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UPDATE: In wonderful social media news, I’ve been nominated for the Women’s Media Center’s Social Media Award…
Cast your vote today for one of nineteen incredible bloggers, social media gurus, activists, and new media makers for gender justice! Public voting for the award opened this morning and will continue until October 29. The winner will be honored at the Women’s Media Awards on November 13 in New York City.
I read this piece and was fascinated by the apparent agita out there over what people see/respond to on social media when it comes to discussing politics. (CNN):
Nearly one-fifth of people admit to blocking, unfriending or hiding someone on social media over political postings, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. The biggest gripes: The offending person posted too often about politics, disagreed with others’ updates, or bothered mutual friends with partisan political postings.
“In the real world, we navigate these issues all the time. We know not to bring up politics around certain friends or family members. We try to avoid people who are constantly looking for an argument or trying to sell us on their pet ideas,” said Aaron Smith, a Pew research associate.
As a political blogger, if you friend or follow me, surely you know I’m going to post political news articles and link to content I find interesting (and not always items I agree with). I’m a prolific social media maven — I post with more regularity on Twitter and Facebook than on this blog — so I assume those who are friends with me or follow me on Twitter are there because they want to know what I think. I have plenty of people out there who don’t agree who read and comment politely, if vigorously, but it sounds like there’s a level of rudeness and lack of any kind of etiquette out there that is generating a lot of de-friending and blocking.
It’s the hateful tone of the political conversation that is particularly disturbing to Luis Stevens, who has temporarily muted the Twitter voices of roughly 150 people and blocked more than 400 others until after the November 6 election.
More than one person has threatened to show up on Stevens’ doorstep after he disagreed with them on Twitter. A few more have called him names. And at least one stepped across a political “red line,” endorsing a pundit that Stevens finds offensive.
W.T.F? It sounds like a lot of people act as if they are victims of seeing political posts on their feeds as if they have no control over it. It also seems as though most of the agita comes from people users know in the real world getting riled up over the offline friend’s political posts. My guess is that apolitical FB friends probably tire of it and find out more than they want to know about the politics of that family member or friend, particularly in an election cycle as polarizing as this one is.
Note to the folks overwhelmed by the political chatter from online friends – if you don’t care to see the content (or the discussion) for some reason, simply “Hide a Friend’s Posts From Your News Feed.” It’s that simple.
Unlike Luis Stevens above, I can count on two hands the total number of FB friends and Twitter users I’ve blocked over the years and it was less due to any political disagreement than incessant, bordering-on-insane personal attacks. I certainly don’t have to subject myself to that on my own Wall or Twitter feed. But it is indicative that the people who do engage me on social media tend to be civil and less thin-skinned about discussing politics. However, I also notice that most of the people who comment are not close family or friends I know offline. My personal and political worlds co-mingle on social media accounts, so I guess it’s kind of odd that there’s nearly zero friction on that front.
13 Comments
Congrats!
I friended you on Facebook not because of your political opinions but because of your snappy fashion sense, but you hardly ever post photos of your ‘going-out’ gear anymore. What’s up with that, girlfriend?
And: Congrats x2
congratulations– checked out the site– impressive competition
i sent a friend request and it’s still pending– sniff
Vote here for Pam.
You got my vote. Add me to those congratulating you on this honor and the distinguished company you are keeping there.
Congrats and I agree with your article. How can we get anywhere if people don’t debate. Of course, I’m not referring to the Presidential debates where the topics have been extraordinarily limited. I’d like to see debates on a few other issues that somehow were overlooked including the Arab spring, Occupy Wall Street, wealth, wage, race, LGBT and gender inequality, bank bailouts, poverty, education, health care quality, the public health care option, the trade deficit, currency and interest rate manipulation, labor unions, immigration, governance, civil rights including privacy, 4th and 1st amendment issues, Wikileaks, retaliation against government whistleblowers, killing of innocents in Afghanistan, extra-judicial killings by the President, CIA prisons, the Palestinian State, corruption, massive tax evasion through off shore accounts, Citizen’s United, the increasing use of manipulative technologies in politics, journalistic and news bias especially as it relates to advertising revenues and news entertainment, organized crime, drug abuse and marijuana legalization, cultural decline, the two party system shutting out other parties from the political process, climate change, pollution, lack of government and corporate accountability, racism, violence, poverty, constitutional violations relating to protecting the public (e.g., selling of addictive and poisonousness products such as tobacco), U.S continued conspiring with dictators, civilian causalities in our wars, and the medical error epidemic that kills as many as 400,000 per year in the U.S. and many more worldwide. Nor where there any questions about the obvious connections between the candidates views and their corporate donors. Did I miss anything?
Facebook friends you no longer see in your day-to-day who continually post offensive crap, unfriend ‘em in a minute! It’s not as if anything you post will ever change their minds let alone help them find enlightenment and if you still care about the person it’s much more likely you can redo the friendship at some later date then if you’ve spent time in pointless arguments. There is no such thing as us all believing the “same facts”, some people believe Rush & Hannity, other people pay attention. Or on the other hand, what’s so important about a ‘friend’ who listens to Rush?
I know a forty-one year-old Democrat who recently unfriended someone he has known since kindergarten who grew up to be a Scalia Republican over too many political arguments on Facebook. So, the cop continued the battle via the Facebook pages of other kindergarten classmates.
They probably got along better in kindergarten.
Discussions of politics and religion used to be forbidden in polite society.
One problem with abiding by that today is that everything seems to be both political and religious, from science class to disease control to being in love.
And those who keep up with current events tend also to be those who are most vehement about politics, if not also about religion.
Is it just me or has facebook posting just gone down during the election season? I wonder if people in general have politics and religion on their minds and so “self censor” by not posting anything at all. I know I’ve hesitated at times from posting a link to something I feared would offend or alienate friends who differ from my political views.
I have no qualms about blocking rightwads who post hateful and bigoted trash. I have over 600 FB friends so I consider it to be culling out the weak ones (my one concession to conservative ideology).
Ha! Well, I haven’t been feeling that well for quite a few months so the fashion show was on hold. Hopefully after the next epidural steroid injection I’ll have enough relief to start vogue-ing again!
You’re not alone — I’m near my friend limit so only people I know offline are getting responded to. Sorry! I wish FB would allow a way to tell all those pending friends to subscribe to my feed.