For this week’s class we talked about the election and I presented my book Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America, by Jaime Settle. Also we viewed and discussed The Newsroom “Boston” episode, where they recreated the awful events about what happened on April 15th, 2013 and the following days that transpired in Boston Massachusetts.

For my presentation I read Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America, I thought it was very interesting and especially relevant to what is transpiring in our country right now. The book talks about how social media can create a divide between people and how many people are actually posting political content on these platforms. Jaime Settle explains how people that post this content would be people that are supporters of a certain view or those who want their ideas to be heard and they tend to be extreme to get more views and followers , but also to stir up the pot. There are also other people that are posting something and aren’t trying to be political, others can interpret and perceive those as political posts. I thought this was the most interesting part of the book because ever since I read it all the posts I see now I look at them and try to see why others may think it could be political content. Especially with the election at hand people are on edge and taking every post very serious and it is almost like the people commenting and taking it to be a political post are just trying to pick a fight it seems. She also says that how people are to exposed to social media and rely on it too much to get their news, not even caring what is real or fake. She also goes on to say that we should leave political reporting by trusted news organizations and other articles for political issues. I couldn’t agree more with Settle, after seeing something on social media people tend to blow up and they repost without researching it. This makes the news feed have a bunch of posts which can trick people into thinking it is real because so many people reposted it. I believe if people got their news from trusted sites, then there would be less hate and things would become more and more clearer for us to see real political issues. I would definitely recommend this book to gain insights on social media and how it can affect you and others, also it is very relevant because it covers the 2016 election so it can help us with this election as well.

The Newsroom “Boston” episode features the Boston Marathon and at the start we see the newsroom seeing the explosion at the Marathon. They are absolutely shaken about what just happened, but still they have to try to get the story together and is able to find out about two bombs and their detonations. They then send reporters into the field in Boston, while Will McAvoy reports the events that just took place and still trying to uncover and investigate the terrorist attack. After multiple days pass the ACN addresses the false accusations against two men, and one police officer at MIT had been killed in a shootout. After one of the two bombing suspects had been shot and killed. Then the city of Boston does nothing but search for the other suspect and the media is investigating any new leads regardless if the information is true or misleading. At the end of the episode they were able to find information that the second suspect was hiding in someone’s backyard.

News Article: It’s Hard to Escape Facebook’s Vortex of Polarization

This article explains Facebook’s ability to create filter bubbles and increase political polarization. I think this article pairs well with the book because of how Settle talks about these filter bubble social media uses.

https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-vortex-political-polarization/