Current forms of social media allow one to be in contact with a large number of people and to be able to exchange "significant" information quickly and efficiently. Unfortunately, like the social media of past decades on the internet (i.e., Usenet, email, IRC, etc.), there is no way to distinguish the true from the semi-true from the delusional from the outright BS. What is different now is that most crap is disseminated incredibly quickly and widely, like viral chain letters. So, perhaps there maybe a place in some course for an article like the following that examines some of the recent hoaxes that have been promoted by facebook and twitter; see: http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/12/if-something-on-twitter-seems-too-bad-to-be-true-it-probably-is/
As an example of what I'm talking about, here's a quote: |In 2011 a retweet can function as the online equivalent of gawking |at a car crash, even when the story seems too good (or more likely, |bad) to be true. Perhaps this is why the hashtag #SeriouslyMcDonalds |was a trending topic this morning, after a sign mandating African American |McDonald’s patrons pay a $1.50 surcharge went viral. Even McDonald’s |Twitter account quickly declared this a “hoax”, but the #SeriouslyMcDonalds |hashtag continues to appear in around 20 tweets a second. Perhaps someone should do a study that measures the degree of a person's impulse control and its relationship to (a) how quickly that person transmits "HOT" news to friends/frenemies/strangers/whatever and (b) is subject to believing hoaxes to be true (i.e., does not critically evaluate the truth value of what is read). -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=10981 or send a blank email to leave-10981-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
