Social Media are interactive computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation or sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks.[1][2] The variety of stand-alone and built-in social media services currently available introduces challenges of definition; however, there are some common features such as:[2]
Social media are interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications.[2][3]
User-generated content such as text posts or comments, digital photos or videos, and data generated through all online interactions, is the lifeblood of social media.[2][3]
Users create service-specific profiles for the website or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization.[2][4]
Social media facilitate the development of online social networks by connecting a user's profile with those of other individuals or groups.[2][4]
Users usually access social media services via web-based apps on desktops and laptops, or download services that offer social media functionality to their mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets). As users engage with these electronic services, they create highly interactive platforms through which individuals, communities, and organizations can share, co-create, discuss, participate and modify user-generated content or self-curated content posted online. Networks formed through social media change the way groups of people interact and communicate or stand with the votes. They "introduce substantial and pervasive changes to communication between organizations, communities, and individuals".[1] These changes are the focus of the emerging fields of technoself studies. Social media differ from paper-based media (e.g., magazines and newspapers) and traditional electronic media such as TV broadcasting, Radio broadcasting in many ways, including quality,[5] reach, frequency, interactivity, usability, immediacy, and performance. Social media outlets operate in a dialogic transmission system (many sources to many receivers).[6] This is in contrast to traditional media which operates under a mono-logic transmission model (one source to many receivers), such as a newspaper which is delivered to many subscribers, or a radio station which broadcasts the same programs to an entire city. Some of the most popular social media websites, with over 100 million registered users, include Facebook (and its associated Facebook Messenger), TikTok, WeChat, Instagram, QZone, Weibo, Twitter, Tumblr, Baidu Tieba and LinkedIn. Other popular platforms that are sometimes referred to as social media services (differing on interpretation) include YouTube, QQ, Quora, Telegram, WhatsApp, LINE, Snapchat, Pinterest, Viber, Reddit, Discord, VK, and more.
Observers have noted a wide range of positive and negative impacts of social media use. Social media can help to improve an individual's sense of connectedness with real or online communities and can be an effective communication (or marketing) tool for corporations, entrepreneurs, non-profit organizations, advocacy groups, political parties, and governments.
History Edit
See also: Information Age
Front panel of the 1969-era ARPANET Interface Message Processor.
IMP log for the first message sent over the Internet, using ARPANET.
Social media may have roots in the 1840s introduction of the telegraph, which connected the United States.[7] The PLATO system launched in 1960, after being developed at the University of Illinois and subsequently commercially marketed by Control Data Corporation. It offered early forms of social media features with 1973-era innovations such as Notes, PLATO's message-forum application; TERM-talk, its instant-messaging feature; Talkomatic, perhaps the first online chat room; News Report, a crowd-sourced online newspaper, and blog; and Access Lists, enabling the owner of a note file or other application to limit access to a certain set of users, for example, only friends, classmates, or co-workers.
ARPANET, which first came online in 1967, had by the late 1970s developed a rich cultural exchange of non-government/business ideas and communication, as evidenced by the network etiquette (or "netiquette") described in a 1982 handbook on computing at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.[8] ARPANET evolved into the Internet following the publication of the first Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) specification, RFC 675 (Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program), written by Vint Cerf, Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine in 1974.[9] This became the foundation of Usenet, conceived by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis in 1979 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, and established in 1980.
A precursor of the electronic bulletin board system (BBS), known as Community Memory, had already appeared by 1973. True electronic bulletin board systems arrived with the Computer Bulletin Board System in Chicago, which first came online on February
2004; YouTube in February 2005; Yahoo! 360° in March 2005; Bebo in July 2005; the text-based service Twitter, in which posts, called "tweets", were limited to 140 characters, in July 2006; Tumblr in February 2007; Instagram in July 2010; and Google+ in July 2011.[24][25][26]
Definition and classification Edit
The variety of evolving stand-alone and built-in social media services makes it challenging to define them.[2] However, marketing and social media experts broadly agree that social media includes the following 13 types of social media:[27]
blogs,
business networks,
collaborative projects,
enterprise social networks,
forums,
microblogs,
photo sharing,
products/services review,
social bookmarking,
social gaming,
social networks,
video sharing, and
virtual worlds.[27]
The idea that social media are defined simply by their ability to bring people together has been seen as too broad, as this would suggest that fundamentally different technologies like the telegraph and telephone are also social media.[28] The terminology is unclear, with some early researchers referring to social media as social networks or social networking services in the mid 2000s.[4] A more recent paper from 2015[2] reviewed the prominent literature in the area and identified four common features unique to then-current social media services:
Social media are Web 2.0 Internet-based applications.[2][3]
User-generated content (UGC) is the lifeblood of the social media organism.[2][3]
Users create service-specific profiles for the site or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization.[2][4]
Social media facilitate the development of online social networks by connecting a user's profile with those of other individuals or groups.[2][4]
In 2019, Merriam-Webster defined "social media" as "forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)"[29]
Classification of social media and overview of how important different types of social media (e.g. blogs) are for each of a company's operational functions (e.g. marketing)[27]
The development of social media started off with simple platforms such as sixdegrees.com.[30] Unlike instant messaging clients, such as ICQ and AOL's AIM, or chat clients like IRC, iChat or Chat Television, sixdegrees.com was the first online business that was created for real people, using their real names. The first social networks were short-lived, however, because their users lost interest. The Social Network Revolution has led to the rise of networking sites. Research[31] shows that the audience spends 22% of their time on social networks, thus proving how popular social media platforms have become. This increase is because of the widespread daily use of smartphones.[32] Social media are used to document memories, learn about and explore things, advertise oneself and form friendships as well as the growth of ideas from the creation of blogs, podcasts, videos, and gaming sites.[33] Networked individuals create, edit, and manage content in collaboration with other networked individuals. This way they contribute to expanding knowledge. Wikis are examples of collaborative content creation.
Mobile social media Edit
The heavy usage of smartphones among young people relates to the significant percentage of social media users who are from this demographic.
Mobile social media refer to the use of social media on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Mobile social media are a useful application of mobile marketing because the creation, exchange, and circulation of user-generated content can assist companies with marketing research, communication, and relationship development.[34] Mobile social media differ from others because they incorporate the current location of the user (location-sensitivity) or the time delay between sending and receiving messages (time-sensitivity). According to Andreas Kaplan, mobile social media applications can be differentiated among four types:[34]
Space-timers (location and time-sensitive): Exchange of messages with relevance mostly for one specific location at one specific point in time (e.g. Facebook Places WhatsApp; Foursquare)
Space-locators (only location sensitive): Exchange of messages, with relevance for one specific location, which is tagged to a certain place and read later by others (e.g. Yelp; Qype, Tumblr, Fishbrain)
Quick-timers (only time sensitive): Transfer of traditional social media mobile apps to increase immediacy (e.g. posting Twitter messages or Facebook status updates)
Slow-timers (neither location nor time sensitive): Transfer of traditional social media applications to mobile devices (e.g. watching a YouTube video or reading/editing a Wikipedia article)
Elements and function Edit
Viral content Edit
Some social media sites have the potential for content posted there to spread virally over social networks. The term is an analogy to the concept of viral infections, which can spread rapidly from person to person. In a social media context, content or websites that are "viral" (or which "go viral") are those with a greater likelihood that users will reshare content posted (by another user) to their social network, leading to further sharing. In some cases, posts containing popular content or fast-breaking news have been rapidly shared and reshared by a huge number of users. Many social media sites provide specific functionality to help users reshare content, such as Twitter's retweet button, Pinterest's pin function, Facebook's share option, or Tumblr's reblog function. Businesses have a particular interest in viral marketing tactics because a viral campaign can achieve widespread advertising coverage (particularly if the viral reposting itself makes the news) for a fraction of the cost of a traditional marketing campaign, which typically uses printed materials, like newspapers, magazines, mailings, and billboards, and television and radio commercials. Nonprofit organizations and activists may have similar interests in posting content on social media sites with the aim of it going viral. A popular component and feature of Twitter is retweeting. Twitter allows other people to keep up with important events, stay connected with their peers, and can contribute in various ways throughout social media.[35] When certain posts become popular, they start to get retweeted over and over again, becoming viral. Hashtags can be used in tweets, and can also be used to take count of how many people have used that hashtag.
Bots Edit
Social media can enable companies to get in the form of greater market share and increased audiences.[36] Internet bots have been developed which facilitate social media marketing. Bots are automated programs that run over the Internet.[37] Chatbots and social bots are programmed to mimic natural human interactions such as liking, commenting, following, and unfollowing on social media platforms.[38] A new industry of bot providers has been created.[39] Social bots and chatbots have created an analytical crisis in the marketing industry[40] as they make it difficult to differentiate between human interactions and automated bot interactions.[40] Some bots are negatively affecting their marketing data causing a "digital cannibalism" in social media marketing. Additionally, some bots violate the terms of use on many social mediums such as Instagram, which can result in profiles being taken down and banned.[41]
"Cyborgs", a combination of a human and a bot,[42][43] are used to spread fake news or create a marketing "buzz".[44] Cyborgs can be bot-assisted humans or human-assisted bots.[45] An example is a human who registers an account for which they set automated programs to post, for instance, tweets, during their absence.[45] From time to time, the human participates to tweet and interact with friends. Cyborgs make it easier to spread fake news, as it blends automated activity with human input.[45] When the automated accounts are publicly identified, the human part of the cyborg is able to take over and could protest that the account has been used manually all along. Such accounts try to pose as real people; in particular, the number of their friends or followers should be resembling that of a real person.
Patents of social media technology Edit
Main article: Software patent
Number of U.S. social network patent applications published and patents issued per year since 2003. The chart shows that the number of software applications published (the green bars) increased steadily from 2003 to 2007, and then shot up from 2008 to 2010.[46]
There has been rapid growth in the number of U.S. patent applications that cover new technologies related to social media, and the number of them that are published has been growing rapidly over the past five years. There are now over 2000 published patent applications.[47] As many as 7000 applications may be currently on file including those that haven't been published yet. Only slightly over 100 of these applications have issued as patents, however, largely due to the multi-year backlog in examination of business method patents, patents which outline and claim new methods of doing business.[48]
Use in hiring Edit
Main article: Social media use in hiring
Photos of college applicants engaging in activities contrary to a school's rules or values can adversely affect admission, as evident from this photo of a 40-year-old crack addict.
Some employers examine job applicants' social media profiles as part of the hiring assessment. This issue raises many ethical questions that some consider an employer's right and others consider discrimination. Many Western European countries have already implemented laws that restrict the regulation of social media in the workplace. States including Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin have passed legislation that protects potential employees and current employees from employers that demand that they provide their usernames and/or passwords for any social media accounts.[76] Use of social media by young people has caused significant problems for some applicants who are active on social media when they try to enter the job market. A survey of 17,000 young people in six countries in 2013 found that 1 in 10 people aged 16 to 34 have been rejected for a job because of online comments they made on social media websites.[77]
Use in school admissions Edit
It is not only an issue in the workplace but an issue in post-secondary school admissions as well. There have been situations where students have been forced to give up their social media passwords to school administrators.[78] There are inadequate laws to protect a student's social media privacy, and organizations such as the ACLU are pushing for more privacy protection, as it is an invasion. They urge students who are pressured to give up their account information to tell the administrators to contact a parent or lawyer before they take the matter any further. Although they are students, they still have the right to keep their password-protected information private.[79]
Before social media,[80] admissions officials in the United States used SAT and other standardized test scores, extra-curricular activities, letters of recommendation, and high school report cards to determine whether to accept or deny an applicant. In the 2010s, while colleges and universities still use these traditional methods to evaluate applicants, these institutions are increasingly accessing applicants' social media profiles to learn about their character and activities. According to Kaplan, Inc, a corporation that provides higher education preparation, in 2012 27% of admissions officers used Google to learn more about an applicant, with 26% checking Facebook.[81] Students whose social media pages include offensive jokes or photos, racist or homophobic comments, photos depicting the applicant engaging in illegal drug use or drunkenness, and so on, may be screened out from admission processes.
Use in law enforcement and investigations Edit
Social media has been used extensively in civil and criminal investigations.[82] It has also been used to assist in searches for missing persons.[83] Police departments often make use of official social media accounts to engage with the public, publicize police activity, and burnish law enforcement's image;[84][85] conversely, video footage of citizen-documented police brutality and other misconduct has sometimes been posted to social media.[85]
In the United States U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement identifies and track individuals via social media, and also has apprehended some people via social media based sting operations.[86] U.S. Customs and Border Protection (also known as CPB) and the United States Department of Homeland Security use social media data as influencing factors during the visa process, and continue to monitor individuals after they have entered the country.[87] CPB officers have also been documented performing searches of electronics and social media behavior at the border, searching both citizens and non-citizens without first obtaining a warrant.[87]
Use in court cases Edit
Social media comments and images are being used in a range of court cases including employment law, child custody/child support and insurance disability claims. After an Apple employee criticized his employer on Facebook, he was fired. When the former employee sued Apple for unfair dismissal, the court, after seeing the man's Facebook posts, found in favor of Apple, as the man's social media comments breached Apple's policies.[88] After a heterosexual couple broke up, the man posted "violent rap lyrics from a song that talked about fantasies of killing the rapper's ex-wife" and made threats against him. The court found him guilty and he was sentenced to jail.[88] In a disability claims case, a woman who fell at work claimed that she was permanently injured; the employer used the social media posts of her travels and activities to counter her claims.[88]
Courts do not always admit social media evidence, in part, because scree
Use by individuals Edit
As a news source Edit
Main article: Social media as a news source
In the United States, 81% of users look online for news of the weather, first and foremost, with the percentage seeking national news at 73%, 52% for sports news, and 41% for entertainment or celebrity news. According to CNN, in 2010 75% of people got their news forwarded through e-mail or social media posts, whereas 37% of people shared a news item via Facebook or Twitter.[105] Facebook and Twitter make news a more participatory experience than before as people share news articles and comment on other people's posts. Rainie and Wellman have argued that media making now has become a participation work,[106] which changes communication systems. However, 27% of respondents worry about the accuracy of a story on a blog.[63] From a 2019 poll, Pew Research Center found that Americans are wary about the ways that social media sites share news and certain content.[107] This wariness of accuracy is on the rise as social media sites are increasingly exploited by aggregated new sources which stitch together multiple feeds to develop plausible correlations. Hemsley, Jacobson et al. refer to this phenomenon as "pseudoknowledge" which develop false narratives and fake news that are supported through general analysis and ideology rather than facts.[108] Social media as a news source is further questioned as spikes in evidence surround major news events such as was captured in the United States 2016 presidential election.[109]
Effects on individual and collective memory Edit
News media and television journalism have been a key feature in the shaping of American collective memory for much of the twentieth century.[110][111] Indeed, since the United States' colonial era, news media has influenced collective memory and discourse about national development and trauma. In many ways, mainstream journalists have maintained an authoritative voice as the storytellers of the American past. Their documentary style narratives, detailed exposes, and their positions in the present make them prime sources for public memory. Specifically, news media journalists have shaped collective memory on nearly every major national event – from the deaths of social and political figures to the progression of political hopefuls. Journalists provide elaborate descriptions of commemorative events in U.S. history and contemporary popular cultural sensations. Many Americans learn the significance of historical events and political issues through news media, as they are presented on popular news stations.[112] However, journalistic influence is growing less important, whereas social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, provide a constant supply of alternative news sources for users.
As social networking becomes more popular among older and younger generations, sites such as Facebook and YouTube, gradually undermine the traditionally authoritative voices of news media. For example, American citizens contest media coverage of various social and political events as they see fit, inserting their voices into the narratives about America's past and present and shaping their own collective memories.[113][114] An example of this is the public explosion of the Trayvon Martin shooting in Sanford, Florida. News media coverage of the incident was minimal until social media users made the story recognizable through their constant discussion of the case. Approximately one month after the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, its online coverage by everyday Americans garnered national attention from mainstream media journalists, in turn exemplifying media activism. In some ways, the spread of this tragic event through alternative news sources parallels that of Emmett Till – whose murder by lynching in 1955 became a national story after it was circulated in African-American and Communist newspapers.
Interpersonal relationships Edit
Modern day teenagers interacting
Social media is used to fulfill perceived social needs, but not all needs can be fulfilled by social media.[115] For example, lonely individuals are more likely to use the Internet for emotional support than those who are not lonely.[116] Sherry Turkle explores these issues in her book Alone Together as she discusses how people confuse social media usage with authentic communication. She posits that people tend to act differently online and are less afraid to hurt each other's feelings. Additionally, studies on who interacts on the internet have shown that extraversion and openness have a positive relationship with social media, while emotional stability has a negative sloping relationship with social media.[117]
Some online behaviors can cause stress and anxiety, due to the permanence of online posts, the fear of being hacked, or of universities and employers exploring social media pages. Turkle also speculates that people are beginning to prefer texting to face-to-face communication, which can contr
Changes in mood Edit
Many teenagers suffer from sleep deprivation as they spend long hours at night on their phones, and this, in turn, could affect grades as they will be tired and unfocused in school. Social media has generated a phenomenon known as " Facebook depression", which is a type of depression that affects adolescents who spend too much of their free time engaging with social media sites. "Facebook depression" leads to problems such as reclusiveness which can negatively damage one's health by creating feelings of loneliness and low self-esteem among young people.[180] At the same time, a 2017 study shows that there is a link between social media addiction and negative mental health effects. In this study, almost 6,000 adolescent students were examined using the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale. 4.5% of these students were found to be "at-risk" of social media addiction. Furthermore, this same 4.5% reported low self-esteem and high levels of depressive symptoms.[181]
UK researchers used a data set of more than 800 million Twitter messages to evaluate how collective mood changes over the course of 24 hours and across the seasons. The research team collected 800 million anonymous Tweets from 33,576 time points over four years, to examine anger and sadness and compare them with fatigue. The "research revealed strong circadian patterns for both positive and negative moods. The profiles of anger and fatigue were found remarkably stable across the seasons or between the weekdays/weekend." The "positive emotions and sadness showed more variability in response to these changing conditions and higher levels of interaction with the onset of sunlight exposure."[182]
Effects on youth communication Edit
Social media has allowed for mass cultural exchange and intercultural communication. As different cultures have different value systems, cultural themes, grammar, and world views, they also communicate differently.[183] The emergence of social media platforms fused together different cultures and their communication methods, blending together various cultural thinking patterns and expression styles.[184][better source needed]
Social media has affected the way youth communicate, by introducing new forms of language. Abbreviations have been introduced to cut down on the time it takes to respond online. The commonly known "LOL" has become globally recognized as the abbreviation for "laugh out loud" thanks to social media.
Another trend that influences the way youth communicates is (through) the use of hashtags. With the introduction of social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, the hashtag was created to easily organize and search for information. Hashtags can be used when people want to advocate for a movement, store content or tweets from a movement for future use, and allow other social media users to contribute to a discussion about a certain movement by using existing hashtags. Using hashtags as a way to advocate for something online makes it easier and more accessible for more people to acknowledge it around the world.[185] As hashtags such as #tbt ("throwback Thursday") become a part of online communication, it influenced the way in which youth share and communicate in their daily lives. Because of these changes in linguistics and communication etiquette, researchers of media semiotics[who?] have found that this has altered youth's communications habits and more.[vague][citation needed]
Social media has offered a new platform for peer pressure with both positive and negative communication. From Facebook comments to likes on Instagram, how the youth communicate, and what is socially acceptable is now heavily based on social media.[citation needed] Social media does make kids and young adults more susceptible to peer pressure. The American Academy of Pediatrics has also shown that bullying, the making of non-inclusive friend groups, and sexual experimentation have increased situations related to cyberbullying, issues with privacy, and the act of sending sexual images or messages to someone's mobile device. On the other hand, social media also benefits the youth and how they communicate.[186] Adolescents can learn basic social and technical skills that are essential in society.[186] Through the use of social media, kids and young adults are able to strengthen relationships by keeping in touch with friends and family, make more friends, and participate in community engagement activities and services.[187]
Social impacts Edit
Disparity Edit
People who live in poverty, such as homeless people, have low levels of access to computers and Internet or a lack of familiarity with these technologies. This means that these marginalized people are not able to use social media tools to find information, jobs, housing, and other necessities.
The digital divide is a measure of disparity in the level of access to technology between households, socioeconomic levels or other demographic categories.[137][138] People who are homeless, living in poverty, elderly people and those living in rural or remote communities may have little or no access to computers and the Internet; in contrast, middle class and upper-class people in urban areas have very high rates of computer and Internet access. Other models argue that within a modern information society, some individuals produce Internet content while others only consume it,[139][140] which could be a result of disparities in the education system where only some teachers integrate technology into the classroom and teach critical thinking.[141] While social media has differences among age groups, a 2010 study in the United States found no racial divide.[142] Some zero-rating programs offer subsidized data access to certain websites on low-cost plans. Critics say that this is an anti-competitive program that undermines net neutrality and creates a "walled garden"[143] for platforms like Facebook Zero. A 2015 study found that 65% of Nigerians, 61% of Indonesians, and 58% of Indians agree with the statement that "Facebook is the Internet" compared with only 5% in the US.[144]
Eric Ehrmann contends that social media in the form of public diplomacy create a patina of inclusiveness that covers[145] traditional economic interests that are structured to ensure that wealth is pumped up to the top of the economic pyramid, perpetuating the digital divide and post-Marxian class conflict. He also voices concern over the trend that finds social utilities operating in a quasi-libertarian global environment of oligopoly that requires users in economically challenged nations to spend high percentages of annual income to pay for devices and services to participate in the social media lifestyle. Neil Postman also contends that social media will increase an information disparity between "winners" – who are able to use the social media actively – and "losers" – who are not familiar with modern technologies or who do not have access to them. People with high social media skills may have better access to information about job opportunities, potential new friends, and social activities in their area, which may enable them to improve their standard of living and their quality of life.
Political polarization Edit
According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans at least occasionally receive news from social media.[146] Because of algorithms on social media which filter and display news content which are likely to match their users’ political preferences, a potential impact of receiving news from social media includes an increase in political polarization due to selective exposure.[147] Political polarization refers to when an individual's stance on a topic is more likely to be strictly defined by their identification with a specific political party or ideology than on other factors. Selective exposure occurs when an individual favors information that supports their beliefs and avoids information that conflicts with their beliefs. A study by Hayat and Samuel-Azran conducted during the 2016 U.S. presidential election observed an "echo chamber" effect of selective exposure among 27,811 Twitter users following the content of cable news shows.[147] The Twitter users observed in the study were found to have little interaction with users and content whose beliefs were different from their own, possibly heightening polarization effects.[147][148]
Efforts to combat selective exposure in social media may also cause an increase in political polarization.[149] A study examining Twitter activity conducted by Bail et al. paid Democrat and Republican participants to follow Twitter handles whose content was different from their political beliefs (Republicans received liberal content and Democrats received conservative content) over a six-week period.[149] At the end of the study, both Democrat and Republican participants were found to have increased political polarization in favor of their own parties, though only Republican participants had an increase that was statistically significant.[149]
Though research has shown evidence that social media plays a role in increasing political polarization, it has also shown evidence that social media use leads to a persuasion of political beliefs.[150][151] An online survey consisting of 1,024 U.S. participants was conducted by Diehl, Weeks, and Gil de Zuñiga, which found that individuals who use social media were more likely to have their political beliefs persuade
