We all know that social media is everywhere, that information is out there and that it is impossible to fully be aware of everything that is on the internet at a time. Today, I learned that information about you is shared in such a way, that it should no longer be surprising to oneself to randomly find foreign country's newspaper articles - with their own Facebook pictures in them.
What happened to me, is that I used to be a member of Clark's International Student Association, a relatively big student group with - like the name indicates - many international students as members. Another one of the members, Anshu from India, helped out a former college counselor of hers who was writing a newspaper article about US colleges in the well-known Indian newspaper Hindustan Times. The author then proceeded to take one of Anshu's Facebook pictures of ISA at Clark and use it as a featured picture for the article. The article quickly spread through Facebook, especially since those members of ISA that happened to be in India at the time that it got released saw the article and did not hesitate to share it with everyone. Now my face is shown in a large Indian newspaper - thanks to Facebook. This could have never happened a couple of years ago. The author of the article could have never used information this freely if it wasn't for Facebook where he had access to all of Anshu's pictures as well as school info and where he finally ended up contacting her for questions as well. It seems as though Facebook (and if it wasn't, it would probably be another social networking site) is the new mostly used medium of communication - emailing is out, like we have discussed in class. I find it truly amazing that - without my knowledge or active contribution - I find myself in a foreign country's newspaper - on paper and online - and not only does my picture appear in it, but I also did find out about the article being released a couple of hours after the newspaper comes out. This form of communication is so efficient, that it almost scares me while at the same time it impresses me very much. My next step, becoming famous, should not be much more difficult with all the social media tools that are out there.
The freedom of information scares me a bit. At least facebook is not like myspace where you can see anyone's picture, but I would not want my picture used as your picture has been used in a foreign country's newspaper. Using the information on social network sites is easy enough for anyone and the fact that we do not have control or rights over this information can cause us some problems. In fact, police have been creating facebook profiles, adding unsuspecting friends and then nabbing them for underage drinking. Who knows what these sites will lead to next?
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