I think that the main takeaway from the articles is that social media, whether Twitter or Vine, is not an adequate platform to share deep feelings and thoughts. Both articles mentioned different reasons for why social media is not adequate to share deep feelings, but the common reason that both sources cited is the quickness of social media. In the case of Twitter, users can only use so many characters in a tweet, so users have to prioritize what they are going to say and often have to make broad statements. For vine, users are limited by a six second time limit. Although vine does utilize video, which allows for more communication, the time limit is very restrictive. I think that these two points are very good points, but something that I think is also important to the idea that social media can’t be used to fully express points of view is the nonstop nature of social media. I know in my experience with social media, I tend to scroll pretty fast through feeds and often do not take the time to fully read posts. Additionally, with so much content posted every second on social media, it is often hard to keep up with everything that is going on and it is easy to miss posts. Therefore, even if a person were able to convey deep emotion within the constraints various sites place on users, there is a high possibility that the message wouldn’t even reach people. I think that these two articles provided a good reminder that social media should not be used to have deep discussions about certain topics.
One Reply to “Blog Post 9/21/2020”
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One take away I got from both the articles as well as Vine is the trade off between simplicity and a more complete understanding, as the Brian Ott article mentions. On one hand you do have media outlets like TV that are a predecessor to Twitter, but also take time to deliver news (or propaganda in a decent amount of cases). This is almost like reading a chapter or an article on a topic, as it becomes tedious to become informed, especially with an easier outlet like Twitter available. There is a fallacy that the simplicity of Twitter equals the “need-to-know” of the world, that all one truly needs to understand what is going on in the world can be found in a Tweet or series’ of Tweets under 280 characters. The misplaced belief, coupled with the incivility and impulsivity mentioned in the article as well leads to a watered down and distorted flash of information that can come at you from illegitimate sources, or in the case of Trump, to be inappropriate for someone in his situation, both in rudeness and in the “fake news” so easily spread by one Tweet.