Social Media may, in fact, get more done


The idea of mass amateurization is a double-edged sword, especially when it comes to journalism - in all of its formats. When anyone and everyone can "publish" anything that they want without "approval", it can lead to mass misinformation. You miss out on the input of "professionals"/the powers that be/the experts, whatever you want to call them that give the input to tell you whether or not what you are writing is horsesh*t. You miss out on the input of things that you may not have thought of. However, maybe that isn't entirely true. When you post things for the world to see, you have the input of hundreds, thousands, even millions of different opinions, views, "editors". You also don’t get hung up on delaying technicalities and bureaucracy. When you don't have to filter your information through the usual avenues of "fact checking", you get the raw, unedited, uncensored, un-“someone else's agenda” focused information. You get information in real time. You become a part of it. You get to watch things unfold. "The people" get to decide what is important to them, not what someone else thinks should be important. You don't have the spin and dramatization of news outlets. When this information comes from social media outlets, which by their very nature have more up-to-date information, these outlets can also apply pressure to the traditional media outlets to cover what is truly important to the people. It tells the traditional news channels that sports scores, Martha Stewart and her dog, what celebrity couple is breaking up/getting together or what celebrity couple had a baby and that baby’s name are NOT news. What we see with the government’s and other “powers that be’s” attempted shutting down of social media accounts, etc. is that they now have less control over who hears what, and they don’t like it.

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