new - we've been communicating for thousands of years, and social media is making the world smaller and more like local communities, so emulating a lot of what humans are about anyway.
It's making us more connected to people further away, not necessarily "better".
Angela Quattrano
· 9 months ago
I see no sign that people are changing for the better. People who like the bland, moderated type of atmosphere that exists on a site like Facebook or Twitter will spend their time there behaving nicely. People who like to act up on occasion will do it on other sites while being good on Facebook. People who are trolls will hang out on sites where this behavior is permitted or encouraged.
You are segregating yourself from the entirety of reality. Reality has not changed.
If anything, hanging out on social networking sites where you endlessly write about yourself and tally up immense numbers of "friends" with whom you never truly make contact has made people more shallow and self-centered.
If you're totally into social networking, you will see it as a force for positive change in the world. Me, I see it as a form of light entertainment.
You should narrow up this form by about 15 columns. The textarea is so wide that the words you are typing disappear off the edge of the earth, so you can't read what you're typing, at least in Firefox.
Natasha
· 9 months ago
To my mind, media in any form does not make us better or worse as people; it is a forum which allows individuals to express their 'selves' and whilst it can be used for the greater good, that will depend solely on who is using the medium and why.
A recent example could be the mass fraud online in relation to the fabrication of evidence on the Palestine/Israel conflict. The net allows people to indulge their points of view and therein lies the paradox: some people can express their beliefs with full honesty whilst others choose not to.
The personal choices we make play out in the medium we use. I believe that cyberspace has huge potential for unmasking social ills but that it faces all the same problems that a non-virtual arena faces: human vulnerability.
Before we can connect meaningfully to the internet, we need to hardwire our brains to the truth, or at least to the pursuit of it.
passive consumer
· 9 months ago
The "potential" to make us more sociable through Social Media. But that, ultimately, will depend on human behavior. If there's one constant in the digital age, it's that it's ever changing and unpredictable. We could always go the way of "Idiocracy", I suppose.
Tony C
· 9 months ago
I don't think social media will put us on our best behavior. People continus to behave badly whether they are on camera or not. Those people who pay attention to the rules might be a little more careful of negative social media exposure.
passive consumer
· 9 months ago
The "potential" to make us more sociable through Social Media is in front of our faces. But that, ultimately, will depend on human behavior. If there's one constant in the digital age, it's that it's ever changing and unpredictable. We could always go the way of "Idiocracy", I suppose.
William W. (Woody) Williams
· 9 months ago
Whether or not we are "nicer" in public has little, or nothing to do with becoming "better people" and it is arguable if we are, indeed, even nicer in public due to the SM toolkit.
People use tools, not the other way around, and we at heart the people we are regardless of the tools we use.
SM makes it easier to be good or bad in the scalable sense, but there's nothing inherently good -- or bad about SM.
geo geller
· 9 months ago
to repond to your question - even though your examples were mostly negative - i think social media has a hidden agenda to make us more us to be like the flapping of butterfly wings can change a storm or event ccreate a storm and if we don't stop pretending we are zombies it will freeze us in a past that is pretty dark - the present systemic meltdown is a failure of trust the social media space social communication social sculpture space is trying to reflect on the lack of trust by niavely buidling trust by shared passions and interests - in essence - a society built on fear and distrust serves its masters and leaders a society built on trust serves its people - the question we have to ask ourselves is who protects us from those who say they are protecting us and when will we ever learn that going along to get along is wrong and leads us into very strange dark place - its up to each one of us to take back the future to make a difference in our own way in our own back yard - good question keep asking them - geo
Shira Lazar
· 9 months ago
The fact that everything is more transparent makes people step back and think about their actions and what type of image they're projecting to the world. I agree, this could possibly make people think twice before they do or say something that's makes them look like disrespect people and the world around them. In turn, this means people take more responsibility for their actions. Social media becomes a therapy of sorts, an exercise in self awareness.
People fear the loss of a privacy. You don't need to reveal every detail of your life, but social media makes it easy to get a sense of who a person is by what they share and how they live. Ultimately, if you're a good person, there's nothing to hide and no fear to be had.
Shira Lazar
· 9 months ago
Oops! just saw some typos at the beginning of my comment- sorry!
Chris Thomas
· 9 months ago
Social media both reflect existing patterns and add a few novelties due to new opportunities for reaching a greater public and also the initial capability for alter egos and anonymity.
So behavior will reflect the choice and range of contacts as well as type of interaction preferred (family, friends, business, interest groups). After an initial rush of enthusiasm in making contacts (and how many still see plain counting as an objective in itself), longer use of any network introduces a natural selection to those contacts of real interest.
As humans, we readily adapt to different social situations, so the behavior will be determined by the conventions of whichever group you are interacting with at the time.
As social animals we are also very susceptible to peer pressure and the avoidance of exclusion by breaking the conventions of a group. My feeling is therefore that social media do not necessarily make better people, they will make us better communicators in a variety of networks.
Michael Langley
· 9 months ago
Anything that brings us together is positive for the world. Let's face it, we isolate ourselves on a global level by not learning about and interacting with people from other cultures/parts of the world. Anything that makes this world smaller and gives me insight I did not have is a great thing. Social networks are great for that.
Val P.
· 9 months ago
Human nature won't change due to social media. The real question is who is the real scoundrel? The one telling the tale or the one being told on? Parents have had to deal with this question for generations. Now it's simply grown up and left for society to judge. It's the very nature of humans to want to know the worst about everyone and only promote your own good. Very few rise above that trend to strive for the best for all of us. Until the social media has more cases of kindness and heroism making the top trend charts than tattling gossip, the social media will still be primarily encouraging our baser natures.
Elevenser
· 9 months ago
It doesn't make us nicer, but reminds us that we are to be held accountable for our actions. Twenty or thirty years ago we may have been held accountable to our neighbors or our hometown. Now that we've become more mobile we've simply found a way to scale that accountability.
Same fish, bigger pond?
Reaction Remedy
· 9 months ago
Maybe not better people, but it certainly controls our actions. When we think we are being watched, taped, and remembered at every moment its important to be thoughtful and behave in a socially acceptable manner. Good or bad? Definitely limiting.
Melanie Robbins
· 9 months ago
This is a great question. I think that the interconnectivity and the decentralized mass distribution of news and ideas via social media, including blogs, is basically a good thing. When Middle Eastern extremists were on a beheading binge a few years back, the exposure did not help them, as I presume they thought it would. The West’s outrage, which reached its zenith with the beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl, was so forceful that by and large, this tactic has abated. Thank god.
If you’ve been a bosshole and attempt to get a high-level job at a public institution (and the job search is public), you will have trouble now that the Internet is available to all your victims.
And the attempt of newspaper chains in the ’80s to drive out competitors, thereby making the newshole of a newspaper merely the gray matter that flowed around the ads instead of a competitive forum for democracy, has itself been destroyed by ubiquitous blogs and alternative information (as a journalist who witnessed this, I am laughing at the chains as they continue to lose subscribers – it is their karma coming home to roost.)
Yes, there’s a lot of bad info out there now. That’s the risk. Yes, bad outcomes can be expected if a “mob rule†mentality overtakes a group. Yes, cyberbullying is a bad thing and can have dreadful (suicide of teens) outcomes. Not having access to a wide and vast array of information, or having information controlled by the power elite, is worse in my opinion.
Gregory Ferenstein
· 9 months ago
Scientifically speaking, Yes, I definitely think it has an impact. But, only in one way: it makes the younger generation more cosmopolitan.
Gen Y is the _most_ likely to feel like a "citizen of the world".
However, the conditions which facilitate cooperation and empathy are not inherent to social media: we can barricade ourselves in niche groups as easily as expand our social circle. I think there's certainly potential given the right system. @wikiworld
Kristina Marie
· 9 months ago
As with anything, it can be used for good or evil. And I think we could all think of examples of social media being used positively and negatively.
But in my experience the "tone" of Twitter and other community forums has been generally positive and used by people genuinely wanting to help and learn from one another. This is great to see!
While social media can't "make" us better people, but it can certainly help if we choose to use it for this purpose.
Adrian Ionel
· 9 months ago
Absolutely. Knowing is caring. We know more about each other. So we become better friends, citizens, colleagues. And we learn that what we do is seen and matters. This leads to better behavior.
SuziO
· 9 months ago
Better? I am not sure, but well connected: yes. If you know how to select people and information you want, it could be helpful. We can make nice firendships all over the world and keep ourselves well informed! It is cool!
SuziO
· 9 months ago
Better? I am not sure, but well connected: yes. If you know how to select people and information you want, it could be helpful. We can make nice friendships all over the world and keep ourselves well informed! It is cool!
Christopher
· 9 months ago
Connecting is the name of the game here. In our acts to share, publish, inform, and downright annoy, I doubt that behaviors will be shaped into a Mary Poppins way of being. The tools at our fingertips are making the world a lot less formal. Along with this trend comes the lost art of self control and the never ending push to new extremes. Even with all of that said, I do see a trend in "people credit". The people I believe in and the ones I don't. If you act in certain ways or share untruths, you will lose credit. Just like in my in-person life, I chose to associate with people I like or admire. Same goes for the people I am following in Twitter.
Jerry Kambic
· 9 months ago
I have always felt that people coming together in an exchange of ideas would change the world. I also believe it is happening today as we discuss this very topic. If the entire world could exchange ideas governments would have to deal with the will of the people. More citizen journalism and gobal thinking is what will make this planet a better place to live. Remember,the human race will not out last this planet. Let's all enjoy the little time we all have to be alive. Peace
Stan Sanders
· 9 months ago
Pete,
Are we better people due to social media is an interesting question. Being more aware of each other and the world around us should improve the human condition, but people are still people. Some will be more affected by this than others, some it probably will not change at all. I do wonder, is this leading us to have less face to face communication, which would be a loss.
John Davis
· 9 months ago
Wow, you actually do raise some pretty valid points!
Social Media makes us more powerful. It dilutes the power of traditional governing bodies by breaking down barriers. Because we access information and respond faster we operate in swarms. We can respond rapidly to any event without being restricted by our governments or nations.
The funds raised for the recent fires in the South came partly from people who witnessed the aftermath through social media, and it came fast. The death threats and exposed identities of arsonists also happened online, on Facebook.
Social media allows us to act on whatever we want, faster and more effectively than ever. We got more funds for that incident than we could have hoped for otherwise, and the facebook groups are being shut down. Better people in this instance.
David - LA Marketing Firm
· 9 months ago
With all due respect, you know that social media is merely a communication tool like every other. Let's not fool ourselves. There are the myspace murder incidents, the ability to communally ostracize someone publicly has great repercussions. It just amplifies current social values.
Undoubtedly, there are numerous benefits to social media. Having people's private lives come out has positives and negatives...
The question shouldn't be "what can we do to use social media to bring out the best sides of ourselves, and minimize the negative stuff"...
And that's a good question - something that I haven't spent close to enough time on.
(It's mostly been spent simply using the social media ;) )
Suzanne Lainson
· 9 months ago
Here's a variation. You take a photo of people you meet but don't know and send it to this company that keeps it on file. If anything happens to you, there is a record, with a time stamp, of strangers you have met, at a bar, coming to your home to work on the plumbing, etc.
I think so - particularly how its transparency can be considered a prompt for ethical action. If you want a particularly Buddhist take on this whole issue check out
Not sure if social media makes us better people, but it can certainly help us communicate better and stay more informed with what interests us.
One of the greatest advantages of any social media website, is the ability of the community to influence mainstream. Whether it's Twitter, Facebook, or AppleBlotter --- people discover new people, groups, communities that interest them and share similar interests.
All that said, I think many people act differently but not necessarily as a different person. Being aware of things can be a form of enlightenment, no? Handling and what you do with that enlightenment is the real question.
shane mcloughlin
· 9 months ago
The concluding headline of social conscience does seem fitting here! The web has created the possibility for a kind of crowd sourced big brother. Big Brother doesn't become some burecratic and institutionalised entity, it becomes the will of sections of society. This creates a whole new dystopian vision. As it seems to suggest less possibility for true self determination and free will, Social media being a more efficient and effective means of keeping society in check, in an age of increasing population and urbanisation. It is worth noting though that the ratio to consumer contributor on the web is incredibly small ranging from .2% (youtube) to 5% (wikipedia) at best. Overall, it points to the increased need for reflexive web use, with a degree of caution and vigilance with regard to what one says on websites.
Social media makes us only more connected to the existing social contract. To the extent that the contract is good, we are better people. To the extent that the contract is bad, we are. This begs deeper philosophical questions that lie far outside the scope of this site. I argued a possible outcome of the transparency of social media on namasteeconomics.com, which you might find interesting.
Don Rhoades
· 9 months ago
As Machiavelli stated: "an armed society is a polite society", and everyone with an internet connection is "armed" with a watchful eye on their neighbors, government, and themselves.
Twitter Tools Lister
· 3 months ago
What is great about Social Media and the blurring of boundaries that it brought is that it empowers us as individuals. With regards to the question of making us nicer to one another, it is very possible that social media can make us nicer individuals. It also can make us more critical and responsible individuals.
socialtweet
· 3 months ago
Actually, I think social media makes us vain people. Whatever it is that they say about the lost of our privacy, in the end, it all boils down to wanting our face seen by many people. Though, I must somehow agree that in a way, it does makes us conscious of the way we act. But it doesn't necessarily makes us better people.
socialtwit
· 3 months ago
I think social media is both a bane and a boon when it comes to our "face" as people of this hightech generation. In a way, yes, it makes us better people because we go to lengths that other people may not see us as nuts. But then again, it makes us very vain. Let's face it, we want to see our faces everywhere and for other people to recognize us, right? So in effect, we do all we can to create a roar for ourselves. Does this--being vain--makes us better people? I think not. It only makes us more aware of what we can do for ourselves. Very much like the 15-minutes of stardom that people from yesterday dreamed of.
All Comments
So awesome that you bring this up because it can actually be world changing.
In fact, a project that Peter Gabriel is involved in has shown that atrocities
in third world countries went down after people had ability to record events
and share them with the world.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/peter_gabrie...
Keep on rocking the intertubes with the mashable effect. Use it for good,
and not for evil.
@isfan
There is so much political correctness already in the world that social media
forcing us to be nicer to our fellow man would be a great thing in superficial
interactions. But when it comes down to letting someone know exactly how we
feel, how vulnerable we are, how expressive (or not) we can be, that's really
the spice of life. It teaches us far more about ourselves than mere niceties
ever could.
being defined, in this instance as: The immediate public scrutiny
of behavior executed over traceable media.
My answer: No. It may inspire greater self-censorship, but ‘social
Media’ won't inspire hearts to greater purity.
Mr. Cashmore follows his initial question with: “Might it actually make
us…nicer to one another?â€
My answer: Sure. However, flattery shouldn't be confused with altruism.
It already promotes rules of responsibility, respect and humor, it breaks
secrecy, isolation and fear, it affects the collective without creating a Borg,
emphasizing the value of individuality, communication and help...it already
broke the chains of slavery by people being able to reach out to strangers.
It broke the pyramid of control.
Don't expect social media to make us better, it's just a reflection of real society. The same rules and behaviours apply. For example, a quick glance at YouTube will show you what people will say when given the cover of anonymity. The same goes for any other online forum...
broadens the reality of the extent of our failures, which most humans abhor.
So, the accountability, responsibility and awareness that many tout about
the social media experiment duplicates the same superficial shit society has
always been obsessed with.
In some ways it's worse than suburban fakery since body language cannot be
read on Facebook.
Which is why social media is a wonderful thing to manipulate for fattening
wallets.
Great post Pete...
Bert
post tonight. I was literally thinking about this very topic sitting in church tonight (Fellowship Church of Grapevine, TX). My church pastor and our associate pastors Twitter, even during church!! They twitter the excitement, energy, current Word - really cool stuff. Anyway, I was realizing thqat will all the avalanche of EVERYONE jumping on the SNA trains, I think it has the ability to help us become more authentic and transparent. I think it also has the opportunity to help us knock off the constant human weakness of back-stabbing, back-biting, gossiping, letting our emotions cuase us to say stupid things about someone who hurts us. It takes a nano-second for something we say to reach round the world (kinda like that famous shot on April 19, 1775). I think it helps us take a deep breath and think twice realizing that we have no idea who may be reading our thoughts and emotions. Interesting times we live in today!
I would argue that human weakness IS authentic.
And the desire to control every single item one says and does is the
embodiment of artificiality.
You become what you assume 'those' who may be reading your thoughts and
emotions desire you to be, rather than a more pure expression of who you are
which WILL include weakness.
No argument - you make a few excellent points, especially that human weakness
is authentic! I cannot stand pretension and pretensious, pious, self-righteous
"Christians" are the WORST!!
Let me make my point more clearly, I am bad about getting ticked off about stuff
that isn't even a deal in the grand scheme of things and I'll go let out my
anger and angst by telling someone who in turn will tell someone else, etc. It
isn't ever worth all the excessive drama and needless pain it brings about. I
guess it is fresh on my bloginion (blog opinion) because I just blew off some
steam about a colleague in an SNA I belong to and before I knew it a mutual friend
joined that network and the person I originally ranted and raved asked about
the network and wanted to join it. For me, the lesson learned was that we live
in a glass house society and I need to learn to keep my immature, impulsive
mouth shut! It was a very self-centered need to go in and blow off steam in
a room full of strangers. I could have received the same support and encouragement
as well as professional growth advice without ever having gone into the details
of the scenario.
Make sense?
In other words - IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL! (That was my favorite DisneyLand
ride when I was a girl living in LA, you'd think I would have taken that as a
prophetic hint for my adult life! LOL)
I don’t believe social media make us any better or worse than we are in the ‘real’ world. Yes, to an extent, there are those who try to disguise their characters to present themselves in a better light, but I don’t believe such a ruse is sustainable over the long term (the truth will out, as it were). IMHO, online behavior is reflective of who a person really is, illuminating positive traits and exacerbating negative traits.
People who are genuinely kind, outgoing, helpful, etc, will likely remain so on social media sites. Those who behave politely face-to-face but turn around and backstab no doubt will behave much the same way in the seeming anonymity of the Internet. That is, they may be courteous initially but revert to character. Then, there are those individuals who are nasty whether live or on the Web; however, the Internet provides a medium in which many of these latter people feel free to let their worst traits spill over, again because of the seeming anonymity.
other. ;-)
That said: I do believe that civilization advances over the long term. I
believe that overall the world is a better, more civilized place than it was
1000 or 500 years ago. And yes the internet is a piece of that...but we need
to take a realistic view of it.
The internet, and social media specifically, are a new powerful tool.
People who are able to use that tool effectively will have a new way to
defend themselves and their causes by bringing attention to their point
of view -- they have a new channel for making their case.
However: social media is very susceptible (as humans are) to the issues of
charisma, celebrity status, and image manipulation. Some people have a gift
of communication online -- they can make sh*t look like gold. And vice versa --
people with legitimate issues and grievances can't get attention because
they don't know how to do good PR -- they don't know how to make their
issue "sexy."
So there's a risk that internet/social media will simply become another
arena where style triumphs over substance, where important issues get
ignored in favor of titillating trivia. Postman's still right: we're still
very much at risk of entertaining ourselves to death.
That said: I love online culture and social media. But let's not get
ahead of ourselves by believing that a new tool/environment is some
guaranteed uplift for human nature. (After all, they thought that
about television too -- see how that one played out?)
It's not that simple. Social media are changing the power dynamics. But
that doesn't mean power issues go away, or that abuses of power and
injustice go away or become impossible to perform.
BTW science fiction novels deal w/ this a lot -- sometimes I get the feeling
that a lot of social media people need to read more sci fi. Nobody can
read Rainbows End, Pattern Recognition or Spook Country and
still believe that increased virtualization and ubiquitous communications will
inevitably result in people behaving better towards each other.
While the Social Media platform encourages us to be nice to each
other, I'm not sure this automatically makes us better people.
Some thoughts...
1) We're nice because we self-regulate:
Social Media communities do a fairly good job of self-regulating user behavior,
typically resulting in constructive communications. Put simply, the majority
of responsible users effectively manage the few who aren't.
2.) We're nice because we adhere to social constraints:
Most people are keenly aware of maintaining positive personal brands they
would be proud to share with anyone, from employers to families. Thus, the
negative consequences of poor behavior serve as deterrents.
3.) Some of us may be nice because we're afraid:
People in closed societies are often afraid to offend those in control.
Communication might be nice, but not honest.
So, no, I don't believe Social Media necessarily makes us better people because
we're nicer to each other, or more polite. But I do think it has the potential
to facilitate increased communication,which can engender increased
understanding and tolerance. And that just might make us better people who
also happen to be nice. :-)
thanks for bringing this up, as I consider this to be an important issue.
Unfortunately I don't think that it will turn us all into nice people, at least
not in the short-run. However I do think that it makes it more difficult to
get away with not being nice, which is positive.
Furthermore the media makes it easier to find and follow nice people. This can
also be positive, since it is part of human nature to follow (or be followed).
Think about how much more successful Gandhi could have been globally, had he
had a blog, Twitter, Facebook etc. at his disposal.
So in the long-run there is hope.
porting the function of monitoring and browbeating and punishing to
people. I don't see this positive at all. The incidents you describe here
of various public figures having their careers ruined actually show that
this sort of outsourced hate isn't making people better. Those people
did not deserve to have their lives ruined over one incident or case of
bad judgement merely because of the amplification of social media.
The character of those anonymous judgemental types who can destroy others
so malicious really is in question.
The other side of the coin is that some people will ignore the people who "break the rules", while other similar minded people will find each other and the group of "social outlaws" who do everything that breaks one group's rules will be totally accepted in another group.
There are no "rules" for using social media, but that's what makes it great. People can use it however they want to. They will attract the people that agree with those ways, or they'll simply ignore, de-friend, unsubscribe, or otherwise disconnect from people they don't want to socialize with.
Social media may, however, bring us closer to one another.
A long time ago when people lived in small communities like villages, you didn't have a choice. Everyone knew your business and you knew everyone else's business. The question of privacy and publicity wasn't there at all. Social media may have something to do with this village idea.
but lacks vitality and reality.
Many seem to think that this kind of interaction CREATES respect, kindness,
honesty and love when in fact it DOESN'T.
Social media merely creates aggregates of like-minded individuals who are
intolerant of differentials.
You are artificially being led to believe YOUR group is precious and pious
and consists of large numbers of changed individuals.
I don't believe this for one second. You have rejected those who rub wrongly,
you coalesce around specific themes of conformity and by doing so you create
a more perfect union of similarity not possible in neighborhoods of wood
and plastic.
It is total bullshit to think social media makes us BETTER.
It makes us compliant and less than authentic, especially since most of
society is pack-oriented and seeks acceptance.
(with all due respect, Rona) wink
with @conniereece and others moving their hosting to other vendors.
Quick mob action isn't always a bad thing!
the first four SF books people should read, if they're working in
social media -- and why fiction books can be useful for envisioning
the future. Post is here: http://bit.ly/ncLBp
If you want real change, it happens from the inside out, not from the outside in.
So while we could argue that placing video camera inside everyone's home and place of work would make for a better society, all we really do is subject people to live in fear. Fear doesn't make people better; it steals away their freedoms. Good people don't act good because they feel they have to act good. Good people act good because they make it part of their nature.
Now, go be good because you choose to, not because you have to.
All my best,
Rich
society you speak of?
only you said it in many fewer words - short and concise, to the point! Thank
you for your post, that puts it in perspective for me and I could not agree
with you more!
more personal information online than is already available.
Don't become comatose to the fact that many people still value their privacy,
no matter how f'ing boring it is.
MY privacy, on the other hand, is rated triple X which makes it entirely
unacceptable for many places online.
Lots of information should be left whence it came- boring or
otherwise.
for over 3 years now. I recently had to do some PR on a closed forum where
people hide behind false names. The experience was harrowing. There were
personal attacks made on me for no reason except ignorance and exactly
because they were anonymous. Should these (generally male) people have
been on Facebook they would not have been so nasty. Its an absolute fact
that social networking sites like Facebook promote civility, openness, honesty
and friendly, good behaviour.
Consensus of opinion rules too e.g. Twitter .. if someones trying to hard
sell you they simply won't be followed. end of story.
I think the opposite is happening people choose what to write on twitter and facebook.
This does not change how they behave in real world situations.
Seems like more propaganda from the tehcnocrazzi. Twitter and other services like it are actually another barrier to real and meaningful communication.
Twitter especially is like a grand mass delusion where everyone thinks people acutally care when they are watering the lawn or taking out the trash or whatever. Its insanity. Reminds me of the game on stark trek that takes over the ship and everyone is walking around like a zombie.
People talkin about apps that know where you are according to your phone...
Wait til they embed credit card chips in us...
How about Enemy of the State? ...and more recently... Eagle Eye?
The less "you are online", the better. ; )
way people communicate. Everything is trackable, employers are looking at it
and importantly people are utilising it to learn and to network.
to have us listen to the conversation and absorb multiple points of view before
we voice our own opinion. This allows us to have a richer and more nuanced
conversation than we ordinarily would.
bringing people together in all sorts of new ways with no
rules - but they brought out all manner of human beings.
What social media may do now that marketers are becoming aware of them
is make the conversations louder and wider, make the mainstream aware
of what the 'geeks' have been doing for years - but it won't really
change human nature; it may change society in terms of making us more
aware of being watched, recorded, monitored.. but I can't see it
really changing human nature.
Ultimately, humans are sociable animals, and in general I like to
think that we're inherently friendly, trustworthy and honest people.
The *principles* of social media are nothing new - we've been
communicating for thousands of years, and social media is making the
world smaller and more like local communities, so emulating a lot of
what humans are about anyway.
It's making us more connected to people further away, not necessarily "better".
You are segregating yourself from the entirety of reality. Reality has not changed.
If anything, hanging out on social networking sites where you endlessly write about yourself and tally up immense numbers of "friends" with whom you never truly make contact has made people more shallow and self-centered.
If you're totally into social networking, you will see it as a force for positive change in the world. Me, I see it as a form of light entertainment.
You should narrow up this form by about 15 columns. The textarea is so wide that the words you are typing disappear off the edge of the earth, so you can't read what you're typing, at least in Firefox.
it is a forum which allows individuals to express their 'selves' and whilst
it can be used for the greater good, that will depend solely on who is using
the medium and why.
A recent example could be the mass fraud online in relation to the fabrication
of evidence on the Palestine/Israel conflict. The net allows people to indulge
their points of view and therein lies the paradox: some people can express
their beliefs with full honesty whilst others choose not to.
The personal choices we make play out in the medium we use. I believe that
cyberspace has huge potential for unmasking social ills but that it faces all
the same problems that a non-virtual arena faces: human vulnerability.
Before we can connect meaningfully to the internet, we need to hardwire our
brains to the truth, or at least to the pursuit of it.
ultimately, will depend on human behavior. If there's one constant in the
digital age, it's that it's ever changing and unpredictable. We could always
go the way of "Idiocracy", I suppose.
of our faces. But that, ultimately, will depend on human behavior. If there's one constant in the
digital age, it's that it's ever changing and unpredictable. We could always
go the way of "Idiocracy", I suppose.
becoming "better people" and it is arguable if we are, indeed, even
nicer in public due to the SM toolkit.
People use tools, not the other way around, and we at heart the people we are
regardless of the tools we use.
SM makes it easier to be good or bad in the scalable sense, but there's
nothing inherently good -- or bad about SM.
People fear the loss of a privacy. You don't need to reveal every detail of your life, but social media makes it easy to get a sense of who a person is by what they share and how they live. Ultimately, if you're a good person, there's nothing to hide and no fear to be had.
opportunities for reaching a greater public and also the initial capability for alter egos and anonymity.
So behavior will reflect the choice and range of contacts as well as type of interaction
preferred (family, friends, business, interest groups). After an initial rush of
enthusiasm in making contacts (and how many still see plain counting as an objective in
itself), longer use of any network introduces a natural selection to those contacts of
real interest.
As humans, we readily adapt to different social situations, so the behavior will be
determined by the conventions of whichever group you are interacting with at the time.
As social animals we are also very susceptible to peer pressure and the avoidance of
exclusion by breaking the conventions of a group. My feeling is therefore that social
media do not necessarily make better people, they will make us better communicators in
a variety of networks.
Same fish, bigger pond?
When we think we are being watched, taped, and remembered at every moment its important to be thoughtful and behave in a socially acceptable manner. Good or bad? Definitely limiting.
If you’ve been a bosshole and attempt to get a high-level job at a public institution (and the job search is public), you will have trouble now that the Internet is available to all your victims.
And the attempt of newspaper chains in the ’80s to drive out competitors, thereby making the newshole of a newspaper merely the gray matter that flowed around the ads instead of a competitive forum for democracy, has itself been destroyed by ubiquitous blogs and alternative information (as a journalist who witnessed this, I am laughing at the chains as they continue to lose subscribers – it is their karma coming home to roost.)
Yes, there’s a lot of bad info out there now. That’s the risk. Yes, bad outcomes can be expected if a “mob rule†mentality overtakes a group. Yes, cyberbullying is a bad thing and can have dreadful (suicide of teens) outcomes. Not having access to a wide and vast array of information, or having information controlled by the power elite, is worse in my opinion.
it makes the younger generation more cosmopolitan.
Gen Y is the _most_ likely to feel like a "citizen of the world".
However, the conditions which facilitate cooperation and empathy are not inherent
to social media: we can barricade ourselves in niche groups as easily as expand our social circle.
I think there's certainly potential given the right system.
@wikiworld
think of examples of social media being used positively and negatively.
But in my experience the "tone" of Twitter and other community forums has been
generally positive and used by people genuinely wanting to help and learn from
one another. This is great to see!
While social media can't "make" us better people, but it can certainly help if
we choose to use it for this purpose.
we learn that what we do is seen and matters. This leads to better behavior.
people and information you want, it could be helpful. We can make nice
firendships all over the world and keep ourselves well informed! It is cool!
people and information you want, it could be helpful. We can make nice
friendships all over the world and keep ourselves well informed! It is cool!
Are we better people due to social media is an interesting question. Being
more aware of each other and the world around us should improve the human
condition, but people are still people. Some will be more affected by this
than others, some it probably will not change at all. I do wonder, is this
leading us to have less face to face communication, which would be a loss.
RT
www.anonymity.eu.tc
The funds raised for the recent fires in the South came partly from people who witnessed the aftermath through social media, and it came fast. The death threats and exposed identities of arsonists also happened online, on Facebook.
Social media allows us to act on whatever we want, faster and more effectively than ever. We got more funds for that incident than we could have hoped for otherwise, and the facebook groups are being shut down. Better people in this instance.
like every other. Let's not fool ourselves. There are the myspace murder
incidents, the ability to communally ostracize someone publicly has great
repercussions. It just amplifies current social values.
Undoubtedly, there are numerous benefits to social media. Having people's private
lives come out has positives and negatives...
The question shouldn't be "what can we do to use social media to bring out the
best sides of ourselves, and minimize the negative stuff"...
And that's a good question - something that I haven't spent close to enough time
on.
(It's mostly been spent simply using the social media ;) )
http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/als-em...
ethical action. If you want a particularly Buddhist take on this whole issue check out
http://www.21awake.com/?p=465
One of the greatest advantages of any social media website, is the ability of the community to influence mainstream. Whether it's Twitter, Facebook, or AppleBlotter --- people discover new people, groups, communities that interest them and share similar interests.
All that said, I think many people act differently but not necessarily as a different person. Being aware of things can be a form of enlightenment, no? Handling and what you do with that enlightenment is the real question.
The web has created the possibility for a kind of crowd sourced big brother. Big Brother doesn't become some burecratic and institutionalised entity, it becomes the will of sections of society.
This creates a whole new dystopian vision. As it seems to suggest less possibility for true self determination and free will, Social media being a more efficient and
effective means of keeping society in check, in an age of increasing population and urbanisation.
It is worth noting though that the ratio to consumer contributor on the web is incredibly small ranging from .2% (youtube) to 5% (wikipedia) at best.
Overall, it points to the increased need for reflexive web use, with a degree of caution and vigilance with regard to what one says on websites.
see; relativemusings.blogspot.com
http://twittertoolslist.com