Essay 2 - The quality of social media

First part, I describe my personal experience in using social media. Then according to my experience, I discuss about some different parts and comparisons between traditional media and social media. In the end, some conclusions and suggestions will be provided within the core argument of media quality area.

How to access to the valuable information?

“You need a pair of better glasses nowadays.” After the Internet stage, especially after Blog became popular, the information and self media on the internet is explosion. Searching information capability becomes much more important than before. For example, pick out the accurate key words may be more efficiency instead of learn by heart many pages text from literature book. But on the other hand, there is lots of useless information wasting our time.

From my experience, I use several powerful tools and web services to access high quality media. I think these tools refine the media information in a high degree.

Peer production

From the theory of peer production, this might be the most reliable tool to get the high quality media; however, it must base on a large quantity numbers of “peer”. On the other words, it needs to have enough vote or comment to differentiate one media to the others.

It’s well known that PageRank is the essential algorithm of Google. In social media field, compare with that, I use PostRank as reference in my Google Reader. This Firefox plug-in could give priorities for social media information, especially Blogs. I also use Digg.com and Xianguo.com (which is a web service combine Google Reader and Digg.com function together.) to check the most popular or most rated blogs. These peer-based recommendations usually provide me a filter to get better media message.

But I think the weak point of peer production is that it always high votes the popular information, people will follow the trends. So that, some articles, videos or music etc, will become hit, but many niche resources couldn’t be discovered well because there are not so many peers in these fields.

Mentors

This example is also come from Google Reader. I subscribe some people’s shared items, such as,

I consider their share items are high relevant to my interested area. I think this is similar as traditional media. In traditional media, editors play the role as filter to choose and aggregate information. Sometimes use the tradition way to pick out high quality media information is very useful. But it relies on the people or channel you trust, the potential risk is misleading guidance of your opinion.

Social network

The third tool is high involved with your social relationship. As I mentioned in my previous essay, I usually read the shared items in Xiaonei.com (Social network service).

This service is very powerful to get some interesting media. But it also has some problems, such as, there is not clear topic and the number of shared items is also random. Also, when my friends and I have different situation, such as I am studying in Sweden, they are still in China and already work in company. My shared items which I cared about may be boring for them, and vice versa.

These are my solution to deal with social media. Although, there are still some potential weak points, but generally, it’s very useful for refine the quality and access to more valuable information.

Traditional Media vs. Social Media

In traditional media, the amount of resources/information is usually much larger than social media (One to one comparison). But Internet improves the accessibility to media. Also according to the low cost and less limitation in social media, the total information amount is much larger than traditional media.

Considering media quality, traditional media usually has a good quality. They have mature business model to support hiring qualified media providers. And the employees have the professional responsibility to provide media production. The budget of making a program is much higher than social media or self media (bloggers). But in some other fields, social media has the significant advantages, for example, social media may more immediately to report some news, some people are better understanding the situation, the story may come from themselves and in some niche topics, bloggers may have better competence than traditional media company.

The way of communication is also different. Traditional media/Mass media usually push information to the audience. While in social media, audience become more positive to grab the media which they like.

To sum up, the quality of social media depends on the way of refine the huge scale of media resources. With the development of tools and internet services, people would have better opportunity to get the valuable information. But the essential quality of social media must be self-regulate, only social media providers take the responsibility to produce high quality information, social media would provide more value to the world.