Double-edged sword

Social Media has changed our society and culture as it allows instant communication. That can lead to both negative and positive results. Basically it enables all organizations, companies and brands to communicate with its targeted audiences and customers faster, easily and effectively. Social media dramatically extend the playing ground for sports brands and organizations. Companies and individuals have the ability to contact users in a much wider global spectrum and leverage their commercial activity and goals by reasonable means. But it works the other way as well while Social media gives the mass market and audiences the ability to fire up their own opinions and thoughts by easily generating e-content that will last forever and be accessible to all.

As the news about the Penn State scandal spread all over the social media sites virally, many important facts were left out. This omission of detail on sources like Twitter which limit “tweets” to 140 characters caused many to be unaware of the whole story. One such fan was Ashton Kutcher who tweeted, “How do you fire Joe Pa?” But once brought up on the situation as to why the coach was being let go, Ashton quickly deleted that tweet and instead tweeted: “As of immediately I will stop tweeting until I find a wat to properly manage this feed. I feel awful about this error. Won’t happen again”. For someone who has over 8 million followers and a reputation to uphold, this blunder was titanic.

I agree with the words wrote by Michael Foley (tech.pnosker.com) about the social media role when Joe Paterano was fired from Penn State: “ But this case of overreacting on social media, without knowing all the facts, is not unique to this event. Social Media has changed our society and culture as it allows for instant communication. But this instantaneous medium is a double-edged sword. While allowing us to share ideas in real-time and around the globe, it also prompts instant reactions which are not constructive to the conversation. No longer do we take the time to think on an issue and do a little bit of research to figure out the context and all the facts surrounding it. Instead, when we see something that we disagree with on the surface, we respond immediately and sometimes forcefully; then move on to the next, never having taken the time to study the issue. This makes us look foolish and ignorant and contributes nothing productive to the conversation.”

Almog