Seriously though I shouldn't be all that surprised about the search results. Given that we are in the middle of election season here in the US if you search for anything controversial, be it on google or social media, you will probably find that the majority of links, like this one, are about something a politician said on the topic or some kind of political commentary. Honestly, I don't think that is the best thing for Americans that are trying to be well informed. We would be much better served if when we searched these topics, more links were dedicated to investigative journalism pieces or feature stories like this. For example Americans would be much more well informed about Syria and immigration if the stories we searched for tell us more facts about the refugees and their reasons for immigrating, instead of political rhetoric about why we should or shouldn't accept Syrian refugees into our country. This is simply another example the politics of a situation taking precedence over the substance of it in social media.
Monday, October 24, 2016
WI: Syria and Immagration
For this Well Informed post I decided to do a search on Facebook instead of google to see what I would find on a social media platform about Syria and immigration. Before I started the search I guessed that I would find a lot of posts about ISIS and terrorism, however when I typed "Syria immigration" in the Facebook search box I mostly found reports about politicians' and political comentators' reaction to mass immigration from Syria.
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James,
ReplyDeleteI agree that people would benefit far more from links containing specific information on the topic, as opposed to what a politician had to say about it. Social media definitely leans towards the later, especially because this issue is being discussed by presidential candidates. I also agree we would be much more well informed if information regarding the refugees personal experiences and reasons to be listed before political opinions. Because of this failed search system, I believe it is everyone's responsibility to well inform themselves before they react to the first information/opinion they read or hear.
When these types of things, that typically impact the U.S. in some way, often becomes the center of attention in politics. Sadly, so many people are focused on the election this year and what candidates are saying about the issue, that they're missing the big picture. It almost seems like we're being misinformed because of politics. We're not getting all the information we should from politicians about the subject.
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