CHAPTER 13

Social Media

“To get the most from social platforms we need to know what they do best.”

—Nandini Dias COO, Lodestar UM

INTRODUCTION

People’s longing for feeling the comfort of being connected with one another has always been there. So they communicate, using whatever medium they have—images or words. Even Caveman, our ancestors of Bronze Age used social networks. They can be considered pre-historic versions of the contemporary Facebook. Some British scientists ‘claim to have discovered a pre-historic version of Facebook’ used by Bronze Age tribes to communicate with each other. ‘Studying thousands of images scrawled across two granite rock sites in Russia and Sweden, a Cambridge University team of scientists claimed the ‘sites were like an archaic version’ of the social networks where users shared thoughts and emotions and gave stamps of approval to other contributors—similar to the Facebook “like” ’.¹

These Cambridge scientists believe that ‘there’s clearly something quite special about these spaces’.² According to Mark Sapwell, one of team researchers, people went there because they knew people had been there before them. Bringing out the similarities between the Bronze Age carved spaces and the modern Facebook platform Sapwell says, ‘like to-day people have always wanted to feel connected to each other—this was an expression of identity for those very early societies, before written language’.³

The Sapwell group of Cambridge scientists have been investigating the sites, one in Zalavruga in Russia and another in Namforsen, northern Sweden. These sites contain about 2500 images such as animals, humans, boats and hunting parties. Sapwell observes, ‘Like a Facebook status invites comment, the rock art invites addition—the way the variations of image both mirror and reinterpret act as a kind of call and response between different packs of hunters across hundred, even thousands of years’. ⁴

These scientists believe ‘ancient man continued to go back to the exact same locations to draw and communicate for thousands of years as it provided them with ‘comfort’ and a deep “human connection” ’.⁵

Like ‘ancient man’, modern man constantly keeps visiting social media sites for comfort and deep human connection. Here’s an insightful account of use of social media today. It is interspersed with valuable observations of Olympic gold medalist Sebastian Coe, who is also the chairman of the London Organizing Committee.

LET THE FIRST ‘SOCIAL MEDIA GAMES’ BEGIN!

‘It was a common sight till the turn of the archetypal millennium—a sports fan sitting at home, watching the action live on the TV, and, upon being overwhelmed by passion, hurling abuses at the screen in front of him. He didn’t really have an alternative—Social Media was a term he had never heard of’. Would all that later on his whole experience as a viewer changed with ‘the creation of social networking sites such as My Space (in 2003) and Facebook (in 2004)’, which led to the great popularity of blogging and tweeting as, common modes of interacting across the social world of netizens, specially teenagers and young adults.

By Athens 2004 internet connections had became faster, mid-range cell phones came equipped with at least a VGA camera, and now, the derelict Orkut was a blip on the horizon. However, even by the time the quadrennial multi-sport extra vangoiza made its way to China for the first time, microblogging was virtually unheard of, and Facebook barely had 100 million users’.

‘Cut to the present, and technology has penetrated in more ways than was imaginable four summers ago—over half of Facebook 900 million users log in through their smart phones, and the half-a-billion netizens, who have something to share, instead of blogging, send out almost as many tweets or 140-character microblog’.⁶

Sebastian Coe observes, ‘The fans are part of the action. They can comment on content, interact with the atheletes, create and publish their own content. Never before has there been such a channel to interact with the world, specially with the youth’.

THE AGE OF INTERNET COMMUNICATION TOOLS

Today, we hear so many new technical terms, such as web, internet, serfete, blogging, etc. Except for the younger generation, who are well advanced in the use of modern internet based electronic gadgets and applications, most of us need a brief introduction to the meaning of these terms.

• The Web: The system on the internet that allows us to find and use the information that is on computers all over the world.
• Webpage: All the information that you can see in one part of a website.
• Website: A place on the internet where you can find information about something, especially a particular organization, topic, or individual.
• The Internet: A computer system that allows millions of computer users around the world to exchange information.
• Chat-room: A place on the internet where you can write messages to other people and receive messages back from them immediately so that you can have a conversation while you are online.
• Facebook: A social networking website started in 2004.

What does Social Media mean?

The term social media was coined around 2004, after the creation of the Usenet (in 1979) and other social networking sites such as My Space (in 2003) and Facebook (in 2004). To be able to understand social media, we should first talk of Web 2.0 (in 2004) and user generated content. Web 2.0 describes a new way of utilising the world wide web as a platform for continuously creating, publishing, adding, and changing the content in a participative and collaborative manner by all users; the individual initiator of the message (content) and the subsequent respondents to it.

1
Understand the meaning of social media.

 

The following essentials of social media extend the meaning and scope of the interpersonal communication as a quickest mode of collective opinion forming platform.

• Its key is interaction.
• The receiver also creates the content.
• The social message is the sum of all the ways in which the receivers contribute to the creation of the content by adding their own responses and comments which modify the content in its total form.

2
Know the use of social media as a universal phenomenon.

 

Technically, this process of continuous transactional communication and creation of content by the message readers, developed the idea of the user generated content (UGC), which can be regarded as a sum of all ways in which people use social media.

This view emphasizes the point that social media is a network site that organizes the participants who are already a part of an extended social network. In other words, its distinguishing feature is that people are not ‘net working’ necessarily to connect with new friends, but to maintain the pre-existing networks to meet and talk with people who have similar interests and views as yours.

Open Diary

The present day use and concept of social media emerges from Bruce and Susan Ableson’s, social networking, in 1959, called ‘Open Diary’, which was an online diary writers’ network. The ‘Open Diary’ writers were connected together to form a community of net users sharing one another’s semi public account of themselves. The same year, the term ‘weblog’ was first used and subsequently changed into ‘we-blog’, thus formed a verb ‘blog from the noun weblog’.

Weblog

The growing number of younger generations and X-generation users of high speed internet has made the weblog widely popular. The creation of social networking sites such as My Space (in 2003) and Facebook (in 2004) brought in the term ‘social media’ in 2005. According to Keplan and Haenlein the term social media is usually applied to describe ‘the various forms of media content that are publicly available and created by end users’. ⁷

CHARACTERISTICS OF SOCIAL MEDIA

To be considered as part of social network, the UGC, according to the Organization for Economic Corporation and Development (OECD, 2007), should have the following three characteristics:

1. It should be published either on a publicly accessible website or on a social networking site accessible to a selected group of people. Hence, UGC leaves out content exchanged in individualized e-mails or instant messages.
2. Second, it should indicate that some creative effort has gone into its generation. This means just a mere reproduction of already existing content for example, posting a copy of an article printed in a magazine or newspaper on a personal blog without any comments or changes would not be considered to be UGC.
3. Thirdly and finally any content that has been created from a commercial market point of view is not considered social content. It should be created outside of professional context of practices and considerations. For example, posting reviews to shopping sites is a contribution to social media if it expresses your view of a product without considering its effects on its sale. It is an online contribution to the content generated by other consumers of the product.

CLASSIFICATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Because of the multiplicity of existing forms of social media such as Facebook, You Tube, Wikipedia and emerging forms such as virtual social worlds like second life and virtual game worlds, for example world of war craft, it is considered better to classify social media theoretically on the basis of some key component related to media as such and the social dimension of social media. Thus, the two bases of classification are:

1. Social presence
2. The concept of self-presentation

Social Presence

Social media differ in the degree of social (contact) presence they allow to be enjoyed by their users as two communicating partners. Media richness is closely related to the concept of social presence.

Social presence means the acoustic, visual and physical contact that can be achieved between the two interacting partners. For example, compare the richness of social presence in direct face to face communication with the mediated, through some medium, communication over the telephone, or an ordinary mobile. In face to face communication, both the communicating parties hear, see and, if desired also physically can touch one another. Face to face communication thus provides to the communication high degree of social presence. Now, compare it to the telephone conversation which provides only acoustic (voice) contact. Therefore, as a social medium, telephone helps achieve a low degree of social presence/contact. Social presence is influenced by the intimacy (interpersonal vs mediated) and immediacy (asynchronous vs synchronous) of the medium, and can be expected to be lower for mediated (e.g., telephone conversation) than interpersonal (e.g., face-to-face discussion and for asynchronous), (e.g., e-mails) than synchronous (e.g., live chat) communications. The higher the social presence, the larger the social influence that the communication partner’s have on each other’s behaviour.

‘Media richness theory is based on the assumption that the goal of any communication is the resolution of ambiguity and reduction of uncertainty. It states that media differ in the degree of richness they possess—that is, the amount of information they allow to be transmitted in a given time interval—and that therefore some media are more effective than others, in resolving ambiguity, and uncertainty’.⁸

The Concept of Self-presentation

The concept of self-presentation states that ‘in any type of social interaction people have the desire to control the impressions other people form of them’. They project themselves as they wish to be perceived by others. Therefore, such a self-presentation is done through deliberate disclosure of desirable aspects of yourself. The aim is to develop, close relationships with others. This is the purpose of people to create a personal webpage, for example, the wish to present themselves in Cyberpage⁹ self-disclosure is a critical step in the development of close relationships (e.g., during dating) or between strangers on a journey.

Social media can be classified also on the basis of the ‘degree of self-disclosure it requires and the type of self-presentation it allows’.¹⁰

There are three classifications in respect of social presence/media richness and two, high or low classifications in respect of self-presentation/self-disclosure. Text based as against content based applications such as blogs and wikipedia have lowest social presence and therefore provide only a relatively simple interaction. They are rated as low as applications which have content.

For example, YouTube/and social networking sites (e.g., Facebook) allow, besides text-based communication, the opportunity to share pictures, videos and other forms of media content. To the highest level belong the virtual social communities and worlds of virtual games and wars. For example, Second Life, World Of Warcraft (WOW). These virtual sites create the illusion of real face-to-face interactions in a virtual environment of 3-dimensional reality.

In respect of self-presentation and self-disclosure, collaborative projects generally score less than blogs, because the former usually focus on a specific content area. Blogs can relate to any aspect of content. From the social-presentation and self-disclosure point of view ‘social networking sites allow for more self-disclosure than content communities’. ¹¹

NATURE AND SCOPE OF SIX TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Collaborative Projects

As forms of communication, collaborative projects are most democratic in nature. Many end users can jointly contribute to the content creation. This category includes wikis and social book marking applications. The distinction between these two applications is that wikis are the websites which let users change and modify the text based content by adding or removing some part of the content whereas social book marking applications allow the group of users to collect and share the media content. The on-line encyclopedia, available in nearly 230 different languages, is the best example of wiki application. Delicious is the example of social book marking web service as collaborative project. The collaborative project websites tend to be considered more credible than the work of a single individual as sources of information. Though everything written on Wikipedia may not be correct, yet most internet users psychologically accept it as true because it is the world of several collaborators, not of a single user of the internet. For example, Pearson uses internal wikie platform Neo to share with its employees information on the current status of its on-going projects, new developments, projections and plans and suggest new ideas which a large majority of its employees use.

3
Learn different forms of social media.

Blogs

Blogs represent the social media version of personal web pages. They are like personal diaries. A single individual or an organization or company writes on the webpage— something, some observation or some personal view on a specific content such as launching of a new product or plan to disband the group of social workers, India against corruption. Hundreds of blogs from other net users are posted in response to the single blog initiated by a single person or a single company or organization. The key point is that all blogs are on the same particular theme. The text based blogs are thus usually managed by one person only, but they offer free opportunity for interaction with other’s through exchange of comments. Blogs are most frequently used by companies to inform customers, shareholders, and employees about the latest developments in their organization. But this communicating act may sometimes, embarrass a company by the negative blogs posted against the product/service by dissatisfied customers or employees. Of course, the negative feedback has a positive corrective role to improve the thing, but the fact that the negative comment is an the Cyberspace and therefore the damaging information is shared by many on customers or workers as well.

Content Communities

Content communities are used as platforms for sharing, other users media content such as books via Book Crossing, photos through Flicker, video via YouTube and PowerPoint presentations on slideshare. As communication channels content communities enable organizations to show videos of press announcements and key note speeches of important visitors to their employees and other visitors.

Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites are perhaps the most popular applications that users of internet use to create personal information profiles and share them with their friends and colleagues. Sites such as My Space and Facebook are frequently used to send e-mails and instant messages to each other. These personal profiles can have any type of information, including videos, blogs, audio files, and photographs.

Virtual Game Worlds

According to Kaplan and Haenlein ‘Virtual worlds are platforms that replicate a three dimensional environment in which users can appear in the form of personalized avtars and interact with each other as they would in real life’.¹² This form is used in advertising and promotion media specially with the community of gamers.

Virtual Social Worlds

As in virtual game worlds the virtual social worlds, such as second life application allow the users to create content such as clothes, money, or furniture and choose to live freely a virtual life similar to their real life. Kaplan and Haenlein believe that virtual social worlds are source of varied opportunities for companies in marketing (advertising), communication, virtual product sales/v-commerce, marketing research and human resource and internal process management.¹³

PURPOSE/CHOOSING THE MOST SUITABLE SOCIAL MEDIA

To have maximum benefits from the use of social media, you need to know which of the online applications meet your purpose best. You should know which social platform you should choose when you want to do one of the following things:

 

4
Know how to choose the most suitable social media for your specific purpose.

• Meet new people
• Stay in touch with friends
• Promote yourself
• Make contacts for work
• Learn something new
• Share knowledge and experiences with friends and others
• Be creative
• Change opinions of others
• Express yourself
• Seek other person’s opinions
• Know the social world around you
• Develop a sense of belonging
• Relax and entertain yourself
• Keep yourself up-to-date.

Therefore, choosing the right medium for a given purpose in the presence of a large group of social platforms is important. It requires a careful consideration of what they do best.

Target Group

For commercial purposes also understand and study the target group’s preferences for certain media according to that age group and technology exposure. You should choose accordingly.

REVISITING THE COMMUNICATION THEORY

Communication that has its birth in the human instinct to relate with one another has found its fulfillment through the use of internet across the world. Today, people stay connected with each other by one-way communication, two-way communication, and 3-dimensional virtual communication. The technological effort has been to enable cyber space communication to have intimacy and immediacy of live face-to-face communication. Facebook, blog and virtual social worlds redefine the act of communicating by enriching the medium and also changing it into a truly democratic content.

 

5
Know how the concept of communication is changed by social media.

 

Today, a sender is no more the sole creator of message. The receiver(s) across the globe contribute to the communication content. In the modern age of democracy, this democratization of social media communication represents human desire to be free and equal in all respects of participation in the creation of meaning of message.

SUMMARY

• The chapter defines social media as a group of internetbased applications that allow the creation and exchange of user generated content. The chapter discusses the following.
• Social media as tools of interpersonal communication are no more controlled by a single individual. Instead, this form of communication represents a collaborative process of creation of content by the sender and the endless respondents together.
• The classification of different types of social media depends on the intimacy and immediacy they allow to the communicators.
• To get the best from social media, know what each form does best.

CASE: WAS LONDON OLYMPICS 2012 THE ‘SOCIAL-OLYMPICS’?

Social media’s popularity and influence is fast growing. Instead of depending on the traditional media for information and updates, people, specially teenagers are increasingly resorting to their favorite sites through computers, tablets or smart phones to immediately get latest news and status. Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube are allowing them to enjoy instant first-hand experience of the thrill, excitement or despair and richness of the event as a real spectacle taking place before them.

On the very first day of opening ceremony about 10 million tweets were sent. The heavy transmission of social media disrupted the GPS devices of London that interfered with the internet viewing of that day’s mens’ cycling event. IOC had to ask viewers to ‘take it easy’ while blogging at the games venue. It also laid down guidelines for social media usage among althetes and fans, requesting them to post in ‘a first person, diary-type format and like a journalist’.

It is evident that social media is rapidly growing in its reach and influence. It is changing the ways athletes, fans and the organizers interact and communicate their experiences of the events without any intermediaries instantly across the world. Their thrill of instant connectivity through social media is certainly being enjoyed by the athletes and their fans.

But social media is a double-edged weapon which cuts twoways. It gives global visibility and acclaim but it can also damage you world-wide. Voula Papachriston, the Greek triple-jumper, became the first athelete in history to be banned from Olympics for posting a comment that was considered as a racist comment against African immigrants. Next to be thrown out was Swiss defender Michel Morganella after he posted a blog following a defeat against South Korea in football which was thought to be ‘discriminating, insulting and violating the dignity of the South Korean football team and the people’.

Questions to Answer

1. Would you agree that social media should be used carefully because of its huge influence on people’s way of thinking across the world? What care should be taken while using it as a social platform?
2. Comment on the content of social media, posting the London Olympics 2012 internationally.

REVIEW YOUR LEARNING

1. In what sense pre-historic cavemen were using social media sites? Discuss.
2. Discuss the influence of internet on the nature of communication.
3. Explain the technological foundation of modern social media.
4. Define social media as an internet-based platform of communication.
5. Discuss the influence of the use of social media on the process of communication as a collaborative activity, not controlled by a single individual.
6. Discuss the two most important characteristics of social media which are perhaps responsible for its worldwide extra-ordinary popularity.
7. Discuss some of the inherent risks in using social media for promotional purposes.
8. Explain what is meant by the democratisation of communication by social media.
9. Write a note on the origin of the term ‘social media’.
10. Discuss the main features of Facebook as a social network platform.

REFLECT ON YOUR LEARNING

1. What is the primary purpose of social media users?
2. Elaborate your experience of blogging.
3. Bring out the basic difference between blog and Facebook.
4. Can you maintain privacy on social platforms? If yes, show how can you be social yet individual in sharing your personal information with others?
5. In what sense is social media a system of keeping an open diary?

APPLY YOUR LEARNING

1. ‘Is social media just old wine in new bottles’? Comment and discuss.
2. Discuss the influence of social media on the control of content by the users (receivers) of media (message).
3. Why do collaborative projects such as Wikipedia and blogs score lowest as compared to Facebook and virtual worlds?
4. ‘Virtual game and social worlds replicate all dimensions of face to face communication’. Discuss and illustrate.
5. Explain the negative and damaging aspects of social media for the corporate world, specially for marketing of products and services.

SELF-CHECK YOUR LEARNING

From among the given options, choose the most appropriate answer:^*

1. All human beings need to feel the comfort of being:
   1. heard
   2. connected
   3. noticed
   4. praised
2. Social media communication is controlled by:
   1. a single individual
   2. no body
   3. thousands of internet users across the world
   4. a targeted audience
3. Social presence is influenced by:
   1. intimacy
   2. immediacy
   3. clarity
   4. both intimacy and immediacy
4. The content exchanged in individualised e-mails or instant messages is:
   1. not included in UGC
   2. modified in UGC
   3. included in UGC
   4. subject to the choice of the user
5. In a social presentation the people want to give others an impression that is:
   1. real
   2. controlled
   3. better
   4. false
6. The goal of any communication is to be:
   1. clear and precise and certain
   2. practical
   3. ambiguous
   4. uncertain
7. A blog is written on a single particular topic by:
   1. several persons
   2. a single person or company on a single topic
   3. on several topics
   4. several writers on different topics
8. Virtual worlds replicate reality which is:
   1. four-dimensional
   2. two-dimensional
   3. three-dimensional
   4. one-dimensional
9. Content communities are used as platforms to share content of:
   1. books
   2. video
   3. pictures
   4. All the above (a) (b) (c)
10. Telephone conversation provides the communicators social presence contact whose degree is:
    1. low
    2. medium
    3. high
    4. rich

ENDNOTES

1. ‘Even Cavemen Used Social Networks,’ PTI, London, reprinted in The Times of India, New Delhi, 22 May 2012, p. 17.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. ‘Let the first “Social Media Games” begin’ by Abhimanya, Hindustan Times, 2 July 2012, New Delhi, back cover page.
7. Andreas M. Kalpan and Michael Haenlein, ‘Users of the World Unite! The Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media’, Business Horizons (2010) 53, 59–68, Keley School of Business, Indiana University.
8. Ibid., p. 61.
9. Ibid., p. 62.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., p. 64.
13. Ibid.