How my career in media monitoring ruined social media for me

Social Media Networks

I used to have a weblog. Nah, I used to be on BBS’s. I remember my dad not understanding why I would keep a public diary. That’s what he thought of my blog. My point is, I’ve always liked to post and publish content. Long before I got into media monitoring and social media listening.

Social Media Polarization

There have been many studies on the polarization of social media users. These trends only exacerbated the information bubbles that have been forming. Whenever there is a cross-over, they are often the same repeated talking points.

This makes entering most conversations feel futile, but is amazing for topic clustering.

The Emergence of Bot Armies

Social media is a battle ground and bots are no longer a thing for spammers and scammers. They emphasize talking points. They amplify key messages. Bots help bury a subject, change the conversation, and control the narrative. The fact that we aren’t seeing a lot of literature on this doesn’t negate its existence.

It’s one of those, if you know you know.

The Culture of Mean

People are meaner online. Not having to face the person physically, with all the physical queues, makes it so much easier to be cruel to one another. This has always been the case, but with the continuing polarization, the culture of online cruelty is pervasive.

OK, so what’s all this about? I get on social media and follow a conversation. I am tempted to reply, but before I do I read the comments. There, my media monitoring trained eyes start looking for patterns. I create share of mentions pie charts in my mind. I just see people saying the same thing, over and over again. I don’t comment. There’s nothing for me to add.

I’ve noticed this happening more and more and I’m starting to think my professional life just ruined social media for me.