What is “social” about Social Media?
Many people have the misconception that social media started with Facebook in 2004. Yet, it has actually originated in 1997 with a website called Six Degrees where It allowed users to create a profile and then friend other users on it (Hale, 2015). Then, later came along Web 2.0 in late 2004. According to Graham (2006), Web 2.0 is a weird phase. It began as the name of a conference. And since then it has taken on a meaning. Web 2.0 is not a technology, it is an attitude (O’Reilly 2005). With “Web 2.0”, business has come to understand the internet as a place where people and organizations engage with each other in a “conversation”. It represents an important shift away from mass media conceptualizations of audiences and a re-imagining of the internet user (Hinton & Hjorth, 2014). Web 2.0 is a term that is fundamentally derived from the logic of capitalism, marketing and commercialization. It has made it easy for anyone to publish information on the internet. This was visible when comparing web 2.0 to web 1.0. Web 1.0 only allowed you to read and watch content. While Web 2.0 was more concerned with providing users with the means for producing and distributing content (Hinton & Hjorth, 2014).
The upsurge of social media in the 21st century revolutionized the way people perceive media. Media was no longer only television, radio or press. It was no longer one-to-one producer of information. It has become a many-to-many mean of communication where users are no longer passive. In fact, they have now become active as they are both consumers and producers of information. With the ability of giving feedback, liking, commenting and sharing, users have turned from being simply audiences to communicators who can voice their opinion.
When creating social media, the main purpose was to connect with other people and turning the world into a smaller village where people can communicate with each other no matter the distance. Yet, who knew that with this communication tool, governments can fall apart, and politics can change. Social media has played a significant role in triggering the Arab spring. It all started in Tunisia in 2011 when protests broke out and were documented on Facebook and Twitter. Social media helped spread the word faster and influenced other Arab countries to start their own revolution. During the dictatorship of Ben Ali in Tunisia, YouTube was banned, and freedom of speech did not exist in the Tunisian culture. Thanks to the Jasmine Revolution, the ban on YouTube was removed and Tunisians were finally allowed to speak their mind and voice their opinions. This was mostly done on Facebook and Twitter and was seen by all generations, whether young or old, all Tunisians were participating in the real revolution which was on the street and in the virtual revolution which was on the internet by sharing and commenting.
Social media allows direct exchange of info by also allowing communication and building communities. However, social media comes with a dilemma that assess the user as a controller or as being controlled. When you are in charge of your page and have full control over what you are publishing on the internet, it gives you power of being in complete control of what you want to share with others, meaning, you are in control. However, on the other hand, whatever platform you are using will be in access of all your information and will be in control of your page. Thus, you are being controlled. Yet, this has not stopped people from sharing even after being aware that their privacy is being invaded. Users still take advantage of a free platform to socialize with friends or even strangers.
This is where the question gets posed of how social can social media be? Think of how many friends you have on Facebook? Now do you really know them all? How many times have you passed by someone you know over Facebook but put your head down before making eye contact rather than saying hi? Now, does that really make you social?
Think of all the people hiding behind their computer screen or their phones socializing with other people and sometimes portraying a completely different image of themselves on social media while in reality, they act completely different. How does it make you social if you spend more time on your phone socializing with people rather then actually meeting them face to face? Now, social media can be helpful for certain people, such as introverts, as it can be a way for them express themselves online in a way where they cannot do so in real life.
To conclude, the evolution of social media throughout time has been quite remarkable as it has caused a lot of changes in society whether political, economic or social. Social media has been taken up around the globe at an unprecedented speed, revealing the extraordinary nature of the social media phenomenon (Boyd, 2015). Some people have become very reliable on social media to the point where they cannot spend an hour without checking their phone to scroll down their social media feeds. Others, depend on social media to keep up with the latest news or trends. While, there are people who only have accounts on social media because they feel pressured by society in order to fit in. Yet, we can all agree that the creation of social media has made quite a remarkable change in the virtual and real world.
References
Hinton, S., & Hjorth, L. (2013). Understanding social media. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Hale, B. (2015) The History of Social Media: Social Networking Evolution! (2017, February 26). Retrieved February 07, 2018, from http://historycooperative.org/the-history-of-social-media/
