My degree is all about texts and how they talk to each other.
My twitter feed is all about people and talking to each other.
I'm not trying to say that my degree is like twitter because a two thousand word essay is a lot harder to compile than a 140 character tweet (sometimes). But I am trying to say that I'm an advocate for discussion.
Recently I made a statement on Twitter about the stereotypical events my student union had going on for International Women's Day and how it would have been nice to see them branch out to wider demographics and activities outside of: a cake sale, belly dancing and zumba.
This led to a discussion between myself and two other girls about the availability of groups, interest in the event and the event itself.
Upon telling someone of this discussion they remarked that this is why they didn't like social networking - because it causes unnecessary problems between strangers.
Social networking does sometimes cause arguments between strongly opinionated people. However, at university level, I'd like to think these discussions are educated enough to not descend into personal attacks. Sometimes problems need to be aired to be addressed, in this particular instance, I ended up speaking to next academic year's Women's Officer. She assured me that next year something will be done to include a wider range of groups. Upon a suggestion of another Twitter user, I plan to get involved in the event myself to make sure that happens.
Tough topics are tough because they need to be spoken about. These discussions don't have answers. Feminism, for example, is a big discussion I am wholeheartedly a part of. It's not a problem to be solved overnight. I am glad that there are these social networking spaces, including blogs, which allow people the space to air their views and keep contributing to the discussion.
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