Expert Group: new media/politics and social media book review

           The New Media and Politics group their book panel as well as the Social Media group. The first group focused their discussion on the evolution of tools that made communication easier along the years. The Social Media group focused on individuality and collaboration. 

The book Smart Swarm that Social Media presented is about making decisions by observing what’s surrounding us. A smart swarm, as the writer defines it: “is a group of individuals who respond to one another and to their environment in ways that give them the power, as a group, to cope with uncertainty, complexity, and change.” One of the definitions I came up for Social Media is very related to the definition that Miller gives for Smart Warms. Social media is a technology that allows sharing and giving information and ideas in order for other people to use it. This network is bringing everything together, and although it is more an entertainment factor that problem solving, in most of the cases, it has more in common with this book than it appears. Personally I was very impressed by this book and the ideas the author expresses in it. We will find challenges and difficulties everyday in our lives, some of them are easy to solve, and maybe we solve them unconsciously, but other are more complicated so we, as Miller says, “need to be prepared.” He shares that the best way to do this is to turn to the experts, and those are the ones “in the grass, in the air, in the lakes, and in the woods.” The book is divided in five chapter, each one talking about a certain animal, that can teach valuable life lessons about how to fix problems. The animals he writes about are Ants, Honeybees, Termites, Birds of a feather and Locusts.

          As this was my group, I took some conclusions about the topic: Social media has increased social interaction and collaboration because communication is much easier. There are various purposes for social media and it all depends on the user. Social media can be about connecting people, but starts with the individual, that further decided to connect or not with other people.

          Social Media has changed our lives immensely and it has become part of our culture. It has the purpose of connecting people, but as everything, it might have some negative effects, as well as positives. Addictions to Facebook, apposed to online commercials for companies. Digital isolation, opposed to social appeals on social media platforms. It comes to us the obligation to control the negative/positive effects and to judge it as individuals.