Dissemination+Of+Info+With+Various+New+New+Media+Outlets

(Jess)

Although social media networks such as Facebook and MySpace were originally founded for the purpose of establishing and keeping in contact with friends, over the course of their existence they've become better known for their reputation for quickly spreading information (not knowledge, but information as it's important to note as we'll see later) through their respective networks. Although MySpace is now considered a graveyard desert of friends and sharing, in its heyday MySpace was the trendy place to be online, sharing new music and celebrity profiles with its users. Additionally, MySpace was the original self-promotion tool that allowed users to make a name for themselves through finding friends to share their product with others, who in turn shared it with their friends, etc. MySpace reached 100 million accounts in [|2006], making it a valuable tool for advertisers and marketing purposes.

However, MySpace's predecessor Facebook, with 845 million users as of December 2011 ,continues to evolve the connected role of friends, information dissemination, and advertising, including inserting cookies into the browsers of users in order to mine user data. In 2011 alone, Facebook made $3.154 billion in revenue from advertising. Clearly, sharing information is an industry. However, sharing information effectively is dependent on the number of friends a user might have, therefore limiting advertisers from reaching a maximum number of users/consumers.

[|Twitter] however, allows users, businesses and organizations to reach a countless number of users/consumers through the use of "hashtags". Hashtags can best be thought of as a search term that allows users to look up other users' responses to the original subject in question, much like an index at the back of a book. Twitter has often been used as a journalism tool, such as in the case of the 2011 Egyptian protests, during which users organized events and posted about their experiences The nature of information sharing on Twitter is particularly unique, as information either travels "up" by way of users re-posting and adding hashtags or trickles "down" by users with large followings (such as celebrities, super PACs, organizations, or companies) sharing information with all of their followers. //Information on Twitter closely follows economic principles, therefore making information a concrete commodity rather than an abstract notion.// Can such a network be truly democratic if so easily manipulated? I'm not so sure. Fellow wiki editors, do you care to make an argument or add a thought here? I also posted some other thoughts about the nature of Twitter on a tetrad located here.

The arrival of Google+ will undoubtedly change the nature of information dissemination in the future. In the meantime however, Alyda has posted some thoughts below detailing the dependency of information dissemination on user relationships.

(the following ideas draw on a[| post on my [Alyda's blog)]]
 * Chains vs. friends. vs. circles**

The concept of “friends” change across platforms and though time.

Paul Levinson talked about how MySpace was back in 2005–when he befriended a stranger who a common interest, the person’s response was essentially: “We’ll never hang out in person, we are not friends.”

When Facebook first became popular, people were overall much more cautious about who they befriend than they are now. Now, however, as the platform has gained a lot of acceptance in general and many people have simply become more familiar with it, the definition of a friend on Facebook has become quite loose. Though it is still true that most Facebook friends are grounded in real-life friendships(a claim that Paul Levinson makes in //New New Media),// [|Dominic pointed out] on his blog that Facebook presents a very casual feel towards people being friends–in short, Facebook friendships are becoming less and less significant.

The concept of connecting on Twitter is entirely different. Twitter is very centered on common interests, you can easily follow people you’ve never met and never will. It’s not strange to follow a complete stranger, a professor, or a famous person. But interestingly, I think you’re less likely to instantly start following a person you just met (unlike Facebook, where it’s common to meet someone and that same day receive a Facebook friend request from them). This assessment may not be completely true (I’m not a long-time Twitter user), but I think there is a definite difference between the personal interaction based system of friends on Facebook vs. the interest based association on Twitter.

What about Google+? What does it mean to be in someone’s circle? Google+ allows you to monitor things more closely; with the different circles, it’s easy to customize who your posts are visible to. Additionally, being based around this idea of friend circles, Google+ helps you manage and organize your friends, something that may cause people to think twice about adding a person who doesn’t fit in an existing circle (Dominic also brought up this point in his post I referenced previously). The circles might change the Facebook “sure you can be my friend, I already have 300 of them” to something like, “well, I suppose I could make a ‘random people’ circle for you…then again, I don’t really need you in a circle at all.” The dynamic of video chat might also influence who you may want in your G+ circles; do you want just anyone to have the capability to invite you to “hang out” with them? (not that you have to accept, of course).

The Web and (more specifically) new new media have become one of the most-used methods of disseminating information. Instructors use platforms such as BlackBoard Learn to share documents, post audio lectures, and conduct quizzes. Online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia are constantly being edited and added to with the most recent information with over 3 million articles. YouTube vloggers create "how-tos" for various tasks. Facebook statuses quickly disseminate the death of enrolled university students. Newspapers and magazines are turning to the Web to supplement or replace their hard copy issues. Information is being exchanged at a rapid and instantaneous pace.
 * Information vs. Knowledge and the Threat of Groupthink and Inauthenticity:**

However, the tension between disseminating/exchanging information and groupthink remains prevalent. Groupthink is defined as: //the practice of approaching problems/issues as matters that are best dealt with by consensus of a group rather than by individuals acting independently.// Other ways to think of groupthink are conformity or inauthenticity. Groupthink shares a strong relationship with the dangers cultural relativism does. According to cultural relativism, if a person is acting in accordance with his/her culture (in this case, the group) then he/she indeed is acting morally right. Like groupthink, this can lead to performing actions that are unsafe and defective, but people ignore it because they are more focused on the group's consensus. Such groupthink has happened in events like the The Holocaust, Bay of Pigs, Pearl Harbor, and The Red Scare.

What causes groupthink? How does sharing information morph into groupthink? According to Irving Janis, initial researcher of groupthink in 1972, there are three factors that can key groupthink.

//1. High group cohesiveness// //2. Structural faults// - such as lack of impartiality (especially if the leader is), similar backgrounds/ideology of members, etc //3. Situational context// - stressful external threats, moral dilemmas, difficulty making individual decisions

Basically, if a group is close-knit, shares similarities and biases, and/or feels the need to make decisions but can't on their own - groupthink begins to thrive. Ex: A recent debate is how "overrated" Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow (mostly because of his openness with his faith). Facebook statuses, YouTube videos, and Twitter feeds flood with reasons why/why not someone likes Tebow or not. As time has elapsed from the initial debates, the reasons have grown more vague and lack reason because groupthink has overtaken new new media users' individual reasoning. Such a situation quickly grows volatile and users become dogmatic in their decisions because of their investment in the group's opinion.

Janis, I. L. (1972). //Victims of Groupthink: a Psychological Study of Foreign-Policy Decisions and Fiascoes//. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. [|ISBN] [|0395140021].