Social Media’s Top 5 Contributions to Society

By Samantha Rupert

www.tmaresources.com 

Most of us use some form of social media every day – and whether it’s for personal communication, self-promotion or marketing, we use it religiously. Humans are creatures of habit, but they’re also opinionated and impatient. Those two traits alone are the reasons why social networks thrive. People want the news fast and they want to talk about it now.

Technological advancements have made it easier for people to express themselves and relay news through social media platforms. But many people tend to focus on the supposed negative effects of social media and forget about the good.

Instead of focusing on social media’s pitfalls and absurdities, let me remind you how its influence transforms society for the better. Here are five major contributions that social media has made to society:

1. It’s a forum for support and safety information during a crisis. There have been several recent disasters during which social media provided the only viable venue for communication. During Superstorm Sandy, most people didn’t have power, but some cell networks and WiFi towers were still operational. Many people used Facebook to detail the destruction and reassure friends or family that they were safe. This week, the tragic Boston Marathon bombings mobilized the worldwide social media community to offer support and info for those affected. Twitter even donated a promoted hashtag (value estimated at $200,000), #OneBoston, to lend support to victims, according to Ad Week. More importantly, networks like Twitter proved to be a safety tool for people in the area. The Boston Police Department tweeted up-to-the-minute news describing injuries, death tolls and areas to avoid. In an effort to keep phone lines clear, police asked people to use social media to communicate.
2. It’s a valuable aid for crime-solving. Police departments like the NYPD are beginning to investigate gang-related crimes on social media networks. Recently, the NYPD nabbed about 60 gang members who boasted about violent criminal activity on social media. In other states like Oregon, authorities have arrested people for drinking and driving after they bragged about it publicly on Facebook.  
3. It’s a form of political influence. Social media has given a true voice to the people. Last month, the rally for marriage equality spread throughout social platforms as the Supreme Court heard cases regarding same-sex marriage. Brands even took to the trend by creating relevant red equality symbols. Social media is a powerful force for change and it has potential to influence the outcomes of political decisions. The Supreme Court still has not reached a decision in the ongoing debate, but justices were aware of the public support.

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How NOT to Criticize Social Media

By Adam Chapman

PHOTO: Wired.com

In the wake of tragedy, communities try to find ways to help each other. As social media is made up of communities, it’s no exception that the same logic would apply. So when no one claimed credit for the Boston Marathon bombings and no suspects were initially identified, some online communities took it upon themselves to aid law enforcement and try to find possible suspects by crowdsourcing the thousands of images and videos for potential bombers. The most organized of them was in a community called “FindBostonBombers” (now closed) on Reddit, one of the largest social news sites.

As of April 19, the subreddit had about 9,000 members. The declared point of the subreddit was “…nothing more than one single place for people to compile, analyze, and discuss images, links, and thoughts about the Boston Bombing.” They also say, “FindBostonBombers is a discussion forum, not a journalistic media outlet. We do not strive, nor pretend, to release journalist-quality content for the sake of informing the public.”

The biggest problem is, of course, that while moderation of the group can prevent some unwanted behavior in terms of posting, it there’s no way to enforce the behavior of anyone who reads the site. If it were purely discussion in an isolated room that’d be one thing; but anyone can read it and act upon it. No amount of disclaimers can truly prevent that from happening. 

Which is what traditional media who reported on Reddit should have said. Instead, some reporters took it as an opportunity to offer helpful advice. Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic gently reminded Reddit, “Guys, this isn't dissecting the quality of an animation on the PS3.” He also went on to remind readers that “San Francisco, the city where Reddit grew up, has an ugly history of vigilantes deciding to track down and convict suspects.” (The association logically being that the “San Francisco Committee of Vigilance” probably has much to do with Reddit’s relocating from Virginia to San Francisco in 2006, despite the Committee being disbanded 150 years earlier.)

Not that Madrigal was alone. Ryan Chittum took time away from his traditional business reporting at the Columbia Journalism Review to write an article subtitled “While Reddit fails again.” And Slate’s Farhad Manjoo lumped Reddit with the New York Post when Reddit wrongly identified suspects. (Though his colleague Will Oremus at least admits that no one made the Post publish their pictures on the front page.)

Before we go on, it’s important to remember a couple of salient facts about Reddit:

• Last month Reddit had almost 64 million unique visitors
• There are 5,000 active communities

Put another way, Madrigal et al. felt that 0.014% of a website’s user base basically represented the rest of the site. It’s about the same directing comments about the actions of half of the people who live on an average city block in Manhattan to the whole island. I’m reasonably sure that these journalists aren’t (that) willfully ignorant of how Reddit works.

So when these and other journalists who condescend to social media when they get things wrong, it reeks of a few things, but mostly smugness and fear. Which is great for page views, but not really productive for fixing social media.

Social media has empowered people in ways never seen before. And given that they are people, they’re going to make mistakes. Lots of them. And sometimes they’ll hurt innocent people, and they’ll be wrong for doing so. For example, when talking about how Reddit misidentified a missing Brown University student as a potential bomber, Manjoo admitted, “Caught up in the excitement of breaking news, I was one of many journalists who retweeted news that the Brown student was one of the suspects—a fact which, in the morning, I feel absolutely terrible about.” (Apparently he’s learned a lot about journalism since then.)

But the reality is this: there’s no guarantee that social media can be prevented from doing this again in the future. We can try to create a culture of getting stories right instead of getting them first, but much traditional media has already done away with that idea. Plus, it’s a lot easier for them to cast blame on new technologies than it is to change behaviors.

As last week proved, social media can be an unpredictable, uncontrollable force. It’s important to critique it and to think of ways it can be tempered, especially during crises. Patronizing journalists should set examples for how social media ideally would be used. Blaming people who only wanted to help won’t make your jobs any more secure.

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