The New Millennium Gatekeepers
By Nayelis Vargas
Social Media has power. And with the turn of the 21st century, came an inevitable technological advancement. Those two things combined have played a major role in fashion trends, words, and even ideas that have been used in today’s society. It has also played a role in the news consumption that we intake on a daily basis.
Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are just two among many social media platforms that have taken it upon themselves in the past few years to become not just our latest gossip blogs, or a place to share pictures of our new outfits. But a place where thousands of users share, and sad to say even consume their news.
Consider the fact that a lot of us no longer go in search of actual newspapers.
I mean we have no real need to thanks to the fact that we are so glued to our phones. At this point all we have to do is go onto our internet browsers or again, open up our social media apps . and before you know it, we get slammed with click-bait or posts from our favorite news outlets.
Before I proceed, I must acknowledge that although social media has pretty much become one of the worlds active gatekeepers for journalists, apps such as Twitter or Instagram aren’t so bad when it comes to news consumption.
This is proven because when you log on to Twitter or Instagram, you have the option to follow and filter whatever you want to. Meaning that if you don’t want to be flooded with news or ads from popular sites such as Fashion Nova or Fox, then you don’t have to be.
Here you are subscribing and deciding for YOURSELF who or what you want to follow, or in some cases, unfollow. Places like Facebook, again by experience don’t really give you those options. Facebook goes as far as to show you ads of places that you’ve visited on separate web browsers, be it on your cell phone or laptop. They allow for your personal app to be flooded with clickbait news from outlets that in some cases aren’t verifiable or even real. And that on its own could manage to be a very harmful thing to consumers such as ourselves.
Take for example the incident between Facebook and Myanmar, which I, unfortunately, did not learn about until after watching John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight “Facebook” episode. Because of the fact that Facebook has certain policies when it comes to filtering and other similar concepts on their app, a group of people in Myanmar were allowed to propagate and spread fake ideas and FAKE news about another group of people, Muslims in this case, which resulted in the death and in several of these Muslim people having to leave the only home they’ve ever known.
Social Media platforms can either help or hinder journalism. Not just because they get to gatekeep and decide what remains and what goes on within their apps or sites.
Moral of the story is that this isn’t just about sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Our people need to know the truth, and we can’t get it to them if we don’t find some way to get around platforms with the ability to tarnish what we stand for.
John Olivers Last Week Tonight “Facebook”
