The surge of easy-to-use photo, text, and video editing software and applications gives the phrase “out of context” more relevance and meaning to brands, especially public figures. How many times have we seen demeaning videos, photos, and quotes from celebrities and their primary defense is that the material released to the public was edited? Our initial reaction is to not believe them but we have to keep in mind that media editing is so easy to do already and we should probably give them the benefit of the doubt. When an editor or a producer lifts a sentence out of a paragraph that sentence takes on a completely new meaning because it no longer has the background or supporting statements.
Don’t let Social Media Dumb You Down
One of the pitfalls of social media and technology is complacency. The tool becomes so convenient that it suddenly uses us and not us using them. A lot of people take whatever is posted online as gospel truth, they judge without hesitation, but they never bother to dig deeper into the issue and get both sides of the story before tweeting or posting a comment on Facebook. While social media has tons of benefits like personal branding, marketing, and community building, it’s still dangerous because it can literally dumb person down by making them gullible, lazy, and idle.
Be smart, critical, and proactive. There has to be a conscious effort because if not technology will prevail and we’ll end up the slave and not the master.
I noticed even researchers have been less vigilant in the material they use. Professors at the UP Communication Research Department have been lamenting this for quite some time now.
I think this is true for whatever media we cull our information from – be it social media, the internet, TV, newspapers, radio, etc. It is always important to be critical. Remember the recent experience of the Phil. Star columnist herself – the great Carmen Pedrosa – succumbing to a satirical news of the alleged proven gullibility of Filipinos. She uses the fictitious findings of a fictitious Harvard study to drive down her low regard for Filipinos. But she ends up falling flat on her face – as she herself displays her own gullibility; not to mention her prejudices against Filipinos and her poor journalistic skills.
http://ph.news.yahoo.com/gullible-journalist-falls-satirical-blog-post-20110326-111204-685.html