Ted Talk- When social media became news, James Surowiecki.

This week I watched a particularly interesting Ted Talk, that i felt really ties in with what we have been learning throughout this module. 

This talk started off with an extremely detailed account of the Tsunami from someone in Colombo. This was quite significant at the time as it was said that one of the scariest things about the Tsunami was the complete lack of information. One of the things that happened in the wake of a tsunami was that we saw a whole load of live reporting from just witnesses and citizens themselves. Within a few days the outpouring of information was immense and this provided a vivid picture of the events that had happened. I think it was amazing to see the power of social media and the how much of an effect it was able to have in a situation like this one. A large number of unorganized, unconnected writers and video bloggers were able to come up with a far clearer image of what the tsunami was like than the main stream media.

This reflects how the blogosphere that exists today gives a voice to people who have never been able to talk before.

James continues to discuss the blogosphere throughout the talk and outlines three key questions relating to what the blogosphere tells us about our ideas and what motivates people to do things, the accessibility of intelligence with regards to blogs and what are the potential problems of blogs.

I gained a great understanding throughout his talk about the power that social media and blogging etc. has but the dangers too. People who contribute and spend all this time on the Internet are essentially doing it for free, which is pretty remarkable, as they receive no financial reward. These people giving their accounts during the tsunami were doing so solely to tell their stories to the rest of the world. Collectively, all of these blogs and contributions to social media can give us a very valuable picture of what is going on. Another message that I took from this talk and found quite striking is that there remains certain dangers when it comes to blogging and the power of online crowds. It is very easy to think that all networks are good but it can also be said that the more tightly linked you become with everyone the harder it is to remain independent, according to James, one of the fundamental characteristics of a network is that once you are linked in the network, it starts to shape your views and your interactions with everyone else. I think that having such easy access to information from people first hand all over the world is something extraordinary about the society we live in today but at the same time we do face issues when it comes to excessive use of social networks.