With the introduction of blogs, and social media news sources Americans are relying on other people for their news. It is incredible to think that we trust other people more than reporters to give us unbiased news.
User generated content should be taken as that, an opinion, and nothing more. There are thousands of people who will rely on other users alone to get their information. I don't know if any of you do that but I recommend you don't.
There is nothing wrong with getting information from somebody's blog or a social news website. Know that like any other social news website it can be biases and has a goal in mind. I read many social news sites and blogs, but I make sure to back up the information I get from them from more reliable sources.
Here is a podcast discussing social news sites from a G4 podcast. It's kind of long but it does touch many aspects of these new and popular sites.
It's true that sometimes news sources can have some sort of biased to them, but don't do people?
Sources:
"Citizenship papers", "Fifteen uses of corporate bookmarking"
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3 comments:
Andres,
Readers of blogs and social media websites need to be selective with the information they take away. The information on the particular site can be biased. But, I do feel that some of the information provided can be factual. Many of the people who post blogs could be experts in the area they are discussing. This is why you need to research the person whose blog you are reading and make sure it is valid
I think that relying on other people as your source of news is perfectly fine as long as you use multiple people and not just one. Using one person is just the same as watching a biased news channel while using multiple allows you to find the consistencies and determine what point of view you side with most. Reading many sources and eliminating the extremes is the only way to find the middle ground.
As we discussed earlier in the semester when researching blogs about different companies, and an I Hate Starbucks site came up, we realized that you can have no idea of the circumstances of the person posting the site. It could have been a person fired by Starbucks and bitter about the situation. If you are going to rely on a blog, rely on many to make sure you get the full story.
I don't see a problem in relying on other people for your information as long as sources continue to be given.. People giving their own experiences over the internet is a great idea. That is the most valuable idea of the internet in my opinion.
You just have to be careful when people are simply giving their perspective on the internet without any knowledge of the subject.
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