Some people ask why we would use social media at all if it is unreliable. Ethan Zuckerman, in a recent essay, detailed some reasons why people turn to social media, and what social media might provide that is good for society.

Social media can inform us. We can learn about what's going on in our world, our community, or our profession. Social media calls our attention to things we might otherwise miss, whether it is a new scientific discovery, a sports score, or a new local law.

Social media can amplify important voices and issues. When traditional outlets are not covering a story often social media can call attention to it. That could be about calling attention to excessive use of police force against black people, or it could be about the lack of attention paid to the declining life expectancy of rural white populations. It could be about the animal rights issues that are never covered on the nightly news, or an opioid addiction crisis that went unreported for years.

Social media can be a tool for connection and solidarity. Social media can pull people together that may feel isolated in their physical communities due to unique interests or challenges. Sufferers of rare diseases, lovers of a specific type of anime, bizarre fandoms, discussion forums for trans teens or early 80s electropop. When there is no one among your friends that really gets something that you value or struggle with, there are people online who might understand.

Social media can be a space for mobilization. You can think of large examples of this -- for instance, the Parkland survivors did much of their mobilization on social media, and many student walkouts across the country were made possible by a strong Twitter network of student activists. But there are many smaller examples, and there are just as many conservative examples as liberal ones. Many local activists get people organized around local issues using Facebook groups or meetups -- and those issues are as likely to be opposing taxes and gun regulations as supporting them. Conservatives have often used social media to organize boycotts of companies they perceive to be acting with a liberal bias. And all parties -- left, right, and otherwise -- use social media to try to turn out voters.

Social media can be a space for deliberation and debate. Zuckerman calls this a disappointment -- debates on the web often go off the rails. But many still hope that this function can be made to work, and that people and platforms will find a way to make debate on the web productive.

Social media can be a tool for showing us a diversity of views and perspectives. This seems like an odd claim since social media seems to do the opposite to many. But people who go out of their way to try and get diverse perspectives can get them in ways that were not possible before. Users of Tumblr, for instance, were probably exposed to more viewpoints and varieties of experience than they would have been just talking to others at their school lunch table or in their workplace. Readers of blogs or consumers of YouTube videos can see voices and perspectives that television would have never given them -- again, if they make the effort.

Social media can be a model for democratically governed spaces. This is a bit more out there -- but it's possible that online spaces could provide new, more representative democratic models -- if we could sort through the problems we have.