How have social buttons changed the function and meaning of sharing ?
What is sharing? In fact, this question is becoming very frequently asked; Is it when I give my friend piece of my sandwich so that we can both enjoy it together? Is it when I brag to my mom about a fun day I had at university? Is it when I update my status on Facebook? Funny that it can be all of the above. To begin, the concept of sharing has evolved throughout history, where in every era, this act carried a specific meaning in order to lead to a specific goal. In the very beginning, we shared our most basic resources in order to survive, such as food, shelter, land and much more. Following the rise of different cultures, the meaning of this concept evolved to sharing information, knowledge, and data, in order to enlighten the rest of the world about the existence of glorious traditions and norms coming from different parts of he world, which is exactly the reason we are still aware of wars and civilizations that date back to more than thousands of years. Today, with the rise of the world wide web and the various technologies, the concept of sharing is no longer materialistic; every person has access to different platforms to share his thoughts, opinions and photos, in order to eventually create a hive-minded community, where a group of people with similarities act as a community even if they’ve never seen each other, as Zuckerberg cited: “By giving people the power to share, we’re making the world more transparent”.
This tweet by The independent magazine shows that even with the buzz that social media has created to implement new concepts and to stay updated about the recent news and events, social media has enabled the younger generations to discover important historical movements that are still echoing, such as the case of Feminism.
In addition, social media added new features and buttons, in order to engage people more into what’s occurring around them like writing reviews, commenting, liking posts, following pages, joining groups of their interests, and much more. However the real question is: What do we actually mean when we like or dislike anything posted on social media? Some may argue that people like something if they’re interested in it, maybe a post about a revolution happening somewhere, or even a picture of the Eiffel Tower. By liking, commenting, following, people get to express their ideas and opinions around any subject limitlessly. In Fact, the use of social media has emphasized lately especially for movements, marches, and revolutions in order to reach more people worldwide, such as the Occupy Movement as an example, as cited: “The use of social media for responding to emergencies and creating situational awareness has risen in recent years” (Qu, Huang, Zhang, & Zhang, 2011; Starbird & Palen, 2012). From that perspective, we may predict that communities that carry messages and wish to spread them worldwide , such as feminist movements, funding programs, or even aiding campaigns are the ones benefitting the most from the effect of social media, that is because the word is spread faster and further, reaching a huge amount of people within minutes, as cited “Social networking sites have been actively used to solicit support for resources to aid affected victims during disasters” (Vieweg, Hughes, Starbird, & Palen, 2010). This picture shown below was posted by Blake Lively emphasizes the point stated previously, where through this post, Blake is inviting her audience to donate for the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund against inequality and sexual harassment toward women.
On the other hand, it can also be said that the limited functionality of like, share, and comment buttons have undermined the values we try to express when we exchange these things for free, especially due to the fact that these days, followers and shares are counted, which affects the content of what we post and to whom we post it. To further explain, the buttons we press on social media today in order to react to a certain content, don’t necessarily express our true feelings towards what is posted, the act of “liking” a post, has become meaningless at some point where people might like someone’s post just to get likes in return, because nowadays, a person’s value is measured by the amount of followers he has or the amount of likes he gets on his posts, and that itself affects the content posted in order to be more noticed. For example, a picture of a bikini model will automatically get more likes than a post about the benefits of reading books. This shows that the culture of sharing on social media is being affected, where people are generally posting things that catch the eye of the public even if doesn’t concern their interests, here, the superficial effect of social media is exposed, where people’s values are diminishing the more they use these platforms.
To conclude, we can certainly confirm that the culture of sharing is evolving to this day especially with the rise of social media, accompanied with the features it contains such as following, sharing, and liking buttons. These features, despite their importance in helping communities express themselves, have had a negative effect by diminishing our values and making them more superficial through our content. However, it is our job, as wise individuals, to determine the way we share, and to whom we do so, after all, the more information is shared, the more powerful we become.
References:
Qu, Y., Huang, C., Zhang, P., Zhang, J. (2011). Microblogging after a major disaster in China: A case study of the 2010 Yushu earthquake.
Vieweg, S., Hughes, A. L., Starbird, K., & Palen, L. (2010). Microblogging during two natural hazards events: what twitter may contribute to situational awareness (pp. 1079–1088). Atlanta, Georgia, USA: ACM.
Mark Zuckerberg ( 2009) the SXSW Conference. Cited in www.wired.com
