How diverse is your PLN?
I believe my personal learning network is quite diverse because I usually learn from a variety of platforms like YouTube, social media, books, lectures, and academic readings. In the 20th century, people could learn anything online and there was an unlimited amount of knowledge ranging from basic life needs to academic publications on the internet.
Are you learning from a variety of diverse voices and are you expanding your understanding of the views of others?
Individuals have different thoughts when looking at the same thing in life. Sometimes there is no right or wrong for a certain argument. Thus, a variety of diverse voices can expand my understanding of the views of others. The disadvantage of learning online is that there is a lot of fake or incorrect information online that can mislead people down a completely different path.
How does social media engage in communications?
Social media is an important platform that allows people around the world to share information and comments. For instance, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok are the three most well-known social media platforms that are used around the world. Instagram is primarily a photo sharing app. Twitter is more like an information and news center, allowing people to gather the latest news from different parts of the world.
How does social media challenge communications?
The biggest challenge of social media is that it is controlled by the government and politics. Therefore, users cannot communicate online freely about information that is sensitive to politics. For instance, the US government only makes the negative impact of certain countries visible and blocks the good news.
What are the benefits of a diverse and inclusive PLN in social media sharing that understands where you are coming from with messaging that impacts the community?
The benefits of a diverse and inclusive PLN in social media sharing lead to global communication and make the world smaller, which is a good thing for people who do not have the ability to leave their own country and see the world. Multiculturalism is one important concept and benefit of a diverse and inclusive PLN.
wasd June 5, 2022
Hi Tim,
Thank you for your post! I can particularly resonate with what you said about fake news and fake messages delivered online. As we are in the fake news era, public media can be used as a tool that is something harmful to people’s minds, and the ability to identify fake news became another must-learn technique for netizens. In addition, I think one other thing that social media challenges communication is that there are way too many voices that you can hear. Aside from the ability to identify fake news, I would say that information overload is also something that netizens have to deal with on a regular basis.
timyang June 5, 2022 — Post author
I agree with you. Some people trust everything they see on the internet and spread the wrong information to people around them, which leads to more and more people believing the wrong news becoming the true story.
腾飞石1 June 5, 2022
Your blog leads readers to think about how PLN can help people learn and how social media can communicate through asking four questions. I agree that diverse PLNS can help with learning, as I often learn different things through Youtube, online lectures and various online resources. It’s important to identify whether the information is reliable, because reading fake news can give us the wrong idea about something. As for social media, I think it is a learning method that can directly contact different people’s views, because social media such as Twitter and Instagram contain the thoughts of people of different races and regions.
timyang June 5, 2022 — Post author
Social media is one way to learn knowledge and gather information, but the ability to identify fake information is particularly important in the current era.