Social Media And Social Communication

968 Words2 Pages

In the media crazed society that we live in, with or without our knowledge we are constantly being influenced by our everyday surroundings. Just as we are persuaded by political campaigns, swayed by news coverage and pressured by marketing teams, we are equally impacted by social media. The main purpose of social networking is to share content and interact with other online users. Online interactions have become just as frequent in ones day than face to face interactions. Many wonder how this affects our communication skills and what this means for our society. Does online interactions strengthen our social skills or hurt them, and if they hurt them, how will our society ultimately end up? While many believe there is a black or white answer Time magazine’s (2006) claim stating that we, “Control the media now and the world will never be the same,” is just the beginning of the grand scale of social media and how it will evolve in future generations. Social media, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram are web-based communication mediums that allow everyday people to create and share pictures, content and information. Dr. Nicholas Carah states in his article, Do We Control Our Own Media? that, “Social media rely on our participation. Users provide the content, social connections, attention and data that social media platforms capture and channel” (2014). Without active participants, social media would lose the sense of interaction between people. An example of how social media helps our community as a whole, is how police efforts are now using social media mediums to aid in crime solving. They are able to release information along with pictures to the mass media by Facebook, Twitter and Amber Alerts via text message in order to find criminal and help victims. In the years to come, social media will only advance and grow, which is how the online world will never be the This is a small scope of social media as a whole. Social media networks allow companies to interact with consumers, politicians to interact with voters, and even professors and employers to interact with their students and employees. Unlike Keen (2007), who fears the “Cult of the amateur” and its narcissism, the social world allows ordinary people to socialize in an unordinary way. Posting about oneself or one’s company could be seen as narcissistic, but the idea of self promoting in the social or business is a way to get yourself ahead. Social platforms, “Represent conversational media since each application allows users to gather online and easily exchange photos, videos, audio files, and content while building and cultivating relationships” (Luttrell, 2015, p. 22). Now, just because the entire world can be involved in the media, does not necessarily make it any stronger. The contemporary era of participatory media does destroy the sense that any person, educated or not, can create input on certain issues. Along with information that could not be credible, social media has become very emotionally heavy in that people are openly discussing the high’s and lows’ of their lives online (Jalonen, 2014, p. 128). Social media is so easily accessible people are also known to be taking advantage of

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