Role of social media in information dissemination discussed

PIB
Imphal, Oct. 27: Despite its advantages, social media is not free from numerous dangers, said Pradip Phanjoubam, Editor of Imphal Free Press who talked on the “Role of Social Media in Information Dissemination” at the one-day “Rural Media Workshop” at Manipur Press Club, Imphal on Wednesday.
The resource person talked at length on the impact given to the print and electronic media with the advancement of social media in the workshop organised by the Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, Imphal.
He said that online social networking technologies enable individuals to simultaneously share information with any number of peers.
Quantifying the causal effect of these mediums on the dissemination of information requires not only identification of who influences whom, but also of whether individuals would still propagate information in the absence of social signals about that information, he said.
Despite the wide availability of data from online social networks, identifying influence remains a challenge.
Individuals tend to engage in similar activities as their peers, so it is often impossible to determine from observational data whether a correlation between two individuals’ behaviors exists because they are similar or because one person’s behavior has influenced the other.
In the context of information discussion, two people may disseminate the same information as each other because they possess the same information sources, such as web sites or television that they consume regularly, he added.