Are you what you share?
What is sharing? According to any dictionary, to share is to to use, participate in, enjoy, receive, etc., jointly and to divide, apportion or to receive equally. When you’re sharing you’re doing something good, thus sharing is a positive act. There’s a known moto in most of the societies that says “sharing is caring” because when you share what you have or love, it represents the good deeds in you. Therefore, societies through out the history tried to maintain cultures of sharing through breeding individuals since day one on the importance of sharing because they knew that it is what would keep them going and humanly alive, they knew that societies would not maintain strong if there were no sharing going on between there people.
When you share, you might share your thoughts, old or new ideas, believes, judgments, things you’ve learned or know, views, life concepts and stories you. Whether they were wrong or right, negative or positive, good or bad its all about giving and giving promotes a sense of cooperation between individuals in every society.
But, things have changed. The technological revolution was successful enough to change values and standards of different cultures. Values, standards and principles are now replaced with new and modern ones. One of these redesigned values is sharing, it went from being physical to digital since social media platforms were born such as Facebook and Myspace reaching to Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter. Social media platforms employ the term sharing by using its association to predated activities, claiming to better enable such sharing by buying into existing vernacular yet paradoxically also masking the idea that it was ever possible to do any form of sharing before their existence. (Kennedy)
Social Media platforms came with numerous activities their users could do like being able to express their opinions through social bottoms. What are social bottoms? Social bottoms are bottoms placed beneath every post shared on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter Tumblr and etc. They’re shaped according to its meaning. For example, if you want to like something you click on the bottoms up bottom, if you want to follow/add/join someone you click on the cross(add) bottom and if you want to share/retweet you click on the moving arrow bottom. These bottoms may seem friendly and nice but beneath them lies the changing of traditional functions and meanings of each act. For example, our parents have taught us since the very first to act wisely and have good manners because you’re what you do, but now you’re what you like. The things you like or share on social media platforms now represent you as an individual. According to Yochai Benkler (2004), you’re what you share. So if you follow George Galloway, like or share one of his posts on his Twitter or Facebook account it means that you support his ideas and political views
. Another example is that when a couple breaks up they both immediately unfollow each other, thus unfollowing someone on social media platforms is equivalent to removing him/her from your life.
Social media bottoms became so important in our lives that we’ve started counting the numbers of likes/favorites/retweets we receive from people. The higher the number of likes was, the more satisfied we feel. So according to that people started choosing what to post on social media platforms carefully in order to get more likes and attention as if the number of likes decides your social rank. For example, personally, I would not post a photo of me on Instagram if my outfit wasn’t on point
. or I wouldn’t share on Facebook a post randomly before checking if it was good enough to be posted. Another thing is that each medium has its way of dealing with it. For example, on Snapchat I regularly post anything that I want to share but on Facebook my freedom of choice becomes limited because of the people I have them as friends.
In our society, the protocols of communication are not based on the sharing of culture, but on the culture of sharing’. (Manuel Castells, 2009)
The limited functionality of like/share buttons narrow the values and expectations expressed through sharing in the past because back then sharing wasn’t about impressing people, getting their attentions or getting appreciations (likes). You share to care, but nowadays what part of “care” can we spot in what we share on social media platforms? Its all for the individuals benefit and name.
All of these things we are able to do and do on social media platforms seems to be helpful in maintaining relationships between families and people. But realistically, we are just innocent victims of the marketers. “These functions of sharing are discursively framed as practices of socializing, network- ing, or navigating.” (Kenendy, Unlike Us Reader)
Social media platforms explicitly and strategically position sharing within a culture of participation, they position themselves as enabling this sharing for the purpose of community development, engagement, and creativity. Tensions exist between the statements of these sites and the expectations of the users. As curators of publicly generated content, these providers also shape what content exists. They curate not only content but the discourses around that content. (Kenendy, Unlike Us Reader)
According to Kenendy, Jessica Litman spots sharing as a form of “anarchic volunteerism” where “un- tamed” sharing of digital information, files, and communication is more effective than paid subscriptions or hard copy distribution. In ‘hive-minded’ gift economies re- sources are exchanged through unspecified obligations with an expectation of satis- faction in participation.
When it comes to me, sharing digitally on platforms added new functions and meanings to an essential social activity. It produced users to a new sharing criteria such as what you’re wearing in that photo you’ve represents the fashion-insta in you, or what you’ve retweeted represents your philosophies. This does affect the society of sharing at last because sharing is not sharing for caring anymore but its sharing for bragging.
