How does social media engage communications?

Social media promotes communications and provides platforms for all kinds of communications to happen. As was mentioned in the Talk with Markiel Simpson, sensitive topics such as racism and rights of the minority or disadvantaged groups get to be brought up and discussed on social media platforms. Social media in this sense could be used to promote the debate and give voice to diverse opinions so that it is not only the “main stream” voices that we hear.

How does social media challenge communications?

Social media challenges communications by removing filters of certain voices. This is a double-edged sword because it helps people present their true self as we could see people’s personal posts of their thoughts and opinions and that we get to engage in the conversations with them directly. However, the challenge lies in that the lack of filter could cause problems and sometimes even conflicts among different groups of people which does not help with the communications and problem-solving. A good example of such conflict was also brought up in the conversation with Simpson in the case of Donald Trump.

Is it inclusive?

Social media can be inclusive as it has the feature of potentially involving everyone who has access to the internet. Within certain restrictions and limits, people get to express their thoughts and make their voice heard. However, certain voices could still overpowers other voices sometimes which challenges the inclusiveness of the social media just as the traditional media does. People’s preferences could also be detected by optimized search engine that would tend to send the users what they like and want to hear rather than being inclusive. The optimized search engine could also be a challenge for social media to be inclusive and diverse on the users level.

Does your PLN amplify the views of others?

My PLN tries to be more inclusive and amplifies the views of others by including more opinions from various groups of people. Using different resources and reaching out to people in different fields with various backgrounds are some of the ways I would keep doing to make my PLN more diverse and amplify views of others rather than being centered to my voice or opinions.

How to better use social media to build PLN – Influencers & Commentators

From the previous readings, we could say that PLN now is basically built on social media and it uses social media to enrich its contents. Using social media to build PLN would require the users to understand how the features of social media would benefit the communications as well as how it could challenge communications in the first place. One should first have a general idea on what kind of PLN he/she would like to have, as well as what kind of digital identity one wants to be perceived as. Then use the social media accounts as their personal pages to influence people while reaching out to people of their interests, or people with expertise and engage with them in their posts on social media.

Be active, participative, and have an opinion on things when keeping an open mindset by respecting different opinions of others could be a good way to use social media to build PLN.