Lots of dogs that bite men in social media

Even some young people are sceptical to social media like Facebook and Twitter. “Whats the point in reading that some one you know is going to the bathroom” one teenager sneered the other day.

And yes. Much that is written on Facebook or Twitter is really silly, stupid or simply uninteresting. But still, if you add all these unimportant reports togheter, it may just be that it reflects the world better than any other media. It’s just like our everyday lives. Mostly they are undramatic or even dull. We are not used to having media report about “ordinary peoples” eveyday lives. We are used to media reporting about sensations, scandals or important events in society or politics.


Students of journalism all over the world learn a defintion of news that says that “If a dog bites a man it’s not news. If a man bites a dog, that’s news”. The reason is of course that dogs biting men are fairly commonplace whereas it seldom happens that men bite dogs.

I think there is a point in arguing that if you put all these reports of everyday life toghether social media can provide you with a much better picture of the state of many matters than tradional mass media can.This would be the case even more in countries with no free press.

And this is also the only area where I can see that Twitter has an advantave over Facebook.

On Facebook you can only follow your friends status updates. On Twitter you can search any topic and se what has been twittered about it. You can also follow backchannels that concern the topics you’re interested in and get a good idea of what people are doing or thinking in a specific area. At least what the twittering part of the world thinks or does.

This is what a wordle of this blogpost looks like:

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