Quote:
Originally Posted by howdydoo
'The twitter crew' will indeed be represented in juries but importantly, unlike the composition of groups of people on a footy message board, or large (but still comparatively small in context of the rest of the adult population) number of people who all follow the same issue, share the same tweets and join the same groups on social media, it is being very much amplified by one another until it seems to them that their views represent the general population. However, a group of 12 people is representitive of the whole adult population and so a very politically active ant-immigrant voice may only be represented by 1, 2 or even 0 people who are then outweighed by 10 or 11 other citizens who aren't predominantly motivated by such views. Therefore, taken away from their twitter sounding boards and discussing actual context and evidence with the rest of the jury, said tweet-ee is more likely to be swayed with the majority in the room with them.
I think the very worrying thing for people who are getting much news from twitter and social media is the frightening amount of 'news' or 'facts' that are loaded onto there and shared en masse that are simply made up, or distorting real events in order to stir up further outrage and unrest amongst their colleagues. I get these sent to me all of the time by my old Rotherham school pal (I still love him to bits) and only a small amount of looking up the situation of the post he has sent me usually leads to very deliberate distortion and even complete fabrication of factual events. But when I put back to him the real evidence, and how it has been distorted, my pal usually just hrumphs or makes a joke, but carries on believing it!
Only recently we had a social media post on this board where an interviewer for a Patriot message board was interviewing 2 ex-forces men who said that they had been evicted from their flat to make room for asylum seekers. Only 5 mins of research showed this was completely fabricated, but such message board leaders are hell bent on fabricating and twisting facts which is met with repeatedly unquestioning eagerness and causing huge amounts of anger and hysteria.
I'm not happy about the numbers of people arriving without checks into the country. It's not a healthy situation. But I recognise the difficulty that politicians in all major European countries have in navigating a whole host of laws and relationships with neighbour countries in providing workable solutions, especially as the country from which the small boats are sailing are having to deal with many more arrivals and asylum claims than we do. It's a ****ing ball ache but the worrying thing for me is not so much that the situation is being exploited by many extremely clever and manipulative people who try to lead us to thinking there are deep and sinister political motivations that are facilitating the issue, but that so many otherwise sensible, normal people are so, so willing to accept the social media postings as facts.
