Think Piece on Ch. 1- Social media, Journalism, and Participatory Culture and My Sports Psychology Social Media Story Idea

It is important to note that before I read chapter one, I thought I knew a lot about social media, but I was wrong. This chapter brought up many topics about social media I believe the class would find amusing and are relevant to my story topic. An interesting question that was posed right off the bat was: If someone is alone on their phone posting something on social media, is it still social if you are alone? Fuchs notes that other people say that not all media is social, but only those that support communication between humans. Communication is a reciprocal process between at least two humans, so sharing photos to your 2k followers on Instagram then is not technically communicating with anyone but your cell phone.

For my topic, I would like to tell a story through various social media platforms- such as Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook in regards to the topic of student athletes mental health- if there are enough resources available for students who are often overwhelmed with classes, workouts, and their mental health as a whole.

How To Really Understand Social Media

Because I am this story is going to be shot using social media, I figured I should read up on the history behind social media and learn all that I can. I learned that understanding social media critically means, among other things, to engage with the different forms of sociality on the Internet in the context of society.

Here are the most frequently accessed websites in 2000:MSN, Yahoo, Excite, AOL, Microsoft, Daum, eBay and Alta vista.

Now here are the most accessed websites in the world back in 2013: Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo!, Baidu, Wikipedia, Windows Live, QQ, Amazon and Twitter, Blogspot, LinkedIn, Wordpress.

Overall, the biggest difference is that these platforms now include social networking sites (Facebook, LinkedIn), video sharing sites (YouTube), blogs (Blogspot, Wordpress), wikis (Wikipedia) and microblogs (Twitter, Weibo) Back in the year 2000, social media was hardly existent. Twitter did was not created until 2006, LinkedIn 2002, Facebook 2004, Instagram 2010 and Snapchat 2012!( Fuchs)

I found this information both interesting and eye-opening because I have never heard of social websites such as Daum and Alta vista ….yet to my surprise that was a popular form of “social media” back in the day.

In order for my story to come across in a way that will be appealing and help the class learn about my topic of choice, I must learn how to critically think when social media is involved.

Critical Thinking …what is it and why does it matter?

Critical Thinking is having power- Power has to do with who controls society, who is taking important decisions, who owns basic resources, who is considered as being influential, who has the reputation to influence and change society, who is an opinion maker, or who defines dominant norms, rules and values( Fuchs).

When critically thinking about my story idea- I did some researching for who would be someone helpful to interview that may be a professional in their field. I found a man named Chris Bader, the Counseling & Sport Psychologist for CU’s Athletic Department. In this case, Mr. Bader has power and influence as he has been known to help student athletes lives here at CU.

On the topic of power, in relation to chapter one, the author asks who is the powerful person behind inventing the all-mighty internet? There were several men who together had inventions and ideas that eventually what is now called the Internet-but Fuchs notes that Karl Marxs was one of the first philosophers and sociologists of technology in modern society. Although social media was non-existent in Marxs’ day, he stressed the importance of the concept of the social: he highlighted that phenomena in society (such as money, the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) do not simply exist, but are the outcome of social relations between human beings(Fuchs).

Marxs’ is completely right, popular forms of social media, that were certainly not existent in his day, create social interactions every hour of our lives. According to www.statists.com, 81 percent of U.S. Americans had a social media profile in 2017, representing a five percent growth compared to the previous year. This statistic tells me that as social media continues to grow more popular around the US and world, the way people communicate through social media and face to face will continue to develop as time goes on.

Therefore, society and the media are open for change and contain the possibility of a better future, and by the way we see social media advance everyday- it will continue to advance and help create a better future.Fuchs notes that if we want to understand what is social about social media, then reading Marx can help us a lot.

Works Cited

Fuchs, Christian. “Social Media: A Critical Introduction What Is a Critical Introduction to Social Media?” Christian Fuchs RSS, Sage Books, 23 Jan. 2014, fuchs.uti.at/books/social-media-a-critical-introduction/.