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Social media

 
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Social media

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Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content"[1]. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM). Social media utilization is believed to be a driving factor in the idea that the current period in time will be defined as the Attention Age.

Social media can be said to have three components;

  1. Concept (art, information, or meme).
  2. Media (physical, electronic, or verbal).
  3. Social interface (intimate direct, community engagement, social viral, electronic broadcast or syndication, or other physical media such as print).

Common forms of social media;

  • Concepts, slogans, and statements with a high memory retention quotient, that excite others to repeat.
  • Grass-Roots direct action information dissemination such as public speaking, installations, performance, and demonstrations.
  • Electronic media with 'sharing', syndication, or search algorithm technologies (includes internet and mobile devices).
  • Print media, designed to be re-distributed.
Contents

Distinction from industrial media

Social media are distinct from industrial media, such as newspapers, television, and film. While social media are relatively inexpensive and accessible tools that enable anyone (even private individuals) to publish or access information, industrial media generally require significant resources to publish information. Examples of industrial media issues include a printing press or a government-granted spectrum license.

"Industrial media" are commonly referred to as "traditional", "broadcast" or "mass" media.

One characteristic shared by both social media and industrial media is the capability to reach small or large audiences; for example, either a blog post or a television show may reach zero people or millions of people. The properties that help describe the differences between social media and industrial media depend on the study. Some of these properties are:

  1. Reach - both industrial and social media technologies provide scale and enable anyone to reach a global audience.
  2. Accessibility - the means of production for industrial media are typically owned privately or by government; social media tools are generally available to anyone at little or no cost.
  3. Usability - industrial media production typically requires specialized skills and training. Most social media do not, or in some cases reinvent skills, so anyone can operate the means of production.
  4. Recency - the time lag between communications produced by industrial media can be long (days, weeks, or even months) compared to social media (which can be capable of virtually instantaneous responses; only the participants determine any delay in response). As industrial media are currently adopting social media tools, this feature may well not be distinctive anymore in some time.
  5. Permanence - industrial media, once created, cannot be altered (once a magazine article is printed and distributed changes cannot be made to that same article) whereas social media can be altered almost instantaneously by comments or editing.

Community media constitute an interesting hybrid of industrial and social media. Though community-owned, some community radios, TV and newspapers are run by professionals and some by amateurs. They use both social and industrial media frameworks.

In his 2006 book The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, Yochai Benkler analyzed many of these distinctions and their implications in terms of both economics and political liberty. However, Benkler, like many academics, uses the neologism network economy or "network information economy" to describe the underlying economic, social, and technological characteristics of what has come to be known as "social media".

Andrew Keen criticizes social media[citation needed] in his book The Cult of the Amateur, writing, "Out of this anarchy, it suddenly became clear that what was governing the infinite monkeys now inputting away on the Internet was the law of digital Darwinism, the survival of the loudest and most opinionated. Under these rules, the only way to intellectually prevail is by infinite filibustering."[2]

Examples

Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking. Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms like Mybloglog and Plaxo.

Examples of social media software applications include[citation needed]:

Communication
Collaboration
Multimedia
Reviews and opinions
Entertainment
Other

See also

References

  1. ^ Kaplan Andreas M., Haenlein Michael, (2010), Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media, Business Horizons, Vol. 53, Issue 1, p. 59-68.
  2. ^ Keen, Andrew, The Cult of the Amateur, Random House, p. 15, ISBN 9780385520812 
  3. ^ Golder, Scott; Huberman, Bernardo A. (2006), "Usage Patterns of Collaborative Tagging Systems", Journal of Information Science 32 (2): 198–208, doi:10.1177/0165551506062337, http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl/papers/tags/tags.pdf 

Further reading

  • Benkler, Yochai (2006). The Wealth of Networks. New Haven: Yale University Press
  • Gentle, Anne (2009). [ISBN 978-0-9822191-1-9 Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation]. Fort Collins: XML Press. ISBN 978-0-9822191-1-9. 
  • Johnson, Steven (2005). Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. New York: Riverhead Books
  • Kaplan Andreas M., Haenlein Michael, (2010), Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media, Business Horizons, Vol. 53, Issue 1, p. 59-68.
  • Li, Charlene, Bernoff, Josh (2008). Groundswell, Winning in a world transformed by social technologies. Boston: Harvard Business
  • Scoble, Robert, Israel, Shel (2006). Naked Conversations: How Blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers. New York: Wiley & Sons
  • Shirky, Clay (2008). [ISBN 978-0143114949 Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations]. New York: Penguin. ISBN 978-0143114949. 
  • Surowiecki, James (2005). The Wisdom of Crowds. New York: Anchor Books. 
  • Williams, Anthony D. (2006). [ISBN 978-1591841937 Wikinomics, How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything]. New York: Portfolio. ISBN 978-1591841937. 

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

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