The power of Social Media
It is a well known fact that Social media has become an important aspect of our everyday life. It is impacting our lives extensively. People use various forms of new media to share and receive information. The power of social media can be used constructively by educating people or use destructively by misleading information. Now that the introduction of internet and the concept of global village has become a reality, it is necessary to understand various effects of social media on different areas such as sociology, education and politics.
Before exploring the effects of social media is it necessary to understand the definition of social media. ‘The term social media refer to internet-based applications that promote social interaction between participants’ (Page, 2011, p.5) As the above statement suggest, social media is a product of internet based applications which different social groups and individuals uses to construct social groups and online identities. Examples for social media are social networking sites, discussion forums, podcasting video sharing sites and blogs. Social media is clearly different from mass media. Mass media is considered as a one-to-many broadcasting system. But social media distribute content through a network or a community of participants. Any of the users can publish information to a large audience. These are some of the distinguish characteristics of social media.
Social media has influenced the society broadly. It gives people the ability to connect constantly with both friends and family. The internet was earlier used by university sector to share information and advance research. But it has now been used mostly for commercial purposes. Digitisation has allowed information technology, communication networks and content (media) to become one (Flew, 2005). Internet based applications and websites such as Facebook, Youtube and Skype allows users to share content with the whole world as a result of digitisation. However there are powerful consequences of sharing personal information with a large audience. Dominant groups behind social media websites can use this information for their benefits. Data mining is an example of this. ‘Data mining is when companies collect and sort the information in our online user’s profiles and sell the results to commercial and public organisations, including governments’ (Warren, 2012, p149). Every personal detail of social media users are recorded by data mining companies for the purpose of selling information to governments and other commercial companies. Three of the biggest data-miners are ChoicePoint, Axiom and Experian. And now these companies are entering ton to commercial arrangements to sell data back to the US government the FBI and CIA (Warren, 2012). Social media is a great way of receiving and sharing information. However people risk their privacy without knowing. Commercial companies use this information for their marketing campaigns. Security agencies and Governments have more power over the society having critical information. Social media has affected people’s privacy allowing those powerful social media groups to have control over information.
Reference
Flew, T 2005, New media: An introduction, 2nd edn, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne.
Page, RE 2011, Stories and Social Media: Identities and Interaction, Taylor and Francis publishers, New York.
Warren, B 2012, ‘Constructed reality: What’ ‘real’ Nowadays?’ in Communication, New Media and Everyday Life, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne.
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