Social Network

Social Network is a term that, despite it’s more modern popularization to just refer to forms of media one can use to stay in touch with others, has taken a more extended definition when used within the context of communications. Social Networks can refer to the utilization of any media, application, or website as a platform for the purpose of networking and communicating with others. A platform referring to the type of technology a social network maintains its online presence on. Popular examples of social networks include Facebook and LinkedIn, which are both valued for their instant-messaging, user-based communities, and ability to keep individuals up to date with each other’s lives. The act of using a social network for the underlined purposes is called social networking.

The platform that an individual chooses for their personal use can change the way that their audience interprets their message. This idea of a platform containing different properties attached to them, and thus serve different purposes is a concept that can be traced back to a multitude of sources. However, can be best explained by John Walter, a writer and university professor that has extensively researched technologies, media, rhetoric, and its relation with culture and society as a whole. As Walter concludes, “Different mediums have different material properties. Consider, again, the photograph of inscription outside the National Archives. The stone wall has very different material properties than a sheet of paper. Likewise, a chisel has very different material properties than does an ink pen or a no. 2 pencil,” (Walter). To apply the chisel and pen metaphor to social networking platforms: some individuals may prefer LinkedIn over Facebook because the aforementioned aligns itself much more with job opportunities while Facebook can be used in a more casual manner.

As society works with the martial properties of the technologies they already have, they are pushed to create new ones as well. Social networking platforms are trying to do the work of what came before them in regard to communication, as well as trying to innovate themselves. This line of thought has been explored by Marshall McLuhan, who was a Canadian communications theorist that presented many ideas on media consumption, digital communication, and the impact of media as a whole on culture that are still recounted today. As he comments on the state of evolving media, “In the name of 'progress,' our official culture is striving to force the new media to do the work of the old," (McLuhan 81). This concept is applied when you look at the majority of social media websites and realize that most of them share similar features.

Similarly, the social networks that society grows with can be seen as cultural artifacts. Cultural artifacts refer simply to the technology a culture develops, but the term also has connections to the works of Lev Manovich. Manovich is an author of many books on New Media Theory, who presents culture artifacts as “the ways in which information is presented in different cultural sites and objects-road signs; displays in airports and train stations; television on-screen menus; graphic layouts of television news,“ (Manovich 13). With those examples, we can see that social networks are cultural artifacts of a digitalized era.