Social Media Exhaustion – Over-Loading and Over/Mis-Reporting
Is this us…are we now the media? You know…”The Media”…
You know “those” people that compete to report information to gain readership? To gain clicks? To gain recognition of exclusivity? I used to be “The Media” and know what it means to compete to be the first to report, to provide the first images, the first information…hell, I lived it! I still claim to be the first to fly over southern Louisiana in a helicopter to capture the first images for the world to see…just after Katrina.
Why does it matter? Why do we compete to stack our timelines when we hear some dies? Is it out of the need to share or to be the first to put it out “that” information? Do we consciously think about it as we do it…or have we bought into the synchronous style of social reporting. Are we digital voyeurs?
Facebook knows it…they openly admit they do not want to be the content creators but the content aggregators. Their timeline has the the “News Ticker” and will be adding new “Gestures” so people can do more than “Like”. Oh yeah…we can now subscribe to people without becoming friends, placing thought leadership into individuals’ timelines.
It can work to our advantage where we watch hurricanes and earthquakes unfold via Twitter. Providing rich information necessary to help people in need when the “mainstream media” had to have two sources to confirm. But…oh but…we see the flip side everyday from mainstream media we trust and support. We watched this misreporting happen during the Rep. Giffords shooting where it was misreported over the airwaves and the social spaces that she had died. Yep…just have to be the one to say it first. Mainstream media led the way and we followed by retweeting faster than we could stand it. We had to be the first to post the unconfirmed information to our timelines…to be the first to tweet and post those links. I wonder how many went back and deleted those posts? I wonder if I fed the frenzy?
We are overloaded…extremely overloaded. USAToday.com published predictions for 2012:
“In general, more and more people seem to be reevaluating their social and digital existence. Even the SOPA battle is revealing some unforeseen schisms. The Stop Online Piracy Act is a bad idea, not because piracy is good, but because of the plan for enforcement is wrong and dangerous. That said, no one who creates content can deny that the digital revolution hasn’t forced them to rethink how they create, sell and distribute content. There are no easy answers here and 2012 will be a year of introspection; one where we possibly rewrite the rules of content, copyrights and social interactions.”
Yes…I bolded the important part. An we are in the midst of a fight over how content is created via the web…all the way up the food chain to the Congressional ranks with SOPA.
Our timelines are overloaded with individuals fighting to report information faster than the next. Lots of unconfirmed information from deaths of people we know to out-of-context quotes from political candidates. My social space is a competition between individuals competing to express opinions formed from mainstream media about political figures to videos captured of political candidates in the midst of heated, out-of-context debate and conversation.
Have we become the 6 O’clock news right inside our own timelines. No offense to the many of my friends and colleagues that are true journalists…but my timeline has become daytime drama from 4-6:30pm replacing the soap operas and 5-6pm news.
We are overloading our friends, family, and colleagues with un-truths in our social spaces. No wonder the numerous predictions across the spectrum have predicted 2012 as the year we pull back from the social space because of fatigue. Forbes.com just reported that Facebook flirting causes 1 in 3 divorces in 2011 overseas in England. This past March, The Guardian reported: “Two-thirds of the lawyers surveyed said that Facebook was the “primary source” of evidence in divorce proceedings, while MySpace with 15% and Twitter with 5% lagged far behind.”
I am a bit overloaded, trying to help clients sift through the social space…in the hopes to find the way to engage in digital word-of-mouth. It is a lot to sift through especially when our own personal space is a barrage of over-achieving social reporters. They are either competing to become the first to report or the first to pick a fight with a local church, hospital, brand, or “ex” something. No wonder customer service has become the next marketing (as reported by Forbes.com), because people have lots to report and fuss about online.
Yep…so who is the customer service for this rant? Well…maybe it is time to just trim back our social spaces; find better connections, richer content, and fonder communities. Time to get real.
***Image from Mashable.com via this link: CLICK HERE
Thought-provoking post. As I read it my mind jumped back to the 2000 presidential election and how all the media outlets wanted to be the first to call it… and someone did (I think CBS and Dan Rather)… and then the Florida count got wishy-washy and we all know what happened. I also remember watching in 2008 and found it fascinating late in the evening that CNN wouldn’t technically “call it” for Obama, but John King spent 10 minutes explaining the mathematical improbabilities of a McCain win. Then, as soon as the polls in the west closed, they pounced. Just recently, before Christmas, the social media scape was abuzz with news of Jon Bon Jovi’s untimely death. So much so that he had to post a pic on Facebook to prove he was alive and kicking. I suppose it’s human nature to be somewhat of a voyeur and to want to be the person letting everyone else know what the big story is. We all want to be “in the know”, and be there first. It becomes hard to weed out the channels with the garbage and the channels with the worthwhile content, be they on cable TV or via social media. But, one can do it.
@brand_BIG We all want to be in the know…we all want to be the one that has the inside track. It is so funny how the social space and social technologies have been created that allow us to compete with mainstream media. We as consumers compete to be the first to consume, aggregate, and update our base with information. We compete to be the first and to share it. This makes me think back in the 90’s when KTLA-TV tried the idea of allowing the community with cameras share local/community news where they did not have the resources to cover it. The idea of the iReporters…consumers on the streets competing against each other to capture and share the local news for KTLA-TV to broadcast. This lead to the embeds during campaigns…interns with cameras just incase something happened. Now Facebook and Twitter aggregate our “news”. It fascinates me how fast this has escalated.
@bobbyrettew@brand_BIG Indeed. Seems like every local news station here in Arizona – and probably everywhere else – solicits “citizen reporters” to call in events they encounter or to send in pix they take with their phones. I often wonder who owns the rights to those photos. Suppose Joe Public uses his iPhone to get a shot of a major news story and then emails that shot to his local news because he thinks it’s cool to have his shot on TV. Then, imagine that image becomes iconic of the event, and famous. Does the citizen give up his right of ownership to that photo because he willingly submitted to the news station? As you know, there can be substantial money, not to mention awards and recognition, in the media for photography. Sorry if that’s a bit off topic, but it came to mind.
Yes, thought provoking and asking great questions. Your picture morphed me into a vision of citizen media being like Ghost Busters- “who ya gonna call?” We are in a new time where there are no rules and it is being created as we evolve in the social space. Like any community, it tells you quickly what is approves, allows and accepts. Trouble I see is with so many voices gaining a platform, who will people align with and believe. We have seen historically the larger groups of humans end up following someone and either form a powerful good or bad as it plays out. Which do you see happening? It boils down to, are they operating from fear or possibility.