Colin's Other Blog mentioned our last class, in which we learned about the death of Patrick Swayze from a message on Colin's Facebook page.
Although Colin's assertion that Facebook is an "information multivitamin" might be true for a user who carefully balances the components, with measured parts of real friends, "news" outlets or reporters who provide content online, and people who are interested in the same hobbies and pastimes as the user is, I have not selected my Facebook friends for this purpose. I suspect most users have not, and therefore the vitamin is unbalanced.
On my Facebook Home page, the most common posts are some (hopefully more clever) variation on "TGIF!" "I'm going to a party!" or "I'm tired and going to sleep." Until I started blocking them, the next most common messages were about how Vinnie got whacked in one online game, or a sheep wandered onto a farm in another game. The next most common posts are random facts about people's lives. ("Little Jimmy's foreskin infection is healing quickly!") And I have friended a large number of reporters or media people, because I see them regularly and know who they are through my job, so I suspect I would have more hard news people on my friend list than your average user. I suspect that for most users, right now Facebook is more of an information marshmallow, than a vitamin.
Here is the full breakdown of news feeds from the last seven hours on my Facebook home page:
Random personal facts: 16
"News": 3 (One by Christine Stuart was "hard news," although the same story was sent twice; one forwarded video of kids bumping and grinding might cross over into news because it sparks outrage; and one broken link to an ACORN political argument.)
Announcements from nonprofit groups: 2
I don't think this is a balanced information diet.
But I do agree with Colin that Facebook is an excellent device to quickly distribute information, and to allow users to control what information they receive. The whole idea of "news feeds" in Facebook seems very similar to specialized wire browsing software that has long been used in newsrooms. The biggest differences are that Facebook is more user-friendly, and hugely more customizable. It would not surprise me to see newsroom wire service programs become more like Facebook in look and feel, in the next few years.
Although Colin's assertion that Facebook is an "information multivitamin" might be true for a user who carefully balances the components, with measured parts of real friends, "news" outlets or reporters who provide content online, and people who are interested in the same hobbies and pastimes as the user is, I have not selected my Facebook friends for this purpose. I suspect most users have not, and therefore the vitamin is unbalanced.
On my Facebook Home page, the most common posts are some (hopefully more clever) variation on "TGIF!" "I'm going to a party!" or "I'm tired and going to sleep." Until I started blocking them, the next most common messages were about how Vinnie got whacked in one online game, or a sheep wandered onto a farm in another game. The next most common posts are random facts about people's lives. ("Little Jimmy's foreskin infection is healing quickly!") And I have friended a large number of reporters or media people, because I see them regularly and know who they are through my job, so I suspect I would have more hard news people on my friend list than your average user. I suspect that for most users, right now Facebook is more of an information marshmallow, than a vitamin.
Here is the full breakdown of news feeds from the last seven hours on my Facebook home page:
Random personal facts: 16
"News": 3 (One by Christine Stuart was "hard news," although the same story was sent twice; one forwarded video of kids bumping and grinding might cross over into news because it sparks outrage; and one broken link to an ACORN political argument.)
Announcements from nonprofit groups: 2
I don't think this is a balanced information diet.
But I do agree with Colin that Facebook is an excellent device to quickly distribute information, and to allow users to control what information they receive. The whole idea of "news feeds" in Facebook seems very similar to specialized wire browsing software that has long been used in newsrooms. The biggest differences are that Facebook is more user-friendly, and hugely more customizable. It would not surprise me to see newsroom wire service programs become more like Facebook in look and feel, in the next few years.
I kind of agree. In my first class in this program, Theory of Rhetoric, I did my final paper on the Silo Effect. I believe that to avoid siloing onself, he or she must make an effort to shop for a variety of material. Otherwise, it is entirely too easy to begin accepting articles from like-minded people and not explore what else is out there. I agree with Colin that a printed paper, at least a well-editing one, offers a reader a much broader selection of material. However, if a reader chooses, for example, Time Magazine, there will be a slight tendency to the more conservative article. It so slight, the reader may not know they are participating in a silo, but that's how it starts.
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