Re: Off-Guardian on the importance of social media Archived Message
Posted by margo on June 25, 2019, 11:10 am, in reply to "Re: Off-Guardian on the importance of social media"
Fair enough, T-man. T: "I don't actually say avoid news media. For that, I recommend the Zappa way. As for social media..." My point is that "social media" (as it's called) incorporates news media: both news and social messages are delivered across the common wireless medium. The medium is neutral. Some of the messages are poisonous and it's our responsibility to work out which are and which aren't... and why. We can choose to follow news accounts only and block the social stuff, turning our "social media" experience into a curated news feed, free of social trivia. MediaLens does that - and the insights they've gained by examining the "social media" utterings of politicians and journalists, are helpful. If MediaLens eschewed "social media" because they'd rather contemplate their navels in silence, the world would be rather worse off. ---- Zappa: “I like to watch the news, because I don't like people very much and when you watch the news ... if you ever had an idea that people were really terrible, you could watch the news and know that you're right.” I think Zappa has that partially wrong. He supposes that "news" presents him with a true picture of the world and the people in it and that its focus is omniscient and infallible. He gives away too much power to salaried journalists and power-serving journalism to interpret the world and induce a sense of apathy, fear, doom and hatred.
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