Social media presents opportunities for users to transmit inaccurate information
Social media has good and bad sides. While it allows us to connect with more people than ever before, it also makes it impossible to avoid bad information and opinions. Nearly everyone will use social media to take a position and to voice a personal opinion on one subject or another. It takes freedom of speech to another level. The question is: How much is too much?
Over the last 10 years, the Internet has become the standard form of communication. School forms, taxes, bills, registrations — pretty much everything can be filled out and filed over the Internet. Social media has made our world much smaller, but also much larger. The past election saw at least 31 million tweets, and the night culminated in the president himself calling the race over Twitter.
During the election, people took sides, tweeting out #Obama or #Romney. Opinions were unleashed on Twitter and Facebook feeds, resulting in arguments and debates, mostly in 140 characters or fewer. The opinions voiced, however, cannot always be considered reliable. Social media is universal, meaning everyone can use it.
From celebrity death hoaxes to trolls who plant falsities, information can be misconstrued online in numerous ways. Hurricane Sandy saw a huge spike in fake photos, including the now-famous picture of a huge storm cloud just behind the Statue of Liberty in New York City.
The big issue we face now is how to control or police social media to prevent spreading false news. The First Amendment gives us the right to speak freely, and that right shouldn’t be undermined. But the right shouldn’t be abused either. If we allow social media to run rampant, propaganda and false information could become the norm.
As social media users, we need to take responsibility in discerning the difference between good sources and bad sources. It’s convenient to look at our Twitter feed to see the debate updates. But if the debate updates come from unreliable sources and we still take it at face value, there is a problem.
The right to free speech means we have the right to speak about our beliefs without fear that they will be threatened. That does not mean we should not think before we speak, especially on subjects as important as a presidential election or a natural disaster. Social media gives the user great power to hear and be heard, but it’s easy to abuse or misuse this power.
In a world where so much is happening in the news, we need to make sure we remember to take responsibility for our opinions and how they are formed.