Why I Don’t Use Facebook: Part 2

October 23, 2017November 28, 2017 Jaigrisdemocracy, facebook, information flows, public sphere, social media, Social Media and Society, surveillanceLeave a comment

This is a follow up to my first post, which details why I think you can be an effective social media advisor, even if you are not personally on Facebook yourself. In this post, I’m going to briefly discuss some of the larger political and economic reasons why I do not engage on Facebook, and why I’m thinking about withdrawing my participation from social media completely, on a personal level that is.

Facebook Video by Esther Vargas. Retrieved from Flickr: https://flic.kr/p/dC3AV4

Ahhhhh Facebook! The ubiquitous social network that allows us to freely cyber stalk each other, and live our FOMO best lives in the public eye! A platform that allows us to specify our likes and dislikes, to be collected for all to see! An online bazaar where marketers take all the information we have freely given and use it to sell us more stuff! Facebook how did we ever live without you?

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Yellow is the New Black

August 14, 2017November 28, 2017 Jaigrisinformation flows, public sphere, social media, Social Media and Society, technology critiqueLeave a comment

I’ve been thinking a great deal lately about social media as a source of news, and how we are currently experiencing parallels with yellow journalism. I think that if we can identify similarities with our current media environment, and the rise and management of yellow journalism during the Hearst/Pulitzer years, we may be in a better position to brainstorm meaningful solutions to the fake news challenges that we are seeing today. And there are indeed many parallels to be drawn, so I’ll begin with a few important ones, as I see them:

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From Print to Digital – Information Overload and Folk Wisdom

August 2, 2017November 28, 2017 JaigrisEisenstein, Filter Failure, public sphere, Rainie, Shirky, social media, Social Media and Society, technology critiqueLeave a comment

Lee Rainie’s Keynote in Image Form from #SMSociety 2017

Last week, I had the great pleasure of presenting my work at the International Conference on Social Media and Society (#SMSociety2017), hosted by the esteemed team at the Social Media Lab at Ryerson University. While in attendance, I listened to a fantastic keynote by Lee Rainie, the director of Internet and Policy Research at the Pew Research Center. His keynote, titled “The Reckoning for Social Media” focused on the research work conducted by the Pew Internet and Technology research center, about how social media have changed the relationship of people to each other and to public institutions. Some of his findings were disheartening such as, for example, recent research that shows that people polled in the US are experiencing declining trust in academic institutions, or that people are becoming more polarized in their political views. Other findings were more hopeful, such as the fact that there is substantial reciprocity across social media platforms.

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Jaigris Hodson, PhD.

Critical thoughts about digital communication technologies and how they impact our lives, by Jaigris Hodson, PhD.

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