A Beautiful Disaster

   I began this blog with the intention of  "exploring the dichotomy between unconsciousness towards media messages and consciousness of my body's messages shows the dulling effect the media can have towards awareness." In essence, I wanted to study mass media's ability to dull my awareness of my health. But, as I've explored this topic through a variety of genres, I noticed that mass media has just as much of a positive effect as negative. While media certainly does often show me a one-sided view of health that I take for fact which may or may not be good for me, social media has the ability to spread information to the masses that can be both beneficial and eye-opening.
    Yes, mass media does have a "dulling effect," as I have said. On social media, I've noticed this in particular with regard to political agendas pertaining to health. During the shutdown squabble over the Affordable Care Act, many of my "friends" on Facebook posted infographics, news stories, and memes about the act. They often had a very transparent political agendas that discussed the act from that party's perspective. So, while it was helpful to see quite a bit of information about the act, I also couldn't tell which information was true, particularly when my "friends" got into heated political on message threads that used misinterpreted data. Many poorly-educated people then take this information for fact and act accordingly, so they may be voting against an act that would help then or vice versa.
    On the other hand, social media possesses the great power of spreading a message to the masses with the click of a button. On two un-health-related notes, when my friend lost my cat while cat-sitting him, I went straight to Facebook and Twitter. I tweeted local pet and news networks in both sites and immediately got an incredible response of people looking for him. Also, when I started my photography business, I opened a Facebook page to promote my work. Through it, I have received many job opportunities that I wouldn't otherwise have gotten had people had less viewing access to my photos.
    Health news works the same way. The ability to spread important research to anyone on social media means that health professionals can quickly reach millions of people almost instantly. For example, this week I followed New York Times Health and HealthCare.gov on Twitter to see what the organizations thought was important. From articles discussing the advantages of quitting smoking to PSAs showing the numerical benefits of eating healthy, to reviews of other health publications, both organizations tweeted quite a bit of interesting information. And, while most people know it's important to eat healthy or not smoke, seeing this information show up on social media when they're taking a few moments just to relax, puts the message into their minds when they're most vulnerable to browsable information. Thus, they might be more likely to read a health article on Facebook or Twitter than in a newspaper or some other less "in" form of publication.
    Social media also brings together the "flatter" mode of communication, as the Health Affairs article says, in that the masses get the voices of many (anyone else on social media) rather than the voices of few (those in the information business.) In that way, information often seems less biased because a reader can take the average of all she reads and find somewhere within all of it what they believe to be true. For this reason, I think the age of social media may actually be a beneficial thing for the nation's health.

A PSA that I found particularly interesting:
http://www.upworthy.com/an-apple-a-day-does-a-hell-of-a-lot-more-than-keep-the-doctor-away