Why Share?
In “Rhetorics of Sharing: Data, Imagination, And Desire”, Jenny Kennedy quotes Manuel Castells, stating, “In our society, the protocols of communication are not based on the sharing of culture, but on the culture of sharing.” Sharing has always played a huge role in social interactions, creating social networks and open communication. In a blogpost on CoSchedule, Garrett Moon traces the reasons behind people sharing, and comes up with 5 reasons behind people sharing, with a huge amount of users (78%) sharing information to “grow and nourish our relationships.” Moreover, 69% of users “share information because it allows them to feel more involved in the world.” Communities are created on the basis of sharing, and society is built by the conscious choices of its citizens to participate in it.
Communication creates community.
In “What is a Critical Introduction to Social Media?”, Fuchs writes, “Communication is a reciprocal process between at least two humans, in which symbols are exchanged and all interaction partners give meaning to these symbols…Communication is a basic feature of all societies and all human activity. We cannot live and survive without communication, just like we cannot survive without food and water.”
Hence, social media has not truly introduced a culture of sharing into the world, but has rather advanced it, with platforms created solely for the purpose of sharing. Social media gets a bad rep, but the truth is that it cannot be anything in and of itself, it’s what people decide to do with it that makes it what it is.
Social media is the pen and paper, we, as users, decide what to write with it.
One must also point out the positive aspects of social media, as it can, “broaden our pool of potential relational partners and leas to new relationships,” (Baym, p.30) Social sharing becomes more accessible, and has a larger reach than ever before. It crosses generations, social class, gender, geographical location, and all other previous barriers to communication. Though it may seem exclusive to able-bodied people with some sort of access to the internet (hence, some sort of disposable income), social media is largely used by people who had previously been unable to participate in “sharing culture”. In one viral tweet, it was discovered by people at large that there is a lot of users on Twitter who are blind, and that the platform has enabled them to be able to participate.
However, this is a simplistic and idealistic way of looking at sharing on social media. Firstly, we must address the presumed global access to the internet. This presumption of a universal availability of high-speed, stable connections is toxic as it excludes a huge amount of people who have no means of entry into what we now deem the most important mode of communication.
Is the internet then, as subversive as we think it is?
According to ahumanright.org, “4.6 billion people live without Internet access”. That’s 68% of the population of the planet. At the same time, Kennedy notes that, “Using social media platforms is equated with being a valid member of society, such that newspaper journalist Catherine Bennett stated ‘Facebook use is now considered so overwhelmingly the norm that employers are more likely than not to consider documented history of online poking, boasting and friending to be a com- forting sign of socialisation and professionalism’.”
Looking further into the structure of social media, one must attempt to find the power structures at play. A social media platform isn’t just that, it actively participates in our sharing, the pen and paper we’re handed now have agency over what we write with them. Who decides how popular what we share is? Who decides when others see it? And in what context? To whom does our content belong? “Sharing is a political construct. Sharing content raises questions about the ‘owner- ship’ of that content which points to the fact that while the internet may be built within a cohesive technological framework, there are distinct (political) divisions within sites between policies for users, providers, and data handlers.” (Kennedy, p.133) These blurred lines when it comes to ownership of both content and our identities as users. In search of finding an internet catered to us, we’ve completely lost our privacy and selfhood. One striking example of that is Facebook’s recurrent outing of queer users due to its advertising algorithm, according to The Daily Mail.
From the very first cave drawings, to the latest viral tweet, humankind has evolved on a culture of sharing and social interaction, and the two cannot be separated. We must, however, be constantly aware of who our sharing is benefiting, and to whom it is a disservice. Social media does not exist alone, we create it and change it into what it becomes, and as education on social media grows, so will our awareness of its problems and limitations.
Bibliography:
Fuchs. (n.d.). What is a Critical Introduction to Social Media?
Kennedy, J. (2013). Unlike us reader: social media monopolies and their alternatives. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures.
MailOnline, N. F. (2010, October 22). Facebook ‘accidentally outing gay users’ to outside firms through targeted ads. Retrieved February 08, 2018, from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1322916/Facebook-accidentally-outing-gay-users-advertisers.html
Moon, G. (2017, January 26). Why People Share: The Psychology of Social Sharing. Retrieved February 08, 2018, from https://coschedule.com/blog/why-people-share/
B. (2010). Personal Connections in the Digital Age. Polity Press.
Right, A. H. (n.d.). Everyone Connected. Retrieved February 08, 2018, from http://ahumanright.org/
