Comments on: Social Media: Aggregating Uninformed Opinions?

By: Tamera

Tamera — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:00:19 +0000

I'm going to add another equation here that I learned over my 15+ years of being on the web and involved in political sites…. it's really easy to set up a fake account and post propaganda. If you aren't the owner of the site (and even then with proxies you may not be able to tell) you have no idea if the person you are hearing from is legitimate, real, or spinning a tale to suit an agenda. It happens more than too many in these “new” social media circles recognize.

I am no supporter of either side in Iran but I do know that there's a lot of presumption going on in Twitter land… why? To who's benefit? That's one to study.

By: Malcolm Bastien

Malcolm Bastien — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:29:53 +0000

I always fear that if everyone knows and is saying the same thing, it's a dangerously strong influence on those who are listening.

If everyone is saying X (assuming X is probably untrue), then people who: Aren't smart enough to distinguish the difference, people that believe who they're getting the message from, and people that have a prejudice in favour of X (they want X to be true and are looking for something to confirm that belief)… In all of these cases we are screwed.

By: Denny

Denny — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 20:17:36 +0000

I suppose I'll preface what I say by indicating that I work for a communication medium, and it relies heavily on word of mouth for interest, which I think makes it a social medium.
Or at least that will have to serve for my example of how my work creates ill-informed people.
I write for a small town newspaper for those who don't know. I live in a town of 3000, and the paper has a weekly circulation of roughly 2/3 that, (which means a readership of anywhere from 7000 to 12000 depending on the school of journalism mathematics you follow). And no matter how many people read a story, they listen to the words of one or two individuals in the community, and let that be the synopsis.
I guess it's because I'm young, or because I was an 'oddball' at school (that being I chose to stop playing hockey so I could focus on my education more, and chose to not be involved in many school sports once I got to high school... except volleyball).
I cover a smaller town's council, and recently they've been attempting to create a Property Standards By-Law. They have had a few very strong opponents to the motion, who have exaggerated the facts off the proposed by-law. This causes everyone who listens to them (and in such a small, tight-knit community, everyone hears what everyone else says and does) to believe that they're right.
The best example I can give you is that I reported that the new by-law allows officials to call for pricey environmental tests if there is reason to believe that something on their lot (an old tractor or vehicle, a storage system in poor repair, a leak in a sewage system in a pig barn, etc.) is causing ground, and thus ground-water, contamination.
Well, somehow these individuals took from this that anyone with a vehicle not in a barn will be forced to pay for the tests. (Obviously not the point).
By the time council convened, the small chambers were filled with enough people that it was standing room only, all caused by the model of social communication and (essentially) the rules of the old "telephone" game, where the first whisper is nothing like the last.
These ill-informed people, unfortunately, make up the majority of the people who read the paper, and take nothing away from it. The informed people are usually reading to make sure I got their name right.
Apply that to the elections (which I have noticed), every Tom, Dick and Harry (and Muchmusic VeeJay) thinks they know the story because they've heard someone's point of view on it. The really sad thing is I bet a lot of them have listened to 'mock' news media, like The Colbert Report.
So, if you can acquiesce a newspaper as a social medium, I face more than a significant number Dan, I face a dominant number, and it does tend to get under my skin.

By: philnelson

philnelson — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:47:32 +0000

What are you, a contestant on the bachelorette? "< a href="http://www.dose.ca/TV/story.html?id=5e8e9de0-d3ec-4229-8590-5a414d00c952" rel="nofollow">for the right reasons"

By: philnelson

philnelson — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:46:25 +0000

Everything said here is true of print and TV.

By: Dan Hocking

Dan Hocking — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:41:21 +0000

I don't know if I'd like to see the comparison between those two numbers – even though it would validate my point – because I just think it'd make me sad. I think that's part of the other problem with things like green avatars; being able to visually determine where people stand – or think they stand – on these issues just disillusions me a little bit more each time.

Maybe this is why I'm no “social media expert” – I can't stand the firehose and the inanity that exists a lot of the time.

By: philnelson

philnelson — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:41:17 +0000

In a crisis the only reasonable thing to do is gather data and treat all of it provisionally.

By: Amrita

Amrita — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:35:23 +0000

Well said, I agree that people should understand and be able to articulate what they are supporting rather than jump on any bandwagon, regardless of whether they are expressing that opinion through social media or any other form of communication. To get more to the point it seems you were trying to address, you are right that social media is just a tool that makes it easier/faster for opinions to get circulated – it doesn't validate the opinion itself.

By: Dan Hocking

Dan Hocking — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:26:48 +0000

I feel like we've had this conversation before… But yes, good examples of things that aren't politically charged also perpetuating this phenomenon. I think it all ends up going back to the “social media is A tool, not THE tool” argument that can be made. Sometimes I can't believe the number of times I can see the same points over and over again through various means.

Hell, maybe that'll actually be a benefit of the aggregation of these opinions – if everyone knows and is now saying the same thing, we'll be forced to come up with something new, right?

By: Dan Hocking

Dan Hocking — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:22:24 +0000

The other important point here is defining what an action is. Turning your avatar picture green isn't an action. Retweeting someone isn't an action. Most interactions within the Twitter platform themselves aren't actions.

Setting up a Tor bridge or similar to get past censorship? That's an action, but is it just one of the few we can take?