Social media has made and continues to make changes in the way people interact on a day to day basis. In addition to changing the way that people interact, social media and new social media technologies have changed the ways that people communicate and share information and knowledge. No longer is knowledge dissemination limited to official news sources; today, anyone with an Internet connection and a cell phone can act as a conduit of information for the public at large. Blogs, Twitter feeds, Facebook feeds, and video sharing sites have forever changed the face of information acquisition and synthesis.
I have found that social media has forever changed the world and the ways that people interact with it. Social media has given voice to the masses-- whether or not the masses choose to do something positive with that voice is another question entirely, however. In the book They Say/I Say, the authors argue that academic writing is too often taught to students as a way of expressing intelligent ideas to a non-participatory audience. However, the reality of the situation is that unlike printed text, social media allows the user an interactive, participatory audience. Graff and Birkenstein write, “academic writing [is] deeply engaged in some way with other people’s views. Too often, however, academic writing is taught as a process of saying ‘true’ or ‘smart’ things in a vacuum, as if it were possible to argue effectively without being in a conversation with someone” (Graff and Birkenstein 3). Social media allows interaction-- Graff and Birkenstein’s two-sided conversation-- to happen much more quickly and effectively than print text did.
Social media allows for all types of uncensored commentary. It allows for the triumph of “I say,” versus the traditional academic reliance on “they say.” Where traditional academic writing suggests that what other experts that have come before is of paramount importance, social media teaches us that everyone can be heard. It is a truly capitalistic medium of communication, where ideas and creations with merit are consumed more readily and with greater speed than the ideas and creations with less merit. This is not to say that all viral media that is spread throughout the Internet is true or even academically valuable, but the reality is that media “goes viral” because people see some kind of inherent value in it. Malcolm Gladwell suggests that in addition to having value, to become viral, something needs to be introduced into the right niche for it to flourish at the correct time; however, this condition does not take away from the contention that viral media is media that is found by the masses to have intrinsic value.
Graff and Birkenstein suggest that the best way to create good academic writing is to start with what others say, and build from intrinsic agreement, disagreement, or conditional agreement with their thoughts (Graff and Birkenstein 21). The Internet and social media allow the individual a mandatory “they say,” while also providing the individual with the platform to respond with their own “I say,” completing the process and setting the stage for potential academic discussion.
Works cited
Graff, Gerald and Cathy Birkenstein. They say / I say. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2010. Print.
