Social Media and Truth

The truth is a tricky thing in social media.  We would assume that the truth is simply that, the truth, but with millions of opinions and thousands of (so-called) experts the truth can be interpreted and many ways.  My assignment to learn something new using social media was a success and failure.  I found out about a lot of new things going on with my friends on Facebook; a friend from high school just got married, my cousins baby is due in September and she's having a boy.  I went to Twitter to see if there was something to learn there and most post were about attending the BET awards.  Checked out LinkedIn and read a couple of 2014 trends in social media which all seem true because of what I see when I check out different sites.  I didn't research further because I believe socialmediaexaminer.com to be a reliable site and all of the examples in the article can be found on popular websites.

I don't go to social media sites to research information or find out information that would be important to anyone other then me.  I go to my Facebook account to see what my friends are doing, Twitter to see what celebrities are doing and LinkedIn to see what people in my field are talking about.  None of that, to me, is intentionally searching for news updates and solid truths; but, there are times when social media does provide that for me.  There are always celebrity RIP post, which aren't always reliable, but social media may be the first time you hear about someone's passing.  I said that learning something new through social media was a success, in that I found out a lot of new information; but it was also a failure because I didn't find out anything I can concretely say was the truth through statistics and chronicled research.  I cannot say that social media is a good resource to use when looking for credible information but it's probable that you will find out things first through social media and then it is up to you to confirm that the information is correct.