But then I start to realize that maybe this isn't as one-sidedly good as I originally thought because many of these international and political (social, economic) news stories are actually quite controversial and complicated issues. Yes it's great to gain information, but being informed is not the same thing as understanding. And when I read news from a colleague about their home, I inherently begin to formulate opinions as if I was also from that foreign land. The news my classmates post, whether it is good or bad, optimistic or critical, encourages me to take sides on an issue (or at the very least to share a perspective) even though I don't have the same background or comprehension of the issue.
Perhaps an example would help. Yesterday I read a post from a Pakistani friend it was about how a girl in rural India was raped and her body was hung from a tree while the police did almost nothing to find and apprehend the attacker. It should come as no surprise that India has problems with sexual violence against women and girls, or that Indian politics and police can be pretty corrupt. These are well-known facts. But the ultimate, emotional appeal is simply: "India is bad." or more fantastically "India shelters corrupt police and rapists". A few days before I read this post, I saw another post, this time by an Indian friend, about how a girl in Pakistan was stoned to death by her own father and brothers in front of a state courthouse because the girl wanted to marry a man she loved, rather than the man she was arranged to marry. The final remarks in this article mention how perpetrators of honor killings usually receive a slap on the wrist, even for such violent acts. Again, an emotional undertone tells me "Pakistan is bad" or "Pakistanis would rather kill their own children than have them disobey orders".
Now I don't know very much about India or Pakistan, I have never been to either place, but I know they have a long rivalry that often resulted in violence, and the border territories are still tense. So it's not surprising that my two classmates would have lingering negative feelings about each other (despite the fact that they get in along well in our class). Both of these news stories of course show just a piece of the country as whole. The same thing happens when the world heard the news of the Newtown, CT school shooting and they begin to see Americans as a gun-crazy dystopian wrecking ball. The underlying message in all these is to spread information to bring out an emotional response, instead of actual understanding. And that's where I see the failure of individualized social media.
Perhaps I am actually just pointing out the obvious. Of course there are expressed biases on Facebook. Of course I am exposed to this same kind of subliminal messages all the time, and not just on social media. Of course I have to filter out the good information from the bad, assess it, and formulate my own opinion of it through a critical lens. We are taught to do that in school, since childhood. And I feel like I have been reasonably competent at it, but all of sudden this last 6 months I have been experiencing a new kind of exposure to it through Facebook and an international framework. Perhaps this struck a chord in me because all my previous experiences at filtering were aimed against mass media, The Man, or even someone or something my parents have taught me to be wary of. I didn't have to be so critical of my friends. My friends growing up were all excellent people, whom I could trust not to mistreat me (in real life and online). Now I have new "friends" on Facebook. They come from all over the world and I haven't adjusted to their new perspectives and intentions, whether they be obvious or far from it.
Unfortunately, the world is just too big and the amount of information is so great that I will probably never get a real understanding from the time I spend on Facebook. It's much too easy to gloss over it, that's all.
