Social Networks a Way of Communication or a Way of
Exposing your Negative Opinions?
Society today is greatly influenced by the
media and its surrounding elements. I for one believe that the media today does
have a strong impact on our lives; let’s take social networks for example, they
are a great way of communication and sharing ideas, many people take advantage
of this in a way to connect with others. People use social networks in this way
most of the time, again, most of the time; often times there other people who
are a bit careless and ignorant about the things they post/tweet on either
Facebook or Twitter as if no one will see. Often times these careless posts are
done by celebrities and political figures all of whom have a high social status
and sometimes even the average teenager looking attention. Anyways, it’s a bit
pathetic especially when you are a person of high social status, in which you
have many followers and viewers of whom you influence greatly. This can often
hurt your image and make society think differently of you because you are
indeed, in society’s eyes, an important person who does have a great influence
and opinion on different subjects. A prime example of what I’m talking about has
occurred recently in French news.
A few months after France’s recent
elections for their current president, President Francois Hollande, there were
some interesting tweets on Twitter made famous by France’s first lady, the wife
of Hollande, Valerie Trierweiler. Her tweets were mainly pinpointed towards
Hollande’s ex-wife, it was here that Trierweiler was downplaying and insulting
the president’s former wife. I believe this was quite careless of her because
obviously many people would have seen this post because being of such high
social status in the French society she has many followers and what she
believes in and what her opinions are indeed effect the French society. In
addition, right after these tweets were among the internet for everyone to see,
France’s first lady soon found herself as one of the least popular figures in
France, all because of one simple tweet that didn’t even need to be posted,
this indeed is a fact on how careless she was by posting her tweet. I feel that
social networks do change our behaviors because from what we see on social
networks whether something was posted or tweeted can definitely change our
opinion and influence towards someone based on their opinion toward a subject
or social status.
Later on France’s first lady did come to
realize that her actions were indeed “clumsy” and that it was a mistake that
she “regerts”. She went on by saying: “I had not yet realized that I was no longer a
simple citizen. It won't happen again”. Again this brings up the point of how
someone’s social status can have a great effect on their influence and
popularity in the media. Obviously moving from a simple citizen to France’s
first lady is a huge increase to your social status.
Eventually this whole situation came to
the point of affecting the image of President Hollande. People in France’s
society began to realize that the president’s own wife was indeed a bit stuck
up and crazy, eventually this came to the conclusion in which France began to
question Hollande’s presidency because his own wife is making him look bad.
Even though France’s first lady is a woman
of high social status a group of people can be just as powerful sometimes even
more when it comes to posting things on social networks. When I use Facebook or
Twitter, on average I often see a lot of fads being passed around and used.
These fads can be noted by a picture being posted and shared by many people for
others to see or even words and phrases that people continuously end their most
recent status update with. These fads are as similar to people hoping on the
bandwagon; once someone starts it others follow and so on. I often ignore these
because to me they are a bit dull but these fads are huge on Facebook and
Twitter and you can see them daily. Recently France has again been affected by
the usage of social networks, this time with a certain fad, a phrase in this
case, that has been going around Twitter. The phrase being overused by many was
“#unbonjuif (#agoodjew)”; it was very popular at the time and it was
accompanied by a few offensive comments each time it was posted. Eventually the
Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF) had taken this in a very bad manner
and took legal action on the situation with Twitter. In the end the UEJF had
won against Twitter and had gotten them to remove all comments containing the
offensive phrase from the Twitter severs in France. In my opinion it’s a bit
sad to see something so anti-Semitic. Moreover, it’s very disturbing to see a
social network, a tool for communication and joy, being used in such a harsh
way. This definitely has a negative impact on the Jewish community, but it was
very pleasing to see that they had won their case to get these anti-Semitic
posts off Twitter. As you can see the use of this fad had changed the behavior
of some of the French community in which most of the community had jumped on
the band wagon. On the other hand the Jewish community of France had retaliated
on the matter, thus again showing how the media impacts are lives.
It’s crazy how such small and simple posts
or tweets on any social network can become the topic of a huge issue. Again I
find that often times social networks make us careless because we don’t think
about what we are sharing on the internet for everyone to see; we don’t ask
ourselves if “this really is the right thing to do” or “do I really need to
post that”, and the list of questions goes on and on. You can see how the start
of one simple joke led to a fad in which everyone was commenting on and not
caring for one second if what they were posting had any effect on the Jewish
community of France. In addition, we can also see how the carelessness of a
person of high social status indeed affected their image amongst their own
nation. I guess that social networks give us the opportunity to speak out more
and give off a strong opinion that a large quantity of people can see, it could
be a possible way of being noticed but they way I see it, is that it’s only a
way to attract negative attention toward yourself, although it is possible that
positive attention can be gained by this depending on what you’re talking about
and who you are.
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