Don't settle for face value and stop relying on social media for your news

When the president of the U.S. uses Twitter to get his message out, it’s safe to say that Twitter has become part of mainstream media consumption. With 140 characters or less, there’s a lot of room for misinterpretation or misrepresentation of the facts.

Media outlets use Twitter to report breaking news. But it’s important to read beyond that and dive deeper to be an educated media consumer. In the race to be the first one to uncover the latest scoop, nuance can be lost. There may be more opportunities to lie because social media lacks the editing or accountability that there is in traditional media.

Facebook’s algorithm makes it possible to only see the news you want to see. Compare this to the 5 p.m. news, which has a little bit of everything. Depending on which Facebook pages you follow, you may only see cute animal videos as opposed to the real problems of the world. Getting news from Twitter or Facebook means that you’re only getting the news that you would be interested in. But by venturing outside of your bubble, you might be able educate yourself on an issue of which you were unaware.

President Donald Trump’s tweets are becoming headlines on their own — which is watering down the news cycle with whatever he wants us to talk about. Instead, the rest of the media should be more like Rachel Maddow, who has stopped covering Trump’s tweets. His Twitter is so filled with lies that the information can no longer be considered reliable. It’s better to focus on the impact of what he’s saying. For instance, with just a couple of tweets he baselessly accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping him. Now that he’s president, Trump’s tweets have the power to cause a diplomatic nightmare — including when he tweeted that Germany owed the U.S. money for NATO, according to Politico. The tweets are no more than a distraction from real problems that we face.

Twitter doesn’t leave a lot of room to explain yourself. Just skimming the headlines of the Alligator might lead you to believe that the UF community has reached a consensus on just forgiving Smith Meyers and moving on. But if you paid more attention to what was going on around you, you would know that’s not the case. Those who didn’t actually read the columns and letters or look into who wrote them might think that this is an outpouring of support from UF as a whole, but upon closer examination it’s clear that “the System” decided to flood in letters of support to the Alligator.

Social media allows the news to become sensationalized, which can ultimately perpetuate harm. It’s like saying vaccines cause autism — which is technically based on a scientific study. If someone took it at face value, they might decide not to vaccinate their kids. Further research would show that the study had been discredited and that not vaccinating is actually quite dangerous — but it’s hard to capture all the nuances of this in a tweet.

Don’t settle for what’s presented to you on social media. In the age of alternative facts and fake news, it’s even more important to delve into the issues instead of taking what you see at face value.

Nicole Dan is a UF political science and journalism junior. Her column appears on Mondays.