Welcome back everyone this week's blog is going to be the topic of, whether or not the quality of news and information has been increased because of social media.
It is true that the number of authors and publishers has increased due to the freedom of social media so one might assume that with more people generating information that there should be an abundance of helpful facts to be found, but i think that it might not be as simple as that.
Social media is extremely easy to use which is both good and bad for news and information gathering. It is good because it lets people voice their opinions and views regardless of social status or education level. On the other hand because it lets everyone have a voice you must now take every bit of information you hear with a grain of salt because you do not know how reliable a person's information is. The following link shows you how easy it is to create misinformation. A reporter named Steve Simmons makes a comment about Jose Bautista and is quickly shutdown by the professional baseball player, however shortly after Simmons tries to save face a makes a comment about how Bautista doesn't really post his own tweets but instead has a firm take care of it for him. Now in this case Bautista respond to correct him that he does in fact take care of his own twitter account but if he had not responded then there would be numerous people who would think that everything that Bautista's account said would not have been genuine. This shows that it can be dangerous to take everything you see on the internet as fact, especially on social media where you do not have to site any sources to prove you point.
On the plus side though, social media has made it much easier to attain news and information. Almost every news station has a Facebook and twitter account that they update constantly with relevant and factual material. You can also follow many intellectual people on twitter such as Neil deGrasse Tyson who post many meaningful tweets as well as many link to interesting sites that can expand your knowledge on a number of different topics.
