Social Media Blog

Cannabis legalization has been a hot topic of debate for quite sometime and still carries through till this day. As I seen on twitter #majianuan is plastered all over, with people on both sides of the fence about the issue. Although I would have to report that most people that I could see were in support for legalizing medical marijuana. They are saying Florida is up next for legalization and with the recent hashtags of #gaymarriage this is definitely the next big topic swarming the internet. Besides the presidential debates, the legalization of this plant has caused quite a stir on social media and continues to incur astronomical amounts of revenue in legalized states.

In the “mean Tweets” video, I found it very funny when President Obama was reading out all of those insulting tweets and he responded to them! I think we lose sight of the impact of social media has on other people because perhaps we are throwing insults from behind a screen. That video’s message was clear in the fact that the President is a person too! The tweets were also seen to be taken more as a joke than anything else.

Twitter does two things it brings people information and allows users to voice their opinions.The statistics read that over two million #marijuana hashtags get put on social media every hour and just over 1 million per hour for #cannabis!! It is apparent that this is done every second in the united States, but the question being asked is, exactly how accurate is this consensus? In our reading, “Pew Research: Twitter reaction to events often at odds with overall public opinion” stated that, “The year-long study concludes that the “reaction to political events on Twitter reflects a combination of the unique profile of active Twitter users and the extent to which events engage different communities and draw the comments of active users. While this provides an interesting look into how communities of interest respond to different circumstances, it does not reliably correlate with the overall reaction of adults nationwide”. Overall Twitter is a good way to come together with other likeminded people and to voice your thoughts, but it is not the only way to measure public opinion.

As far as the overall consensus of the legalization of marijuana the medicinal facts speak for itself and even the conservatives are starting to come around. Twitter is pretty accurate on this particular topic but definitely not a tool to measure opinions