What is SOCIAL about Social Media ?
The development of social media in the web 2.0 as a revolutionary system, its role as a social platform and its social impact are major points we might not consider or think of when using social media in our daily life.
Social Networks are part of the WEB 2.0 wave of online content and services
Social networks have several basements of the WEB 2.0 like using a platform to write content instead of creating your own website and sharing content more than creating your own. The most famous social networks, on a global level, are Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Many argue to add WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and YouTube to the list while others perceive them as slightly different. Many experts list YouTube as a social network for it has all the major aspects while Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp lack many:
First, a homepage that is determined by the content you’re interested in whether by subscribing to it manually and giving the website access to your web history and letting them know your preferences.
Second, the majority of the videos on YouTube are uploaded by average users not companies. However, thanks to their copyrights-protection algorithm, companies get paid if an individual post a video that they legally own.
Third, the website gives us the option the like/dislike and comment under the video. Moreover, we can discuss things related to the YouTube Channel or user in a section called “discussion”.
Forth, every user has a personalized profile that showcases videos they posted as well as videos that they saved in their playlists, liked and interacted with. On the profile we can also find a basic description about the user and his other social media account. This profile can be used as a digital identity which reinforces to social network idea.
Messaging applications allow content creation and sharing between individuals and groups but don’t explore the material to a public of millions of users or followers. There is a limit of 256 people to whom you can send a “Broadcast message” at the same time on WhatsApp. The limit is the same for the maximum participants of a group. Therefore, the application limits your abilities.
Who is a SOCIAL social media user ?
Being social on social media can be explained by the three E’s of Mike Allton, writer of “The Unofficial Book On Hootsuit: The #1 Tool for Social Media Management”
First, educating other people by posting content related to your experience or expertise or in other words “sharing knowledge”. Around 25% of verified Twitter users are journalists. Instead of having to look for a trustworthy article around the web, one can get it on his Twitter app and even get a “push notification” for it similar to the breaking news of IMPORTANT events on TV. Also, we can follow any expert (medicine, sciences, arts, psychology and so on) on Twitter to see their feeds and benefit from their shared material as well as their created content.
Second, entertaining people by letting them relate to you and get to know you personally. People like to know more about private lives and that is the main reason behind the success of “Keeping Up with The Kardashians” Show. However, when you can get private lives exposed for free online, why bother follow up on a paid TV Channel? Although the Kardashian are earning a lot of money out of social media, these networks were the main reason behind the dropped audience. The Kardashian might have years of fame of advantage but today any other person with an “interesting” private life can become almost as popular.
Third, be engaged by keeping in touch with your online community, thanking people, commenting on their content and so on. You’re responsible for what you tweet, and you’re expected to be updated to everything happening. In 2017, many fans and colleagues were blaming Taylor Swift for not taking part in activist movement against gender inequality and islamophobia. Despite being relatively active, the singer chose to tweet things related to her album and music videos on these days.
People who succeed in fulfilling the requirements and be “interesting” can have a direct or indirect income making from social media a rewarding investment. Many professionals become very famous thanks to their social media activity but also many influencers receive offers of advertising on their social media account which is a form of income in direct relation to the social medium. The influencers are famous social media personas who usually are only known for their online activity regardless of their professional life.
Many people aren’t getting any direct reward or income from social media. Today we might ask ourselves if social media has become an addiction. Well, according to numbers, Instagram hasn’t. On an average, Instagram is used on mostly used on weekdays at 8 am, 5pm and 1am. That makes us believe that people are using the app to escape from their serious work environment on weekdays before their work and after it and also before a dreamy night. However, the use of Instagram is relatively low on Weekend which proves the remaining priority of “real” activities over social networking on long vacations. Approximately 391 million users on Twitter don’t have followers and an important number of them don’t tweet or reply to anyone. These people are only there to observe, have fun, get educated but don’t want to feel responsible towards the engagement.
Social Media and Protest Behavior:
As we mentioned above, Taylor Swift was blamed for not participating in social and political campaigns but do these online campaigns really matter? A study by Valenzuela S. (2013) helps to prove the relation between social media and protest behavior.
The use of social media can be divided into a use for opinion expression, news and activism. All of these different uses might lead to a protest index and indirectly linking any use of social media to a probably engagement and nourishment of a protest.
Many protests symbolize the important role of social media such as “The Arab Spring”. Twitter was a platform for the protestors to communicate and share information more easily. However, researcher Evgeny Morozov, specialized in political and social implications of technology says
“Cyber-utopians who believe the Arab spring has been driven by social networks ignore the real-world activism underpinning them” (2011).
That leaves us with a critical thinking towards social media as an important revolutionary tool that might be over-rated when it comes to “real” sociopolitical revolutions.
References:
This article is a slightly modified (adapted) assignment requested at the Lebanese American University.
