Social Media: What Lies Ahead

There is no doubt that social media will grow in popularity as years go by. Social media as of now is an emerging new form of how we will communicate with others and how the world will communicate with us. As time goes by, more and more people will be using social media as their prime way to get information and news. Millions of people sharing info with millions of people via online, rather than a couple thousand sharing info to a couple million via news channels and newspapers.

   Social media is not a phase, it is not a fad or simple alternative to get info and communicate with others. It is the basis of all communication for the future. 10 years ago we didn't have Facebook or Reddit to see what’s going on in our world. Now with a click of the mouse or the touch of your screen you are shown a great amount of info that you could never hope to find on a newspaper. You could never actively communicate with business all over the world instantly. With so many possibilities on how to shape our way of communicating online we can only imagine what role social media will play in 10 years.

   I imagine people walking around wearing their Google glasses or reading the news on their digital watch. Newspapers will no longer exist and the news organization will exist solely online or on television/radio. When a story breaks you will not "hear more about this at 11". When a story breaks it will pop up online within the hour and you can access it anywhere. I imagine Facebook dying in the future, due to more and more people getting concerned about their privacy online.

   In the near future there will be a much higher demand for social media apps that value the users privacy more and more. A lot more people will also be part of the online community. When a petition against something is set up online, people don't care too much about it. A lot more voters don't use the internet for news so not a lot of attention will be paid towards them. However in the past election social media did play a role in gathering the youth vote. In the future It won’t be just the youth vote on the web that's being targeting. I can see presidential candidates participate in online elections and actively communicate with people online.

   In short the presence social media has in our lives will only grow. As more and more people join the online community it will no longer be a simple minority of people on the web. Online communities will become a highly sought out demographic.

Social Media and Presidential Elections

   In 2008 Barack Obama won the presidency with 52.9%. Now how did he win? Was it because he was younger, was it because people wanted to have a "first black president", or was it that throughout his campaign he utilized something his rival failed to do. Social Media.

   During the 2008 election Barack Obama launched a social media campaign to reach out to younger voters. The first time in any presidential campaign history. During the election his Twitter account had over 2.3 million twitter followers while McCain did not have one yet. To this day McCain only has 1.7 million followers compared to Obama's 28.8 million followers.

   There is no doubt that Barack Obama's use of social media helped his campaign greatly. People could check his twitter for updates and videos to his speeches and connect with other voters. They then could share it on Face Book with their friends essentially giving Obama free advertising.

  Social Media played a huge role in the 2012 election, and because Obama had already established a large presence on the web through the last campaign, he had the advantage. Mitt Romney, learning from the mistakes of his fellow Republican from last year also attempted to connect to people via social media though he was not as successful as Obama. During the 2012 election Obama had over 10 times as many followers and was much more popular among younger voters. Obama even held an AMA (ask me anything) on the social media site Reddit. So many people went on the site that day, the website crashed. Millions of people went to ask the president anything and he would respond. This made him look more human and even conservative voters were jumping at the chance to ask him something. All the social media sites were stirred up over it. Nothing like that has every been done in a presidential campaign before.

   In short i believe social media played a huge role in the 2008 election, and even larger role in the 2012 election, and in 2016 it will define who becomes the next president.

Citizen Journalism: My thoughts on why we need it

Social media has allowed everyday citizens to become authors, editors, and publishers of news and information.  Do you believe that social media has increased the quality of news and information or decreased it?

I Greatly believe that because of social media, the quality of new and information that is available to everyone  has increased, but only because of the ability to discuss what we read or hear with other people online.  There are many reasons I believe this, examples include the new ways in which we interpret news and articles.

   Before social media, A news corporation would break a story, it would be published in a magazine, aired on the TV  etc. But most of the time readers would not  be able to have access to all the context in it and go with what the magazine or news channel said and treat it as fact. The News Coverage of the New town School Massacre is an excellent example of this. During the first part of the day when the shooting took place, lots of  news channels were covering it every hour of every second. When police revealed that an id was found on the shooter, the media instantly broadcasting that it had found the identity of the shooter. This of course was not true. The perpetrator of the shooting (Adam Lanza) was carrying his brothers id on him (Robert Lanza). But by the time the news channels revealed the heading "Shooter's ID of Robert Lanza the damage had already been done. Many people went around carrying on about the shooter being "Robert Lanza. People harassed and spammed his Facebook, wrote horrible things about him online, pictures of him were circulating the web labeling him the killer because all the news outlets said the killer had that ID on him. Even more ridiculous is that on Robert Lanza's Facebook page, he 'Liked' a couple of different video games, spawning people to start criticizing the developers of those video games. Because revealing the name of the shooter was deemed more interesting than revealing that they were mistaken, they downplayed the part where Adam Lanza was the actually shooter. But Since I get my news online thorugh sites like reddit, the tail of events can get updated in every few minutes, were people who post new info and links to verify them make it to the top of the page and are visible to everyone.

 If there was a more social element to news story's like how on a news site a journalist can post a article labeled "possible cure for cancer found?" People that are part of the community can post a discussion about it on the site and explain the the reader why that journalist is full of shit and over exaggerating the story and posted the misleading title for views. 

When I read an article online, I never trust the author of the article with out seeing if its nonsense or misleading is by discussing it with others and come to a consensus about it. The way I see it is that journalism on TV and Magazines is usually garbage, and that when you give the average citizen a voice and let people's articles be open to criticism by everyone, It can improve the content of what the reader gets. If i see something on tv news about something and they are being misleading or using unverified info, I have to no way of showing the person who is currently watching it that what there saying is misleading and isn't the whole story. It is much easier through social media where everyone can be a journalist and no one has blind trust in one person who labels themselves a journalist.

It's not a fad, The website your on might be, but not Social Media itself.

My Thoughts on this whole "social media fiasco"

   So I was first introduced to social media around 3 years ago. Probably around grade 10 of high school. I never really created a Facebook profile until the people around me started nagging me to. The way i saw it was that Facebook was just a fad like My Space. I never cared about Myspace, never made a Myspace account, and when it was ditched for Facebook, I felt the exact same way for FB. Well I created a Facebook account added my friends and what not. To this day I do not use it that much, I've never played farmville or anything and I go on it maybe 2 or 3 times a week. I still felt that this was just a fad.

   Once I got wind of Twitter however, my perspective changed. I actuall enjoy twitter because i find it much easier to keep track of the stuff I am interested in. On Twitter, I choose what i want to follow, unlike on Facebook where my news feed is filled with ads and people taking pictures of themselves in the mirror. Like holy shit every time i check my FB, "soneso has changed his profile pic" and its just them looking into a mirror with the camera with a less than happy facial expression. Personally I don't give a shit about that, nor what food you ate today or that hate your parents, I just don't give a shit and I feel that Going on FB is a waste of time. If i want to talk to my friends ill go on Skype, If I want to see what’s going on today ill check Twitter or Reddit.

   In short I do believe the way we communicate is being completely revolutionized because of social media, But it’s important to know site like Facebook maybe just fads that people will soon leave to for better alternatives, Social media will be getting bigger and bigger for the time come, But social media sites will have to keep up if they want to stay in the evoked set of social media.