In the presentation, Wael addressed five critical challenges that he believes is hurting social media. The challenges are: rumors, echo chambers, flame-wars, hard opinions, and shallow one-sided conversations. He believes that all of these problems effect social media in different ways. For example, he believes that rumors effect social media by getting people revved up about the rumor. then starting angry mobs (realizing they're not true). "Echo chambers" are also a challenge because they keep us from seeing other people's perspectives. By "echo chambers", he means the bubbles that we create around ourselves that allow us only to communicate with those who we already agree with, ultimately not being able to see other perspectives on the situation. Flame wars are also hurtful, because they start with calm discussions, then turn into angry, hateful "flame wars" between people. Then there's hard opinions, opinions that when are made, won't change for anything. These are also effective towards social media, because they prevent us from being more flexible and open-minded towards other's opinions. And lastly, there's shallow conversations. These are hurtful, because they make us to talk AT each other, and not WITH each other (conversations are one-sided).
Then there are also the four suggestions that Ghonim advised us to follow. The four suggestions were that we need to: focus more on quality, find more solutions that involve the internet, to think about how to connect with others, and work on how to reach a big crowd. Focusing more on quality would give people incentives to engage in conversations, rather than bluntly blurting opinions. Working harder on finding out how the internet can help us, not hurt us, can help us to develop a more optimistic mindset, and solve more of our problems. Thinking about how to use our social media experiences to connect with others can promote communication with other users. And lastly, working on how to reach a big crowd of people efficiently can spread positivity and understanding with one another.
So in conclusion, Wael Ghonim has helped all of us by recomending all of these things to us. Especially as an internet generation, we should all learn how to use the internet to its fullest potential, and to learn all we can to make the internet a more creative and respectful outlet.
