Social Media

Social media are online applications where users can interact online by posting any content. It is a portal where users can express their creativity through art, and share parts of their lives to the world. It is the most used platform for social networking. Dennis Baron calls these sites the space page, stating that “It is the drive to put our lives online that underlies the popularity of MySpace and Facebook, which offer one-site-fits-all communication portals where writers are busy creating the latest digital genre for doing just that” (Baron 183).

Social media allows users to be in control of what the viewer will see on their page, whether it is pictures of them posing, their favorite poems, to their political viewpoints. Older versions of social media (early 2000s) may be called ‘personal web pages’. Personal web pages are sites designed by an individual who wishes to share their favorite music, TV shows, movies, opinions, etc. Older web pages include those like Hi5 and Friendster. Myspace is also an example of a popular web page site, which began in 2003 and became the number one website in 2006 (“Then and Now: A History of Social Networking Sites”). Today, programs such as Frontpage and Dreamweaver provide an idiot-proof way to build a web page (Baron).

The personal web page is no longer a novelty today and has evolved into a more uniform Myspace, Instagram, and Facebook. Nonetheless, these sites offer less flexibility with customization. You can make your Instagram look a certain way, or reach a certain aesthetic through the types of photos you post, but editing your actual Instagram page is not possible. The same is true for Facebook. A more flexible web page would be Tumblr, allowing users to create their own page by personalizing the background, fonts, photos, music, and more. See: https://thebestoftumbling.tumblr.com/. Now, if a user enjoys making videos as content they would most likely create a YouTube channel. Having your own YouTube channel gives the users the freedom of creating any platform such as vlogs, travel videos, how-to videos, or even a music channel. Now if the users prefer creating short videos rather than 15-30 minute videos, currently TikTok is the famous social media platform. You will find people dancing, role playing short scenes from movies, cooking videos, and some hacks for everyday lifestyle. Yet, Instagram just created “Reels” which are short videos like TikTok. Baron compares social media to being just online magazines, there are many advertisements on any social media platform which is how money is made. Collections of data from the posts users likes, comments, and posts, are used to better advertise products that are shown on the page. According to Lee et al., “engagement is measured on a daily basis (panel data) by actual post-level engagement such as Likes and comments...These aspects make Facebook an almost ideal setting to study the effect of ad content”(3).

Although Social Media provides users accessibility to the outside world and engagement with many people from different countries, everything that is online is saved. As mentioned earlier data is recorded every second when something is searched for online, posted, liked, and even measurements for how long a user stays on a page or looking at a post. We have all the access to these “communication portals” but at the same time users must be aware that everything is saved and can never be entirely deleted. And so Social Media can be an outlet of expression for users and also an effective way to make money through investments and advertising. It is up to the user to decide what content they want to create and share with the online world, and from there pick which social media platform fits best for their content.

Baron, Dennis. “A Space of One’s Own.” A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution, Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 183-206.

Lee, D., Hosanagar, K., & Nair, H. (2018). Advertising Content and Consumer Engagement on Social Media: Evidence from Facebook. Management Science, http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2902 (Links to an external site.)

"Then and Now: a History of Social Networking Sites." CBS News - Breaking News, 24/7 Live Streaming News & Top Stories, 6 July 2011, www.cbsnews.com/pictures/then-and-now-a-history-of-social-networking-sites/7/.