Tag Archives: social media

Communications

How social media is killing democracy

By Tracey Saxby, Originally published on My Sea To Sky

We’re living in an age of information—and disinformation.

Social media was supposed to bring people together, but instead it’s being weaponized to divide us. Algorithms are designed to amplify outrage, and it’s hard to tell truth from conspiracy.

With a federal election looming, the stakes have never been higher. Canada’s democracy is under attack. Disinformation divides our communities, erodes public trust, and makes it harder for voters to make informed choices.

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Arts, Business, Communications

CCEDA’s Business Mentorship Program: Supporting Cortes Island Small Business

In January, the Cortes Community Economic Development Association, or CCEDA, hired a Business Mentorship Coordinator. In the four months since then Tamlyn Collingwood has worked with a number of Cortes Island’s small businesses, developed procedures to help them and is about to unveil a series of new market opportunities in conjunction with Hollyhock.   

“I was contracted to support small businesses in any areas needed. There’s so many different aspects to business and,  for many folks, they might be good at a few things and they might have a few challenges in some of those areas,” she explained.

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Uncategorized

The Quadra Project: Social Media (P 2 of 4)

According to Jonathan Haidt, the fracturing rather than the integrating character of social media’s dynamic began to change in 2009 with the introduction of “Like” and “Sharing”, two similar options that transformed the exchange of person-to-person information into the mass distribution of opinions, rumours and judgments, without providing any substantial corroborating information. This process was abetted by the social media algorithms that favoured emotional rather than rational responses. Facts were boring. Extremism and lies generated more “sharing”, registered more “likes”, and earned more advertising revenue for the social media platforms.

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Uncategorized

The Quadra Project – Social Media

“We invent things, and thereafter they invent us.” This is a fundamental principle in the media theory articulated by Marshall McLuhan, but it is rarely considered because we are usually so enamoured by the ingenuity of our inventions that we fail to consider the ways in which they invent us.

A brilliant essay by Jonathan Haidt, “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid”, in the May 2022 edition of The Atlantic Monthly magazine deserves careful reading and thought. Its insights do much to explain the factious irrationality that has been generated by social media, an adjunct of the internet that was supposed to facilitate and deepen communication, but instead has created angry disputes with irresolvable differences. What went wrong?

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Communications

Fewer young Canadians seeing the steady stream of online harassment

By Morgan Sharp, National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

More than a third of young adult internet users in Canada either witnessed or experienced online harassment last year, a wide-ranging survey on digital habits found, although there has been a significant decline in its visibility.

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