*Depth of Field: Film Screening and Community Event at Community Hall, Kitsilano Neighbourhood House
March 21, 2024 from 5pm to 8pm
Through social media, ordinary people are interconnecting and working together to support, include, collaborate, and realize everyone’s full potential
as interactive “information gatherers and sharers”. The focus in this
worldwide activity seems to be on what is good, positive and
life-affirming and that is what is growing on the planet as a result.
Traditional media has always had a negative, authoritarian, violent,
life-destroying, sexualized focus and that is part of the reason people
are “turning away” from it.
The egoic arrogance of the left-brain logic of dominant traditional media asserts that there is an elite group who are the only ones capable of creating and distributing
the news stories that create our world. We have a long history of
people being censored for sharing their own perspective with others as
is illustrated in this article, “CCU prof reportedly fired for criticizing capitalism”.
As a contrast, social media participants do not even bother to acknowledge, cater to, or pay homage to the authoritative Daddy figures
who act as the judgmental gatekeepers of what is called “news” in the
traditional media of the old paradigm.
The gatekeepers are irrelevant as social media participants go about their own new world business of gathering and exchanging the information that they care
about, globally and collaboratively. Social media participants cover
stories from many different angles and perspectives. They are
reporting from the ground, acting as advocates and watch dogs over
human rights. They network and link together to create group consensus
and collaborative truth-saying which is different from the arbitrary,
one-dimensional, elitist “truth” of traditional media.
The 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics was described as an opportunity for social media to come to the forefront of our collective storytelling. In the
give-and-take of a collaborative social media setting, the video, "The Vancouver Olympics, Social Media & the Future of Citizen Jo...",
gives some of the history of social media and some of the experiences
social media users had during the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games.
Social media is not compromised by external authority figures, big money, advertising or employers dictating a particular moral stance or
perspective. I believe social media stories are more genuine because
they emerge from a person’s own inner authority, passion and ethical
core. This results in a more heartfelt story that is emotionally
connected yet still logical and professional. I believe information
vetted by social media is more valid, accurate, and democratic in
reflecting the authority of a multi-dimensional perspective. It affirms
life and allows everyone, who is involved, to express her/his full
potential capacity in the social media process of news creation.
This does not mean that false rumours do not travel through the social media world because they do as they do in traditional media. So it is still
important for the ordinary person to look with a critical eye at the
information streaming in to them from the world.
The poem, The Great Turning, by Christine Fry, talks about the urgent need for us as a society to turn toward each other and connect up as one collective of humanity:
“For hundreds of years we had turned away as life on earth grew more precarious
[and then]….on one of those days someone did turn
….As the people turned, they began to spin, reweaving the web of life”
Previous blogs on this topic: Dimensions
Social Media and "The Great Turning" to be continued....
This is Part VI of a nine-part series. To read more http://www.vancouverobserver.com/
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