Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter were launched primarily to connect friends, relatives and people with similar interests across the world. Initially, there was an option to share texts, photos and hyperlinks. Facebook later launched news feed and streams to allow large pictures to be shared on your timeline.
Further, the popular networking site came up with video – both in the form video clips and animated GIFs. Hyperlinks, which social networks noticed were rarely clicked, started to become less important with the passage of time.
However, the news feed, which is more like a TV and favors emotion over facts, proved out to be more popular on these social networking sites. Even Twitter worked hard to become a live-streaming hub for sports and TV-style of content. However, you can’t trust this platform when it comes to reading news.
Today, both Facebook and Twitter look less like social networks and more like television. They have started focusing on easy-to-consume videos and clippings over facts and details.
According to Iranian blogger Hossein Derakshan, he witnessed a lot of changes ever since Facebook was launched in 2004. One of those changes was the gradual death of the hyperlink and the open web. But another was the growing primacy of television-style content and the decline of text.
The problem lies with television style of content that favors emotions over thoughts. What matters is not the fact, but how the fake facts or wrong information affects you in the long run.
The TV-style of content is somehow associated with fake news. According to experts, such contents provide you with misleading information, misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information that creates the illusion of knowing something when you actually know nothing.
The social networking sites exacerbate this problem because it favors short bursts of content, in many cases without links, and because it is also an emotional medium.
In fact, the reason why certain posts or updates get shared is due to it triggers a strong emotion in the reader which could be fear, hate, or love.
On other hand sociologists feel sites like Facebook and Twitter work to make people feel part of some tribe or group—not just family or friend groups, but ideological groups as well. Moreover the content gets shared not because it’s true, but because it confirms a person’s membership in a group.
There is no doubt that these sites are desperate for readers and revenue, so many media outlets have played into this emotion-first environment by relying on click-bait and trumped-up scandals, essentially adopting the worst aspects of TV. This has further reduced the amount of trust readers will have in those outlets.
http://www.epaperindia.in/2016/11/facebook-twitter-not-good-platforms-get-news/
#Facebook, #Platforms, #Twitter
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