Social Media: Making Information Interesting

How do I know what I know? What is one new thing I learned today? If you read my first post, you know that my favorite things to learn from social media involve food and/or wallpaper removal tutorials.  But I don't think those are the types of things that Dr. Z is looking for.  So, in an effort to appear more intellectual than I actually am, I took to my Facebook and Twitter pages to see what was popular in the news.  After surfing through many videos of the Ice Bucket Challenge and Cute Kittens Doing Cute Stuff, I settled on  Does Organic Make Food Better For You? from FoodTank, a food think tank. Usually the term think tank is a red flag. To me, it's like people who say they tip well and then leave their restaurant server 5%.  But the for the purpose of this blog, I thought the article would be a good exercise in mindful social media consumerism (did I just make up a new buzz phrase?).

Not surprisingly, FoodTank, whose mission is focused on building a global community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters, declared organic foods as better for you than non-organic versions.  How do I know this is true?  Well, if the article was just commentary from FoodTank I wouldn't believe it, based on that information alone.  While I support organic foods, slow foods, local foods, sustainable foods (I really love food) it's pretty obvious that this website is interest-based journalism at it's finest (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2011).  But just because I approve of their agenda doesn't mean I won't question the validity of the report, even though studies show that people give more street cred to content that they approve of (Kaye & Johnson, 2011).  No, the reason I believe this article's information is accurate and credible stems from the fact that the authors cited a peer reviewed paper from the British Journal of Nutrition. "A new study by Newcastle University on organic versus conventional crops confirms that organic farming methods do have a positive impact on health. Results found substantially higher levels of antioxidants and lower levels of pesticides in organic crops versus conventional crops."  That source gave the content the credibility I was looking for (Nierenberg & Reed, 2014). 

Social media sites like Facebook are a good jumping off point for finding information. While they may not tell you the whole story or present all the facts at once, their content can offer up the most pertinent information and a path for finding out more about a topic.  And let's be honest- often times information posted through social media sites is just more interesting and entertaining than the original source.  Case in point - I don't follow the British Journal of Nutrition (Fun Fact: They don't even have a Facebook page- I checked) so I probably wouldn't have stumbled upon this study were it not for my fellow Facebook foodies reposting the article from FoodTank.

Social Media takes important information and transposes into interesting, bite sized chunks for the average consumer. You don't have to be in grad school to understand the information presented. Though it certainly doesn't hurt.

Work Cited

Kova   Kaye, B.,  & Johnson,T. (2011) Hot Diggity Blog: A cluster analysis examing motivations and other factors for why people judge different types of blogs as credible. Mass Communication and Society. P. 236-263.   

             

           Kovach, B., & Rosenstiel, T. (2011). Blur: How to know what's true in the age of information overload . New York: Bloomsbury.    

          Nierenberg, D., & Reed, M. (2014, September 9). Does Organic Make Food Better? Retrieved from www.FoodTank.com: http://foodtank.com/news/2014/09/organic-produce-higher-in-nutritional-content-than-conventional-produce