initial proposal

In our social media and justice class we discussed a lot about the digital divide, and how we as students use it. The average teen today is a wizard in the social media department. But are we using it for the best purpose?
Yes social networking sites are fun but how can we make them better? Is it possible to make Facebook or twitter better for our society yet still make it fun? This is going to be my topic for our social media project. I love social media, if it wasn’t for social websites we wouldn’t be as united a world as we are today. But this is a double edged sword. As one part of society grows and connects with Facebook other parts of our society are moving farther apart because they do not have this technology. This isn’t justice. If everyone in the world had the resources many upper middle class Americans had, we could get a lot of stuff done faster. Twitter is now faster than most websites and news reports around the world. When sports teams win championships people hear it from twitter first, when minors are rescued, twitter has it; even when public enemy number one has been terminated, people heard it from twitter.
My question is; how can we utilize this power of social media and our connections all the way across the world? Would we have been able to help Katrina victims faster? Could we have warned more people in Haiti? The possibilities are endless. Like in Paul Grabowicz article about digital journalism. In this article he talks about broadening the social media and nit limiting it. Many people are afraid that with the internet containing so much information, many kids are just Googling it and they are done, making parents afraid that the love for long literature is fading away. But Paul talks about using this to an author’s advantage to grab interest in the reader and increase the interest in storytelling.
What other frontiers can be explored? A hindering factor is a person’s internet literacy. Like a person who doesn’t quite know how to use Facebook, therefore lacking in knowledge to utilize the site better; if a person doesn’t have a higher internet literacy they could face troubles that cannot really be taught. Since the web and social media sites are so busy a newcomer may take longer time adjusting to the site and hence losing interest. This is a serious problem for sites like Twitter; people become bored and lose interest over time causing a decrease in applicants. Also many cultures and societies don’t have the technology to gain in their technology literacy hindering them from people who have the resources.
It is a constant cycle that we face and instead of just saying lose the sites like Facebook, twitter or form spring, lets enhance them make them better for those who use it and for those people who don’t.




Grabowicz, Paul. "Multimedia Storytelling | The Transition to Digital Journalism." Knight Digital Media Center. Berkley Graduate School of Journalism, 6 Sept. 2011. Web. 30 Sept. 2011. .