Social Media, or “Antisocial” Media?

We live in a social network. Whether it’s which dorm or house you reside on campus, which professors you have, or even where you sit in Commons- instantaneously makes us all part of the “Bates bubble“. We hold this truth to be self-evident: that the velocity regardless of however fast the individual travels, our fate is inevitable. We’re bound to cross paths, and I mean, “worlds collide” {Here’s a “Seinfeld”-ian example that reminds us why we can’t live alone}

It’s only recently that so many people who can’t stop talking (especially businesses to market products) have taken it to a whole new level: the Internet. As we “twitter” and fritter away throughout our lives, it fascinates me that the Web has become a virtual chat-room for all to come and go to express themselves freely- although this certainly does entail harmful “antisocial” consequences as well, like the spawning of the privacy debate on Facebook , the suicide of Tyler Clementi, and most recently, this WikiLeaks controversy.

And of course, as Bates is always a beehive for boundless buzz, a dialogue about dialogue is to be expected. As part of the “Race in a Post-Human World” panel (for those including me who read “post-human” and said, “What in the world is that?”, click here)l, Bates is hosting a series of lecturers who will talk about online identities. This evening, author Lisa Nakamura is to discuss the roles that race and sexuality play in the cyberterrain.

Whether we like it or not, social media is here to stay. After all, I am writing this blog. Because as the storyline goes, “you don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.”

“The Role of Journalism in a Democracy”

Earlier at 7:30 in Chase Lounge tonight, I was pretty stoked to join in on a panel (presenting were: (Rex Rhoades, Executive Editor of the Lewiston Sun Journal; Thomas Fiedler, Dean of Boston University’s College of Communication and former Executive Editor of the Miami Herald; and Justin Ellis, a staff member at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University and former columnist/blogger, staff writer and multimedia producer for the Portland Press Herald) on the current state of journalism. No doubt, the media has been an essential component of shaping society, whether biased or unbiased- from the history of tools of newspaper printing to television and radio broadcasting, to the Internet.

The chief, lingering issue that hung somberly over our heads throughout the evening was: Has the news lost what it’s stood for? I thought about it in relation to my academic experiences: when I’m assigned to research something for class, I always find it highly disturbing that Wikipedia comes up first on the results in Google Search. Of course. no offense directed towards the creators of Wikipedia (as they are doing their job trying to provide the optimal references for accurate information), but since anyone is free to submit anything on the site, the line between fact and popular opinion becomes blurred (and ultimately, it comes down to: what really is fact and what is opinion)

It’s also no secret that the media is highly politicized (as a result, so is the nation). We may not realize it, but the news has a staggeringly subliminal impact on its viewers. It’s become not just simply information, but when the news tags its own commentaries on its stories (for example, news talk shows) it becomes its own product- fed to unsuspecting consumers, Republican or Democrat.

So how can we coexist in a democracy, where we are uncensored to express our own opinions, yet must keep them in check when delivering the news? I guess the only answer remains- as Jerry Seinfeld would put it, look to the black-and-white cookie.