How do notable individuals use social media?
I think the word notable could be interpreted into many aspects. It could be academics who do great jobs in their own field, people who are celebrities, or people who become famous by promoting certain aspects of themselves on the social media.
For those who are famous for their work or research, they generally use social media for communication, getting up-to-date news and messages, reaching out to people who they may cooperate with or maybe promote for certain ideas.
As for celebrities, I think many of them would use social media the way we use social media, except that they would get a lot more attention from the public. They could also use social media to spread their ideas, advocations or present parts of their lives like the rest of us.
People who become famous because of the social media are most likely to spend a lot of time and effort using and working the social media. They most likely have special skills or knowledge to make themselves heard or exposed to the public by using topics or actions that catch the public’s interests. Then a lot of them would use this attention and make money out of it. Some would also spread their ideas, state their opinions on controversial topics or promote and advocate for certain values.
What are the benefits of being in the public eye and having a PLN?
One of the most obvious benefits is that it brings a lot of attention which comes with possibilities for useful communications or collaborations. Being in the public eye gives one more likelihood to get more useful resources and connections that would benefit one’s PLN.
It would also mean that one’s values or opinions would be more likely to get exposed and be viewed by the public.
Building a community with online tools provided by the employer can be limiting; what are the perceived restrictions and benefits?
The restrictions are that the community could lack diversity. An online community that the employer provided is very likely to have heavy influence on the ideology, values and aspects of the employer. Their views could be magnified, leaving little space for other opinions to be viewed and valued. Employers could also potentially use this community to promote for certain ideas which may further decrease the diversity of the community’s opinions and it is dangerous for a community to be competitive with unified opinions.
The benefits are that the community could be more focused on tasks when at work with could improve the efficiency. It could also make communication and information sharing easy because there is little interruption from the switch of tools or platforms at work.
Delivering information in a connected society requires verifiable resources; how to build a PLN to rely on?
Building a PLN to reply on with verifiable resources would require the owner of the PLN to be truthful and authentic in the first place. Honesty and sometimes selflessness can be important factors to building a PLN with verifiable resources. The owner would also be good at identifying and judging resources on their sources, quality and other features and it would both require the owner’s intelligence and experience. An authentic and truthful atmosphere for researches or studies to be conducted in is also important in this process.
How do those, who are veteran storytellers, minimize the risk of sharing misinformation?
Minimizing the risk of sharing misinformation has a lot to do with building a truthful and authentic PLN because on the one hand, the readers of stories would need better judgements on the truthfulness of the stories told and then decide whether to trust the news or stories. On the other hand, the storytellers would also need to be honesty and understand the consequences of misinformation. From the storytellers part, there is an ethical issue to discuss and sometimes they need to choose between being truthful and having hit news. They would also need to be trained to be good at doing researches on the stories to be told, as well as conducting critical thinking on the storylines to minimize the risk of missing key points, or interpreting the story in the wrong way.
Thank you for sharing. Your article illustrates how celebrities use social media and the positive impact it has, and I think so in the same way. But if it were me, I would also express the negative effects of social media use by celebrities to make my article more comprehensive. Make people aware that celebrities don’t bring only benefits to social media, but also occasionally generate negative reactions among the public.