We are stuck in an echo chamber, a friend said to me recently.
While the digital divide is slowly lessening and more people are online all the time, there is a very small community that is always repeating itself on whatever the social media of the moment is – lately that has been Twitter, of course.
I’m part of it, no doubt. Because our society today demands self-promotion, or so it seems. The echo chamber is so small and there are so many people talking – mostly about the same things – that it’s tough to be heard over it all.
Your post or your story or your A1 article is getting buried, surely a big part of why newspapers are faltering. The democratization of the Web has given megaphones to anyone with an Internet connection, so no longer does your daily newspaper have the same pedastal.
So, if you want to be heard, you flee to MySpace, or Facebook or Twitter or on your blog or wherever else. I believe that you have to put yourself everywhere online if you want to compete in a media field of your choice. But it’s easy to cross over from active self-promotion to incessant self-indulgence.
I’ve done it myself, so here’s my pledge to do better.