Facebook is what Neil Postman would have called a metamedium: a medium that contains all other media—text, images, sounds, videos. It’s improper to ask if Facebook is a publisher or a network, a media company or a tech company. The answer is always “yes.” Facebook is sui generis. Nothing in human history has monitored 2.7 billion people at once. Nothing has had such intimate influence on so many people’s social relations, views, and range of knowledge. Nothing else has ever made it as easy to find like-minded people and urge them toward opinion or action. Facebook may be the greatest tool for motivation we have ever known. It might be the worst threat to deliberation we have ever faced. Democracies need both motivation and deliberation to thrive.
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Source: Making Sense of the Facebook Menace | The New Republic