What are some of the transformations brought about by digital culture and social media? Also, describing some of the areas where tensions between old and new are evident and finding three, credible, academic sources that discuss the world of yesterday as compared with today.
The digital culture and social media have created a litany of changes related to the manner in which society communicates. In many respects, these transformations have been a net positive for society, allowing information to travel in a much more rapid fashion. By communicating quicker, society overall becomes much more efficient. These efficiencies have resulted in an overall increase in societal productivity. Business approvals can occur through email or fax. Supply chains can better communicate consumer demand and produce products in anticipation of higher order counts. Governments can better distribute stimulus payments and communications quickly. Even routine tasks such as a opening a bank account can be done online and in a much more efficient manner. All of these improvements ultimately help improve the quality of life for society through efficient communication (Bradshaw, 2018).
However, the digital transformation has also created areas of tension, these areas of tension often revolve around blatant misinformation designed to obfuscate the truth, a deliberate disregard for fact checking, and a need to embellish information in order to garner likes and followers. In the case of the latter, many consumers and users of social media often lie about their lifestyle in an effort to appear well off. These lies often manifest themselves through the social network as followers compared their own status in life to those of the false lifestyles perpetrated by others. This ultimately helps to contribute...
Those dependent on the approval of others often look to change their own behavior in an effort to garner favor. This concept of group think in order to appease others permeates throughout social media, which can be used as a detriment to society overall.To begin, the digital culture has improved overall efficiencies within society. For example, many processes that once very antiquated methods have now been improved through digitization. The internet allows consumers to access information in the manner and substance that...
…the overall speed and quantity of information often makes it difficult to properly vet its merits. With the overall inability to properly vet misinformation, the critical tension between the old and new form of communication hinge primary on personal responsibility. Here, consumers must be willing to conduct their own due diligence to properly determine the merit of digital information. Unfortunately this has not occurred recently as evidenced by latest misinformation campaigns surrounding the stolen election of Joe Biden, rampant election fraud, and even COVID-19 vaccination misinformation. Each of these accusations have repeatedly been debunked. Studies have shown that no election fraud occurred, President Joe Biden did not steal the election, and many of the negative side effects of the COVID-19 vaccination are not as common as social media would have society believe. However, did in part to the speed of information and the inability of consumers to fact check the information they consumer, many of these accusations are still believed today (Allcott, 2017). The negative consequences of misinformation manifested themselves on the January 6TH attack on the capital which was caused heavily by misinformation from President Donald Trump.…
References
1. Allcott, Hunt and Matthew Gentzkow. “Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 31, no. 2 (2017): 211–36. https://doi.org/10.1257/ jep.31.2.211.
2. Anderson, Janna and Lee Rainie. The Future of Truth and Misinformation Online. Pew Research Center, 2017. http://www.pewinternet.org/2017/10/19/the-future-of-truth-andmisinformation-online.
3. Bradshaw, Samantha and Philip N. Howard. “Challenging Truth and Trust: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation.” Working Paper 2018.1. Oxford, UK: Project on Computational Propaganda. http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/ cybertroops2018/.
4. Bulger, Monica and Patrick Davison. The Promises, Challenges, and Futures of Media Literacy. New York: Data & Society Research Institute, 2018. https://datasociety.net/output/ the-promises-challenges-and-futures-of-media-literacy/.
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