Something I’ve recently beeninterested in is whether or not social media and social networking sites can actually enable or influence real political action. Political engagement has been my main research focus in another class I’m taking this semester. I thought it was interesting that Danah Boyd (2008) said that when mostpoliticians and activists talk about using social networking sites, they’rereally talking about using it as a “spamming device,” or what Crawford (2009)calls the “broadcast-only” model. She says that just because someone wants to reach millions of people, it doesn’t mean they will do so effectively because if nobody is interested in hearing what they have to say it doesn’t matter that the information is out there for millions of people. As I’ve discussed before,if someone is not motivated to learn or seek out well- informed information, they just won’t. It won’t matter how much information is widely and readily available on the Internet.

Additionally important here is the idea of being tuned in. Often as Crawford (2009) notes with Twitter, we utilize a type of “background listening” with the updates and messages we choose to receive and follow. Having Facebook and Twitter and other applications readily available and accessible on our phones and other mobile devices often means being tuned in 24 hours a day. But just because we’re “tuned in” doesn’t mean we’re processing everything that we’re fed, and more often than not, as Crawford notes, we end up scanning and discarding, or tuning out lots of material. And while some of us are active media consumers, who look to switch up and maintain a healthy media diet, most will just search through the tidbits that momentarily hold their interest or mirror ideas and thoughts they already have. That brings me to the next somewhat obvious, yet still unsettling issue raised in these readings.

Just as marketers use platforms like Facebook and Google to track our media consumption habits and target us with ads and information tailored specifically to what they think we want to see, we also tend to seek out opinions of others just like ours. Boyd notes that politically engaged people tend to know and converse with other politically engaged people like themselves. Likewise, uninterested, disengaged people typically associate with people just like themselves. As Boyd puts it, “social network sites create cavernous echo chambers as people reiterate what their friends posted” (243). I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve watched “Friends” on Facebook mindlessly repost statuses ranting about this political debate or that politician without any sort of insight or rational basis of opinion.

I don’t know that I’d call Boyd’s view a dystopian one, so much as a “cyber-realist” one on the effects social network sites can have on political engagement. I do, however, have to remain optimistic about the effects that social media has and could potentially have in mobilizing citizens to real political action. Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential election is the best example of social media at work and being used in the right ways to mobilize groups who had otherwise been politically disengaged. As Malcolm Gladwell wrote, the tools of social network sites have reinvented social activism. I would also argue that it’s changed how people can come together and collaborate to campaign for issues or candidates that are important to them, and have also offered politicians and other leaders the access to connect with a global community.

But again, the most disturbing topic I feel like we’re continually faced with each week as we read is the issue of privacy (or lack thereof) on the Internet. As Boyd (2008) tells us, public and private are merely guidelines on the Internet because “there are no digital walls that truly keep what is desired in, and what is not, out” (243). Boyd & Ellison (2008) ask whether or not law enforcement has the right to access information posted on social media sites without warrants. As the article I linked here last week mentioned, the FBI is already well on its way there.

There is still plenty of room for growth and change in terms of how social media can influence political engagement. I believe the key to using social media to influence future political views will depend on how the message is crafted. It can’t be simply thrown together and put out there like a spam message. The messages must be powerful and have purpose. Without that power and purpose there will be no memorable change, making social media little more than an afterthought in the political process.

Dan Gillmor’s Mediactive encourages us to be better informed and more proactive in our use of social and digital media. He gives a general tutorial on how to be skeptical of what we read online and how to seek out reliable and accurate information. He also offers ways to be more savvy Internet media users, not just as consumers, but creators.

Gillmor mentioned the “echo-chamber” effect –as he puts it, our tendency to seek out information that we’re likely to agree with. Gillmor says it’s easier now than ever before to seek out and pay attention to sources of information that offer new perspectives and challenge our current assumptions. But I think it’s far more complicated than that. As we discussed last week, it’s easier now than ever for platforms like Facebook to package and sell information about our media consumption habits to marketers and advertisers whose job it is to only present us with information they believe we want to see, not necessarily information that’s going to help us make well-informed decisions. This was largely the topic of the journal article I brought last week. That and other privacy issues, and our right to “private inquiry” if there is such a thing on the Internet. Read more here.

I’m skeptical about the “slow news” idea. As Gillmor mentions, Twitter is the antithesis of slow news. And I don’t really believe we’re going backward. As rapid fire as information spreads now through Twitter and other online outlets, the technology will only get more innovative, people will find ways to communicate faster. It’s ever changing, and as Gillmor says, we can almost assuredly count on the fact that the media we know tomorrow will be even more diverse than it is today.

Gillmor’s optimistic view makes me mostly hopeful, though I don’t know that just the nature of the Internet necessarily fixes the problems he cites with traditional media occasionally getting things wrong and making errors of omission. And while I know it’s more critical now than ever before to hone our digital media skills, I also know my parents, veterans of the newspaper industry would beg to differ with Gillmor’s assertion that Internet media entrepreneurs will need to “save journalism.”

Gillmor encourages participation as the start of “genuine literacy.” He says we have to create, contribute and collaborate in the Digital Age. As we find our place in the digital world as not just consumers, but “potential creators,” he says we become collaborate because the new tools of creation available are inherently collaborative. I agree that we can no longer afford to just be passive consumers, and that being an active media user now means not just being a hands-on consumer, but creator as well, but people have to want to collaborate and contribute. While people commit journalistic acts online every day, should we really expect that they’ll all adhere to the principles Gillmor sets forth for citizen journalists to follow?

As I mentioned last week, I’d like to believe that for a group of mass communication graduate students, we can probably research more thoroughly the news we’re consuming and filter better. Or at least we have more of a desire to. I still believe the average person doesn’t or won’t spend the time to research beyond what immediately presented to them. Whether it’s laziness or just a lack of time, I don’t believe most people would actively put the tools and suggestions Gillmor offers to good use. Does the average person demand information that’s truly reliable and trustworthy? Most people just take what they read at face value or are content with the first search result after they type something in Google. But he urges us to go outside our comfort zones, to seek out information from other educated, well-informed people who may see things differently. I think it’s a tall task Gillmor asks us all to undertake, but I know I’m certainly up to the challenge.

What is information? The answer to this question probably depends on who you ask. According to James Gleick, “Information is what our world runs on. Information is the blood and the fuel, the vital principle” (p.13).

The main idea I took from this book was a simple one – all information is essentially a digital entity. Obviously, this is a life I live each day as I send text messages and communicate through social media. This article puts that in perspective. Gleick said that “as communication evolves, messages in a language can be broken down and composed and transmitted in much smaller sets of symbols: the alphabet; dots and dashes; drumbeats high and low” (p.75).

So much of what we do is digital and we often take that for granted. And in many ways it is a mode of communication born out desire to simplify and make our interactions shorter and quicker. That’s why it’s all broken down into symbols that can more easily and more quickly be transmitted. The meaning and intention has almost always been the same. But the research and ideas of the mathematicians and scientists Gleick discussed let you see how the theory of information has changed. You can see how thoughts and messages are broken down, transmitted, and processed.

I think there’s little doubt that one of the most important points Gleick raises while discussing information theory is the distinction between information and meaning. He says that information theory entails the “ruthless sacrifice of meaning,” the very thing that “gives information its value and its purpose” (p. 389). But is the meaning really “irrelevant” to the problem, like Claude Shannon suggested? Is just about the “beeps” as Heinz von Foerster complained? For a group of mass communication grad students, I’d clearly say no. The danger in looking at information from a purely mathematical standpoint emphasizes the importance of speed and efficiency over that of effectiveness and quality.

A point that can’t be ignored was Gleick’s attention to the idea of “interconnectedness.” He talks about language and how our “lexis is a measure of shared experience, which comes from interconnectedness” (p.77). I believe our shared experiences do help define who we are, and our increased interconnectedness makes sharing experiences faster and easier than ever before.

We’re networked closer than we’ve ever been before. Though Gleick refers to communication technologies linking human society like a “coherent organism” and being like a “nervous system,” for us today he says that a network is “an abstract object, and its domain is information” (p.389). But are we really too connected? And are the implications necessarily always negative? I find one paradox Gleick notes interesting. He says our current network presents, that “everything is close, and everything is far, at the same time.” He says this is why cyberspace can feel crowded and lonely all at the same time.

I would like for Gleick to have touched more about how information theory has really changed everything we do, from reading and doing research, to listening and sharing music, to sharing our most personal thoughts and ideas on sites like Facebook. I also would have liked to read more about how the development of communication transmission has changed as a result of economic changes and our need to feel more connected.

So the question remains, what happens now? Are we on information overload? Are we really in danger of losing the meaning of our messages? Are we too plugged in? Once again, the answers you get to these questions will likely depend on who you ask and perhaps even when you ask.

The answers you get today may be different than the ones you’ll get in a few months and definitely in the years to come. That’s because information and the ways we communicate it will inevitably continue to evolve.