1. Social Media Now and in the Future with Dr. Oliver Marsh

Welcome to our first Qwoll podcast “Boundlessly Curious”…. Questions explored * Has social media in fact compounded tribalism and polarization? * Can we reliably measure the positive and negative consequences? * How will generative AI play a role in how we interact with social media? * What does the future of social media look like? Summary of the Conversation Intro to Oliver’s background as a researcher (minutes 1-8) and a discussion around social media, emotions and polarization (8-15) * Oliver describes how people are mix emotions and rationality and how emotional responses have been exacerbated in the online sphere * We talk about the origins of the connection power of like minded communities  Social media and the political sphere: the Arab Spring, Brexit and Trump (minutes 16-21) * You can’t take the genie out of the bottle, analyzing life without social media is like analyzing life without electricity * Context matters greatly; you can’t very easily say social media caused these things even though it is tempting, but we can say we have more visibility into different perspectives than we’ve had before - certain conversations we’re always happening but many of them we’re offline Measuring the net effect of social media (minutes 22-30) * Not so easy, but we can say that there’s been a lot of bad and not a lot of good. Thinking like a scholar or researcher / you have to narrow the scope to answer these questions * “Social media has been pretty horrible” for teenage girls in Western countries; but maybe, it’s been less negative for elderly people to interact with family and friends; and there’s millions of couples who have met on online dating platforms Generative AI and disinformation (minutes 31-40) * So now we might be able to exponentially misinform without a coordinated human effort, that might not be so much worse than it is currently.. but maybe it just becomes more fun? * You might also have more powerful ideas for identifying misinformation now too though at our disposal Social platforms like Twitter are making it more difficult to research (minutes 41-45) * Twitter had previously been allowing researchers free access to data, now under Elon Musk leadership, $42,000 per month is the asking price for .3% of the companies data * This has relevant implications for our ability to study digital life and that’s not good Future of social media (minutes 46-50) * Oliver thinks the trend is for the internet to become ever more personalized and effective at serving our needs, and therefore more addictive… Follow us on Substack Get updated when we release new episodes and publish new articles : qwoll.substack.com/subscribe Support our cause! Lastly, we’re a fledgling start-up on a mission to help busy people stay engaged as lifelong learners. Please consider supporting our mission, donate to Qwoll today: USD EUR