In just six days his 13:34 You Tube video Let's design social media that drives real change filmed in December of last year and uploaded on January 13, 2016 has attracted 238,444 viewers.
While there are obvious advantages to social media, some claim that it has a deceptive presence that gives people a false sense of satisfaction just from clicking a button without taking any real action or risks.
All are clearly stated outcomes and goals for the City of Mesa in Bloomberg's WhatWorksCities.
Simply put: interactive communication undoubtedly increases the accountability of governments.
There are five critical challenges facing today's social media:
1. We don't know how to deal with rumors. Rumors that confirm people's biases are now believed and spread among millions of people.
2. We create our own echo chambers. We tend to only communicate with people that we agree with, and thanks to social media, we can mute, un-follow and block everybody else.
3. Online discussions quickly descend into angry mobs. All of us probably know that. It's as if we forget that the people behind screens are actually real people and not just avatars.
4. It became really hard to change our opinions. Because of the speed and brevity of social media, we are forced to jump to conclusions and write sharp opinions in 140 characters about complex world affairs. And once we do that, it lives forever on the Internet, and we are less motivated to change these views, even when new evidence arises.
5. -- and in his point of view, this is the most critical -- today, our social media experiences are designed in a way that favors broadcasting over engagements, posts over discussions, shallow comments over deep conversations. It's as if we agreed that we are here to talk at each other instead of talking with each other.
