Social media: State of the Art tools for sharing knowledge and reinforcing behavior
Social media have created an alternative world for modern man with new culture for interaction between human beings.
This new world facilitates easier exchange of knowledge and experiences, shared between people around the globe. It also provides for easier expression of one’s opinions, whether in self-expression or in accepting or criticizing others. This ease stems from the absence of face-to-face interactions, convenience of communication irrespective of time and place and the general perception of being beyond the reach of the person negatively criticized.
According to Kennedy, “Social media platforms are central players in the framing of sharing”. They facilitate social, economic, cultural and political engagement using, not only posts to disseminate one’s news and views or to respond to the news and views of others in written form, but also buttons which allow expression of opinion without any use of words.
Buttons, including “share”, “comment”, “like”, “dislike”, “rate”, “follow”, “join” and other similar gadgets provide means for distributing knowledge and experiences to wider, and possibly unlimited, audiences. They also encourage or discourage behaviors as expressed in posts which are liked, disliked or rated, thus reinforcing the positive or negative behavior of the writer of the original post.
Different social media providers have different sets of buttons. For example, the “share”, “comment”, and “like” buttons are found on Facebook, without a “dislike” button. The same is true for LinkedIn and certain other providers. YouTube has a “dislike” button, which one may find useful in sharing feedback related to video content. Such limitations, in Facebook, for example, allows for the encouraging “like” only, but not the discouraging “dislike”, which may be equally important.
Counters on buttons also serve as behavior reinforcement tools. The number of likes and dislikes reinforce the action of the person who liked or disliked a post. The number of followers of a writer on Twitter, for example, reinforce or discourage the writer’s behavior. In this respect, social media serve as an instant and explicit evaluation tool.
Sharing a post, be it a news article, an opinion, a video or any other post, distributes that post to a wider audience within one’s circles. It also provides opportunities for further sharing and as such an unlimited audience for the post being shared. Sharing also means that one has an opinion on what is shared, either positive or negative, even if the shared post is not accompanied by a comment. Certainly, a comment on a shared post clarifies such opinion. “Charles Leadbetter states ‘You are what you share’ ”. (Kennedy, 2013).
Sharing takes many forms and serves different purposes. Social media giants are characterized by specialization. For example, Twitter is used mainly for sharing news and political opinions, while LinkedIn is used to promote the sharing of business related topics. Facebook serves mainly social interaction, but is also widely used for business as a marketing and advertising tool.
Thus, the relationship between social media providers and their users is mutually beneficial. The user derives benefit from sharing his/her news, views and opinions, while social media providers receive more traffic and gain greater value, and subsequently greater revenue. An example of a “like” which promotes marketing is a like of a retailer’s post, as shown at the following link: https://www.facebook.com/ishtari.online/
Sharing posts and opinions on social media has its pros as well as cons. The pros include dissemination of news, knowledge, experience, learning, instant communication with others, and much more. Cons include disseminating content which is false, unwanted or harmful aimed at producing certain behavior or spreading certain misconceptions. An example of a post which promotes learning appears at the following link: https://www.facebook.com/bankingwords/
