The Flow of Information Through Social Media

The way information is passed among individuals has been evolving since the beginning of civilization. When language was invented, information was passed orally. From there, written language was created and that was a means of retrieving and recording information. Over the centuries, different technological inventions and innovations have made information even easier to access. In our current state, social media like Facebook and Twitter is a very powerful arena for the flow of information.

In her article, Danah Boyd discusses how broadcasted media was the predominant form of constructed knowledge, but it is now being surpassed by networked media. This theory can be backed up by the discussion we had in class about the Phillies fan who was tasered. Millions of people saw the video and knew about the story because of social networking. By the time the story was broadcasted on ESPN, it seemed that everyone already knew about it, thus backing up the fact that information through networking is more convenient than information through broadcasted media.

The Phillies-fan-taser video also supports Boyd's article because she says the internet is dismantling traditional forms of distribution. I personally saw the video on Google Video, then about 2 hours later saw it on SportsCenter, and by that time it was old news to me. Distribution innovations through new media has been a common theme in the our class for the whole semester, and there seems to be an unlimited amount of channels for distribution with websites like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, etc...

In conclusion, Social Media is completely changing the way information is dstributed. As Boyd says, the common man is now holding power to distribute media through the networking landscape of the internet. Although people are just learning of this power, it will keep growing and eventually everything will be linked together. It truly is the Information Age.