When the power when out all over the mountain last Friday, Jack and I left the office for the wine bar so I could sit and update the situation on our website for our readers.
During last summer’s fires, social media played a big role as an information source for people to ask questions and leave comments. The same was true Friday evening.
Our website has been online since 1995 and before social media, it was where most public comments about news items were posted.
After the storm, JP and I talked about why we think the comment posting has shifted to the TC’s Facebook page.
When FB first became widespread, it was a forum between family and close friends — a more intimate setting than posting on a news site for all the public to see.
That isn’t the case any longer. Once a link is posted, it’s a free-for-all of sharing it not only in that medium, but through other social media sources.
Yet even as FB grew into connecting more and more people, users still trust that intimacy — that what they post is just between family and friends, even on a newspaper’s FB page.
And, they believe, the informality of the setting is much like an oral conversation between one or more people vs. a news site where more thought might be given to a response.
And so, while we post links from FB to idyllwildtowncrier.com news articles, because of the FB perception, we sometimes use FB to “chat” with our “friends.” In the process, we learn information, such as when I asked Friday night who was with or without power and where were they.
We were able to basically map out where power was and was not on: Garner Valley and Mountain Center were back on first, Pine Cove last, etc.
On the other hand, a few weeks back we picked up on a local kidnapping rumor running through FB and contacted the sheriff’s department to confirm its falseness.
Becky Clark, Editor
