Facebook creates a false outlook on drinking norms through overly exposing images of alcohol

Source: www.tariqwest.com

With the massive use of social media and networking sites continuing to grow, high school and college students are progressively exposed to more images and videos of friends binge drinking every day of the week. With the overly exposed images of alcohol on Facebook, it receives positive reactions from Facebook friends, creates an alcohol online social identity, and gives Facebook users a false outlook on the drinking norm, influencing students to engage in binge drinking. 

Angela Fournier and Steven Clarke conducted a study examining the amount of alcohol-related content posted by college students and the relationship between drinking behavior and perceived drinking norms. It was shown that 76.5% of participants Facebook profiles had alcohol-related contents and there was a relationship between Facebook alcohol content and reported alcohol use, as well as reported alcohol use and perceived alcohol use of Facebook friends. 

Facebook contributes to college student's perceived drinking norms.

Data from: www.cyberpsychology.edu

The study found that student participants who did not drink, had an average percent of 0.89% alcohol-related content shown on their Facebook, compared to students who did drink and had 1-2 drinks per sitting showed an average 7.53% of alcohol-related content on their Facebook, while students who had 3-4 drinks per sitting a 4.44% average and students who drank 5 or more drinks per sitting 6.14%. This data illustrates the relationship between the average amount of alcohol-related content on ones Facebook feed and the number of drinks per sitting that one who is viewing the content on their Facebook will drink. A conclusion can be made that as one views more alcohol-related content on their Facebook, they will be more influenced to consume alcohol and so will the number of alcohol consumed during a sitting. 

Facebook creates an alcohol online social identity.   

The new norm of documenting every attended event on Facebook, with various online alcohol posts, creates an alcohol online social identity. Ridout and colleagues found that young people portraying themselves as a drinker is a socially desirable identity in social network sites (SNS), creating an online culture that normalizing binge drinking. The study also found that alcohol-identity predicted problematic alcohol-related behaviors and alcohol consumption, along with the fact that 60% of the college participants exhibited problematic alcohol use. The researchers claim that the association between the increased prevalence in SNS and high alcohol consumption should be taken seriously by public health research so interventions can be made available for college students. 

Alcohol online social identity of Facebook friends can also influence younger adults that have not yet been exposed to the drinking culture, affecting their drinking behaviors when that exposure does occur.

Claire Kaplan, a student in the clinical psychology Ph.D. program at the University of Maryland, discussed the effects Facebook has on upcoming college student's drinking perceptions. 

Kaplan compares the expected college alcohol content differences between when she was going into undergraduate school and how different it is for upcoming college students now. Kaplan states that when she was going into college Facebook was still unavailable, so she was unaware of the college drinking culture since she did not get any exposure, but now high school students are exposed to the drinking culture through Facebook and establish a perceived drinking norm, influencing their future drinking behaviors.

Alcohol related Facebook posts receive positive reactions from friends.

www.victoriasong.me

A study done to examine the display of alcohol use on Facebook and how friends reacted to those posts found that friends reacted positively to 72.23% of the alcohol related pictures and also to 72.83% of the alcohol related messages.While students notice the prevalence and positive feedback on binge drinking, it creates a glamorous outlook on binge drinkers and encourages people to partake in such actions.

The study goes on explaining why alcohol related Facebook contents receive so much positive attention, explaining that Facebook users usually share positive things for their friends to see, so posting a picture with friends drinking illicit positive reactions from Facebook friends. 

According to Kaplan, "studies have been done to show how Facebook posts influence other people's behaviors [,...] like the kind of mood of the posts being made by your friends can definitely impact the mood of your posts". This illustrates how an alcohol related Facebook post with positive moods and reactions from fellow friends, will also influence another to engage in the same behavior and post related pictures, creating a cycle with other Facebook users. 

Social marketing campaigns about drinking have decreased student's alcohol consumption.

Fournier and Clarke also found that many universities have taken action to combat student's misconception about drinking norms and set up social marketing campaigns that depicted the majority's non-abusive drinking behaviors. The goal of these campaigns are to represent the greater student population's drinking habits, instead of the select people that an individual interacts with and may be contemplating wrong drinking-perceptions from. Results showed that when universities took action and implemented these drinking campaigns, the results were positive in student's perception of drinking norms and a decrease in alcohol consumption.

Kaplan believes that a Facebook educational intervention should be made to teach kids and young adults how things that are seen on Facebook "is not real life, and the things that they are seeing online is not a representative of what people are actually doing with their lives". 

She also believes that young adults are not aware about the possible consequences of an alcohol-related Facebook post, such as possible future employers seeing those contents and preventing one from obtaining a job, and should be taught about what is appropriate to post or not. 

With the use of Facebook, which allows thousands of people to connect with one another, college drinking norms and the frequency of future college students engaging in risky alcohol-consumption will change, incorporating more binge drinking as high school students start observing more alcohol-related posts by college students, creating a false perception that everyone in college binge drinks. 

To illustrate the drastic actions done by undergraduates though out the years, Huffington Post describes the 2015 incident of an Albany student who died after drinking a 60 oz. bottle of vodka during a fraternity hazing. ABC News also discussed the incident of West Virginia University college freshman who died pledging a fraternity, had a blood alcohol level of 0.493, six times more than the legal limit. 

Through over exposed alcohol-related images on Facebook, eliciting positive drinking images to viewers and creating an alcohol online social identity, Facebook influences the perceived college drinking norms and promotes binge drinking. To prevent future college undergraduates from engaging in such dangerous drinking activities and risking the consequences of unemployment from a dream job, getting injured, or even death, an educational Facebook intervention should be established throughout middle and high school. 

The intervention should teach kids and young adults that what they see on Facebook is not always how it is depicted, that just because a few people post something does not mean everyone is doing it or thinking it, and the possible consequences that come with posting alcohol-related contents. 

Trust in mass media has declined to 40%, hitting an all-time low since 1997, due to the increase in media outlets.

Source: www.veteransnewsnow.com

Mass media expanded throughout the years with new social network sites and platforms available to cater to specific audiences. With the increase in mass media outlets, hostile media perception, potential to influence others, and increased public point of views have led to the public mistrusting mass media.

Hostile media perception, known as the perception that information given off by mass media is hostile to their own opinions, was studied by Albert Gunther and Kathleen Schmitt to determine why so many newspaper editors were receiving criticism saying that their news report was biased. It was found that information given off in only mass media caused hostile media perception to partisans.

Information reported on mass media is seeing as biased, but not when reported on a low-circulation report. 

To find these results, the authors presented the same information on genetically modified (GM) food to participants through mass media or a students essay. Biases and hostile media perception were measured by participants that were pro GM foods and anti GM foods. It was found that in the mass media condition, pro and anti GM foods participants experienced biases and hostile media perception, while in the student essay report, no biases and hostile media perception was experienced by pro GM and anti GM participants. The study discussed that the mass media effect is caused by a sense of broad reach and by the potential to influence others.

Americans trust in mass media declined by 13% since 1997. 

Source: www.gallup.com

To illustrate the decline in Americas trust in mass media, Gallup, a performance-management consulting company, found that there has been a 13% decrease in mass media trust. In 1997, 53% of Americans claimed to trust mass media (newspapers, TV, and radio) a great deal and a fair amount, while in 2014 only 40% did.

When observing political parties, liberals were said to trust mass media more than republicans due to the fact that 44% of Americans believe that news media is too liberal. From 1997, liberal trust in the mass media declined by 10%, from 64% to 54% in 2014, while republicans trust declined by 14%, from 41% to 27% in 2014.

Gallup also observed trust and the perception of media bias by party and ideology. Since 1997, Democrats and Republicans trust in the mass media has also declined, with the Republicans taking the lead. In 1997, 64% of Democrats trusted mass media a great deal and a fair amount, while in 2004 only 54% did. For the Republicans, 41% claimed to trust mass media while in 2014, only 27% did.

34% of Americans believe the media is not too liberal or too conservative, but just right.

Source: www.gallup.com

44% of Americans currently believe the media is too liberal, with only 34% believing it is just about right. Within the Democrats, 52% believe it is just about right and not too liberal and not too conservative, while 18% of Republicans believe it is just about right.

These low percentages of Americans believing the media is just about right, brings into perspective the amount of biases that Americans perceive mass media to contain and how hard it is for people to actually believe in a mass media source.

News media perceived to perform negatively. 

Data from www.usnews.com

Pew Research Center found that Americans believe the press to perform negatively with 66% stating news stories are often inaccurate, 77% believe news organizations favor one specific side, and 80% believe news organizations are influenced by powerful people and organizations.

Pew also stated that local news organizations are more trusted than national news organizations, with 69% stating they trust local news a lot or some, while 59% saying they trust the national news a lot or some. This finding corresponds to Gunther and Schmitt's results that low-circulation reports were more trusted than mass media reports.

Broad audience reach and ability to influence causes skepticism. 

The decline in mass media trust is a cause of the increase in media outlets due to the potential to influence others and the sense of a broad reach, causing Americans to be skeptic of the information that mass media provides them. As Pew's data states, most Americans believe news organizations are influenced by powerful people and organizations which their objective is to skew their audience to favor their view points and create agreeableness. With this in mind, most people will see media content as biased and always second guess the information that is being given to them.

With increased mass media, comes along increased public opinion as the public has more platforms to state their opinions and agree or disagree with said mass media contents. Facebook is a perfect example as people can share their opinion on a said topic by any news corporation and bring along different facts and research to back up their opinion for their Facebook friends and the public to see.

California woman expresses on Facebook her believe of UFO sighting by the strange light in skies.  

To illustrate how public opinion has increased, on November 7, 2015, hundreds of people in California were shocked by the strange light that occurred in the skies, and took their opinions about it to Facebook and other social media outlets. Doubtful News (DN), a privately owned news source, described how a woman named Gianna Peptonis published her opinion and experience of the strange light on Facebook, stating that the light was caused by UFOs and how she found a dead UFO outside her house, posting pictures of the so-called "dead UFO". Peptoni's Facebook is filled with statements on how the government is hiding information from the public about UFOs, while others also comment and describes their own point of view on the subject. DN also contributes their opinion in their article and disagrees with Peptoni's statement that the picture she posted is not actually a dead UFO and claims it is just a dead animal.

Peptoni's example illustrates how increased media outlets and platforms allows people to express their opinions, which increases mass media skepticism and makes people question whether what they are being told is correct or biased.

With mass media having the ability to reach so many people, be influenced by bigger and powerful people and organizations, able to influence so many people, and have increased in outlets decreases the masses trust and creates hostile media perception and skepticism on the information being provided.

This lack of mass media trust can lead Americans to ignore factual information, believe the public and government is against their opinions, or even cause drastic actions. A result to this would be for low-circulation reports to publicize important, truthful information to the public and to take action to maintain the reliability and trust they have with the public.

NodeXL Graph creates visualization of the Twitter hashtag #veteran network

Source:http://nodexlgraphgallery.org

"NodeXL" is a computer program that allows one to create a visualization of thousands of tweets under a specific hashtag and then it creates a connection of that network. In this NodeXL Graph located to the right, it created a connection of words related to "veteran" with 871 edges, which are pathways that connects to each main idea. Observing this visualization allows one to see all of the related words that various twitter users think are connected to the word "veteran".

As it is shows, veteran closely resembles Washington DC and various of Washington DC's monuments. After veteran connecting to Washington DC, the network drifts off to death related words such as grave, cemetery, gravestone, tombstone, and then randomly to London. From Washington DC, the connection also takes another drift towards parade and hero, and then to ford, cars, USA, and MIA. There are some very random words that are connected to veteran, such as pow, MIA, and poppy.

I found this specific NodeXL Graph to be pretty easy to understand, the only downside to it it was the color of each edge shown and how various words were not legible since pictures were placed in front of them. I liked how they did not gather too many overwhelming data from various users, or else it would have been hard to follow along, as I observed in other NodeXL Graphs on the NodeXL Graph Gallery.

Overal, I found this computer program very interesting, being that one can take social media and get thousands to millions of users input and plot them all together to see what users think are interconnected with one another. It would be very interesting to compare different culture's connections between a specific word.

Huge meteor was spotted this morning in Bangkok, followed by a loud explosion

I would share this information with my social network because it is not often that people get to see a meteor in the skies, following a loud explosion noise. If I were to see one, I'd be highly shocked and confused at the moment to what it could possibly be.