The Pew Research article concerning the role(s) of Twitter and Facebook play in their users' awareness of news didn't surprise me, although the onslaught of numbers certainly gave me pause. To better understand those numbers (no malice to Pew Research - that's what they do), I actually followed another link that put the findings into a more digestible format for me:
In this article, the Pew Research group drew 8 important conclusions about the role of Twitter and Facebook in news distribution. Point #7 had the statistic that most piqued my interest: "Facebook news consumers are more likely to be female than news consumers on YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn."
A Huffington Post article explains this best: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/09/women-facebook-twitter-pinterest_n_1655164.html Of course the number of Facebook news users is going to be predominately female; Facebook users in general are predominantly female. (Incidentally, the number of Facebook employees is predominantly male: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/26/facebook-gender-diversity_n_5532868.html).
I think that this important bit of information should have been part of the framing of the Pew Research study. I didn't see any reference to the majority gender of Facebook (or Twitter) users in the study, making the data less relevant to me. Maybe they should have included Reddit - with it's predominately male user base - in the study.
Another demographic I'd be interested in seeing is how senior citizens use social media. I'm a big infographic fan:
In the breakdown for how seniors use social media, it doesn't mention news at all. How does this impact the study? Are only users <50 using social media for news?
I fall into the Twitter bucket for exposure to news. I do not; however, use Twitter as my sole source for information, rather more like a movie trailer. An article I stumbled upon during this week's research called this sort of teaser a "pathway to news." My personal procedure is to check Twitter at irregular intervals throughout the day, and when I see a reference to a news story that interests me, I go to a noteworthy news site and/or their corresponding app to get more information. Then I feel as though I've done my due diligence in both assuring the veracity of the news and minimizing the amount of sensationalism that I engage in.
The article titled, "Facebook use polarizing? Site begs to differ" made me want to dust off my FB profile page. I haven't been on Facebook in months. It depresses me. Every single one of my 600 "friends" has either dramatically more exciting or more depressing lives than I do. 20 minutes on Facebook results in a thorough scrub of my mundane existence. Prior to reading this article, I used FB, solely as a way to keep in touch with my parents. I honestly thought it was for the baby boomer generation to keep up with their children and grandchildren. Oddly, last week, as I was hosting an event at work, I noticed the UT Dallas student next to me checking Facebook at least as many times as I checked Twitter during the admittedly boring presentation. That, along with the Pew Research data, turned my senior citizen theory on its ear.
As a mother of three, I've been (somewhat) guilty of protecting people's feelings. But unlike many moms, I was in the Navy for 13 years, and my opinion during that tenure rarely mattered. "The U.S. Navy is NOT a democracy," I was repeatedly told. The combination of maternal instinct and military service has made me a little more pragmatic. It's not reasonable to expect everyone's opinion to be counted. Why SHOULD I carefully tread around the opinon of someone who isn't qualified? I likewise wouldn't expect my untrained opinion to matter in a discussion in an area I know little about - the books of the Bible, for example. I think that opinions should be weighted by authority and experience rather than people's feelings. That isn't to say that I don't believe in carefully couching the rejection statement or in the benefits of collaborative think sessions. I just believe that participants should be self-actualized enough to realize know how relevant their voice is in a given group, and not be offended when they don't win the argument or find a compromise that takes their thoughts into consideration.
Incidentally, I'm also not a fan of trophies for every team that participated in the pee wee football league. You don't get an award for showing up at work as an adult. You get awards for outstanding performance.
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