Unshading The Conveniences Of a Virtual Country:
Abdoul Aziz Sandotin Coulibaly || University of California, Berkeley || CW R4B — Reading, Composition, and Research||Professor: Michael Larkin
General Facts
****Facebook was created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg.
****The number of monthly active users was estimated at 1.86 billion as of December 31, 2016.
****Among these diverse networking sites stands Facebook, the first on the list of the most used social network services with 768 million more users ahead of the second on the list, Whatsapp
****Mission: giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.
****If Facebook was a country, it would have been the most populated among countries in the World: The Virtual Country.
Research Question
How does Facebook impact or even reshape the evolution of our modern society?
Main Claim
With the increasing complexity of our societal environment, Facebook opens our world to instant connectivity, creates inclusivity, gives an outlet for freedom of expression, and endows affability for human beings’ communication.
Reason 1
Facebook appears as an additional venue for social interaction, opening a virtual channel which provides immediate improvement of our social capital.
— Bonding social capital
- Trust, shared norms, shared values, and shared principles.
- Notion of support such as compassion, empathy, care, and love.
“ People who use Facebook multiple times per day gets about half the boost in total support that someone receives from being married or living with a partner.”
— Bridging social capital
- Facebook provides a platform where people can plan and engage in activities and therefore build vertical social ties.
Facebook users who visit the site multiple times per day is two and a half times more likely to have attended a political rally or meeting, 57 percent more likely to have tried to convince someone else to vote for a specific candidate, and 43 percent more likely to have said they voted or intended to vote.
- The notion of staying in touch with the people when they are far away in the offline world.
In the case of undergraduate students, Facebook allows them—once they graduate from college— to be in contact with their college community.
Reason 2
Facebook is presented and appeared as a gateway for older people to reconquer their ability to engage in social interaction.
— According to The Population Reference Bureau, the number of Americans ages 65 and older is projected to more than double from 46 million today to over 98 million by 2060.
— As a result, 2.3 million will be the number of nursing home residents by 2030.
— T. Byram Karasu, M.D., chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral sciences at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, says“[seniors] are lonely because they are alone, they are put in nursing homes, assisted living communities, etc. Those are totally disorienting experiences. Even when they’re being taken care of by family caregivers, there is often little attention paid to deep, engaging communication between a senior and the rest of the family”
You, Me & TV == Facebook integrated into the TV, which appear as the technological tools mostly used by these categories of the population.
Reason 3
Facebook gives people with disabilities a wider access to appreciate their idiosyncrasies and increase their psychological and social well-being. Indeed, disabled people who mostly face limitations can expand their communication channels and social circles.
— Lorenz, a blind person, confesses that “A lot of people are afraid of the blind,” she explains, “When you meet them in person, there are barriers [but] Facebook lets me control the narrative and break down some of the stigma and show people who I am”. She emphasizes that “It [Facebook] can change hearts and minds. It can make people like me — who are scary — more real and more human”
— Facebook Automatic Alternative Text (Video)
— “The whole saying of pictures being worth a thousand words, I think it’s true unless you have somebody to describe it to you. Even having like three words just helps flush out all the details I can’t see. That makes me feel included like I am part of it” : FEELING OF BELONGINGNESS
Reason 4
In the pursuit of its mission of building a more connected world, Facebook is also redefining the notion of freedom and the notion of self-confidence for the individuals which are whether oppressed under higher authorities.
— The Arab spring, a series of anti-government protests, uprisings and armed rebellions that spread across the Middle East in early 2011.
- After a young man named Khaled Said was beaten to death by police, Wael Ghonim created a Facebook page that galvanized protesters.
“Two minutes after [Ghonim] started his Facebook page, 300 people had joined it. Three months later, that number had grown to more than 250,000”
Reason 5
Facebook facilitates the intercultural adaptation of these international students.
Honeymoon Phase || The crisis phase — often referred to culture shock || The Recovery & Adjustment Phases
— The crisis phase can be defined as the period of time when international students demonstrate hostility and frustration with living in an unfamiliar culture. In that sense.
Facebook allows these international students to engage in online communication with their family and others from an international students home culture which help to reduce acculturative stress.
— Even when they overcome this stage of cultural shock, Facebook still contributes a lot in the phase of recovery & adjustment of international students.
Facebook also appears as an important first point of contact for international students when they are making friends with domestics students at university, creating more host country social ties.