In case anyone has been living under a rock for the duration of this class, I LOVE social media; however, I do not think it is flawless, or the end all be all for everything, and I think there is really something to be said about the value and richness of face-to-face communication. I think this was expressed in the article arguing that the revolution would not be tweeted.
Some people might find this surprising, but I was actually excited to take the side that the revolution would not be tweeted for the debate. At first I was a little apprehensive, if we're being honest. I'm good at playing devil's advocate but I know that the reasons why it would be tweeted would have their strengths as well. But I truly believe that social media should be used as a supplementary measure to person-to-person communication when you're trying to make a big change. One of the reasons why, which I didn't think of until after, is that anyone who spends a lot of time with social media is familiar with the idea that "trending topics" on twitter are called "trends" for a reason. They're not meant to stick around forever, and will be forgotten and changed before you can say "hashtag." This can discredit trending topics to a degree. This is because they allow people to "support" a cause without actually supporting the cause or putting in any effort whatsoever. They don't even have to know much, if anything, about it, so even spreading an idea can be challenging, unless it's a hot enough topic to get people to look it up on the internet or the news.
Although I am a huge proponent of Twitter, Facebook, and so forth, I fear the day when it replaces face-to-face communication. There is a certain element of seeing someone's body language and emotions that you couldn't express even if you were given 1400 characters instead of 140.
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