Facebook and Self Efficacy

This campaign cycle is going to get ugly.  There is just no getting around that.  Personal attacks are already being launched from Barack Obama to Mitt Romney and vice versa.  This is not atypical of campaigns nowadays.  In fact, most campaigns, from state races to national presidential elections, feature negative, personal attack ads.  The latest round of volleys in this campaign cycle has to do with the issues of politicizing the death of Osama bin Laden.  This is a very sensitive issue and has become an important issue in the campaign.

Romney, and others including former and current Navy SEALS, have called the president's recent campaign ad touting his decision making regarding the killing of bin Laden. The ad suggests that Mitt Romney may not have made the same decision.  Many have called this highly inappropriate because the real heroes are the SEALS that carried out the operation.  In the minds of many, the president's decision is not what is important in this case.  Nonetheless, the president decided to use the ad and now he must deal with the political consequences.

This topic is very interesting to look at because it is a fairly big deal in the current political world.  However, I have not seen this topic pop up on my Facebook news feed at all.  This is very interesting to me, seeing as this story is one that is all over the news sites.  This is a good example of the situational political knowledge that we've been discussing in class.  The argument is that Facebook doesn't necessarily make people more engaged in politics, but it may increase their situational political efficacy.  Thus, Facebook and social media can increase people's knowledge about certain issues, if they so desire to inform themselves.  It is interesting to me that some issues of political importance consume Facebook news feeds, while others are hardly ever mentioned.  This phenomenon is a little strange for me, but it goes along with the argument regarding situational political efficacy.

In the future, there is a chance that Facebook, and other forms of social media, could help people become more involved in politics in general. However, for now it seems as though Facebook is only as good as the people that use it.  What trends, what's followed, what's important seems to be at the discretion of the people.  Framing and agenda setting by the mainstream media can't be seen on Facebook and maybe that is a good thing.

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A Look Back at Osama

Today marked the one year anniversary of Osama Bin Laden's death. One year ago Sunday there were tweets on Twitter about the death of Osama Bin laden.  That was followed by the official announcement made by Obama to the nation. The following papers throughout the United States entailed pictures and comments basically tearing Osama a new one. If this wasn't bias without any people who actually met Osama bin Laden I don't know what is. I am not saying I agree with Osama Bin Laden at all, but  I wouldn't hesitate to believe that the papers elsewhere in the world were not so offensive. I obviously agree that everything that man planned and  took part in was immoral and that he deserved what was coming to him, but its amazing how there are people out there in the world that saw these papers and thought they were shameful to what he did for what they believed in. It is even funny that while I was writing this, the auto correct for spelling brought up Obama for Osama. He has been totally dis recognized to the point where the spelling corrections change his name to our President.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/01/osama-bin-laden-death-newspapers_n_1467524.html?ref=media

Never gunna give you up, never gunna let you down...

SO, Im never going to give up on the idea that Facebook/Twitter/Blogs and the rest of new media are changing the way we become informed. So I googled (in the news section of the search engine) the word Facebook.... What comes up is a plethora of news articles that expresses how Facebook is making a difference in communication. I chose the very first article, resulting from my search, to share with you.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/technology/facebook-urges-members-to-add-organ-donor-status.html

Facebook is now thinking of adding an organ donor status to its pages. Why is this important you may ask? Well, the point of this someone odd feature to to try and urge other people to become organ donors. Since there are 161 million users on Facebook, that is a possibility of 161 million people being exposed to the idea of being an organ donor. The most interesting thing about this is that the people involved, Johns Hopkins Doctors etc, are actually calling this the Facebook Plan. As if Facebook is being part of some sort of policy.
If we are starting to add information about being an organ donor, and theoretically find organ donors through this social networking site, what other things will we start to explore for SNS use? Social Networking sites are just evolving at a very fast rate. I look forward to seeing how these sites continue to change the way we communicate with one another.