The Age of Connection and Competition
Social media sites are currently replacing two important things: face to face communication and newspapers.
I use Twitter and Instagram the most in terms of social media. To me, these apps are a way to communicate with friends and family that I don’t see often because I am away at college or they live far away. These apps allow me to maintain connections with the most important people in my life.
In addition to this, I also use these apps as a way to see what is going on in the world, and what people outside of my friend groups are talking about, in a much larger, global scale. So, while I get a lot of my news from Twitter and other sites. However, I also make sure to add a healthy amount of skepticism to every story I read on social media. I think it is important to be aware of what is more credible news, and what might be untrustworthy. Since anyone can be an author on social media, it is a lot easier to post fake stories and make them appear credible. For this reason, I mainly use Twitter to see what people are talking about and what stories are trending, and if one catches my eye, I go on Google to further investigate what the truth might be about a particular story.
I believe that these social media apps are sticking around and replacing certain forms of communication and news is because social media sites are constantly being refreshed and updated in order to give the most up to date, current information on any topic that you are interested in. There is such a variety of topics that could be discussed on social media, that anyone can find their niche or find a space that they feel connected with.
Another reason is that they are accessible, located in your phone that can fit in your back pocket. Now people do not have to actively search for their friends or the nearest newspaper, they can just reach into their pockets and instantly communicate with millions of other people within seconds.
I believe that this has a lot to do with motivation, like Shirky explains in Cognitive Surplus. Since there are large groups of like-minded people on these social media websites, many are motivated by other users to contribute similar content, keeping the apps relevant to people’s lives.
Social media apps serve as a places “where people [can] come together, share their ideas and goals, and egg each other on” (Shirky 69). People are motivated by their peers to contribute new and interesting content about their lives, thoughts, or beliefs in order to be considered a part of a larger, global, community of people. This would not be possible outside of the Internet. Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that people naturally want to be considered a part of something, no matter what that group may be. For this reason, we are motivated online to contribute to share our thoughts on the news and trending topics that we see on our timelines or to share pictures or stories about the vacation we went on or anything else that is currently going on in our lives. Because of this motivation to share, the apps continue to thrive and maintain their place in out culture.
There is also an element of competition among sharing. Many people want the most likes, the most retweets, or the most interesting content, so there is a competition to continually post and utilize the social media sites to see who can get the most attention.
This is how sharing can be considered a type of motivation. When we retweet or comment on someone’s original post, it is because we feel motivated to display our thoughts and feelings about the subject to a larger audience. Or, that we feel motivated to make ourselves known in a world that has a sea of authors. We try to share anything we can in order to be seen or stick out.
On the other side, information control is also a another example of motivation, because when we know that our information can be viewed and interpreted by millions of people, we tend to manipulate and change our message in order for it to be accepted by other people, but have it still maintain a certain degree of privacy. We may only tell parts of the truth or keep large sections of stories to ourselves. We control the information we choose to share on social media in order to keep some of ourselves private. This information control motivates the way we display the messages that we share online. It determines how much or how little we actually allow the public to see, and how much of it actually is truthful.
Overall, social media is fueled by the need to be a part of a larger community and will continue to expand and replace face to face communication and news sources because it is faster and provides more freedom in terms of what can be discussed.
Sources:
Shirky, Clay. Cognitive Surplus. New York, Penguin Books, 2010.
