Concepts, Importance and Disadvantages of Social Media

Mazhar Ali Dootio

http://theleader.com.pk/concepts-importance-and-disadvantages-of-social-media/

Social media is a phenomenon that has transformed the interaction and communication of individuals and groups throughout the societies and world. Nevertheless, social media is not a new concept or phenomenon of modern digital age. It has been evolving since the beginning of human communication. However, social media has impacted many aspects of human communication in the recent times. Modern age of social media starts when 'Web 2.0' term was introduced, therefore, it may be claimed that 'Web 2.0' signifies the actual changes. Therefore, social media refers to interacting with other people by sharing and receiving information. In today's society, the use of the social media has become a necessary day-to-day activity. It is typically used for social interaction and access to news and information, and decision making. It is a valuable communication tool to connect locally and worldwide, as well as to share, create, and spread information. A social network site is a social media site that allows users to connect and share with people who have similar interests and backgrounds therefore, social networks may be divided into some groups and categories, such as:

1.                  Bookmarking sites: Social bookmarking is an online service which allows users to add, annotate, edit, and share bookmarks of web documents.  These bookmarks are usually public, and can be viewed by other members of the site where they are stored

2.                  Social news: A social news website is an internet website that features user-posted stories or news. Since their appearance with the emergence of Web 2.0, social news sites have been used to link many types of information, including news, humour, support, and discussion etc.

3.                  Media sharing: Media sharing sites allow you to upload your photos, videos and audio to a website that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. You can then share that media with the world or just select group of friends. Many media sharing sites also allow you to place media on other sites by embedding. This is where you copy and paste a small snippet of HTML code into the web page and it tells your browser where to find the media,

4.                  Microblogging:  It is an online broadcast medium that exists as a specific form of blogging. A microblog varies from a traditional blog in that its content is typically smaller in both actual and aggregated file size. Micro-blogs allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links. The twitter is example of micro-blogging, blog comments and forums. There is difference between comments and forums.

According to Wikipedia; social media is interactive computer-mediated technology that facilitates the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. The variety of stand-alone and built-in social media services currently available. There are some common features of social media:

(1) Social media are interactive Web 2.0 internet-based applications.

(2) User-generated contents, such as text posts, comments, digital photos or videos and data generated through all online interactions are the lifeblood of social media.

(3) Users create service-specific profiles for the website or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization.

(4) Social media facilitate the development of online social networks by connecting user's profile with other individuals or groups. Users, typically access social media services via web-based technologies on desktops, laptops and download services that offer social media functionality to their mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. As users engage with these electronic services, they create highly interactive platforms through which individuals, communities, and organizations can share, co-create, discuss, and modify user-generated content or pre-made content which posted online.

All web applications and also all forms of media are providing information and knowledge to masses therefore, they are in interaction with dissimilar types of organizations, people and societies, hence; all types of communicating web applications and systems can be considered as social because they store and transmit human information and knowledge that originates in social relations in society. This means that social media is a complex term therefore, there are different types of social media. Empirical studies show that the most recent development is that there is a certain increase of the importance of social media on the internet, which is especially due to the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook, wikis like Wikipedia, and microblogs such as Twitter and Weibo (a Chinese microblogging website).  Social media sites allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The difference of working of social media sites and other web sites may be measured on basis of integration, because social media sites provides integrated platforms that combine many media, information and communication technologies, such as webpage, webmail, digital image, digital video, discussion group, guest book, connection list or search engine and etc. It is, therefore, more appropriate to speak of social networking or social media sites that function as integrated tools of cognition, communication and cooperation. Social media sites are web-based platforms that integrate different media, information and communication technologies and that allow at least the generation of profiles that display information that describes the users, the display of connections, the establishment of connections between users that are displayed on their connection lists and the communication between users. These sites are just like all computer technologies cognitive systems because they reflect and display dominant collective values of society that become objectified and confront users. They are communication technologies because they are used for communication and establishing connections in the form of connection lists.

Social media sites are cooperative technologies because they allow the establishment of new friendships and communities and the maintenance of existing friendships. Therefore, new relations are developed for business and other purposes. By friendship, it is meant a continuous social relationship between humans that is based on understanding and sympathy. Social media provides means for establishing virtual communities understood as "social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationship in cyber- space" (Rheingold 2000). Social media, such as Facebook, supports cognition, communication/networking and cooperation (communities, collaborative work, sharing of user-generated and other content). So, a lot of personal and social data about users are generated.

Social media refers to the means of interactions among people in which they create, share, and/or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. Some features of social media are integrated sociality that Social media enable the convergence of the different modes of sociality, for example, on facebook, an individual creates multi-media contents like a video. He or she publishes it so that others can watch and comment and allows others to manipulate and remix the content, so that new content with multiple authorship can emerge and share. One step does not necessarily result in the next, but the technology has the potential to enable the combination of all three activities in one space. Facebook, by default, encourages the transition from one stage of sociality to the next, within the same social space. 

Social media supports you to discover new ideas and trends from posts and ideas of connected or network of connected people, connect with existing and new audiences in deeper ways to know the culture, attitude, ideas and etc., discuss the local problems with international community, bring attention and traffic to your work and problems as well as build, craft and enhance your brand. Social media marketing has the power to increase customer loyalty therefore, it benefits and values your availability on social media. Viewing this, Social media is important for businesses, social contacts, cultural exchange, thought exchange, values exchange and etc. There are significant social media tools which make you and your business as prominent and successful. The tools may be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, google+ and Myspace.

It is easier and convenient to access information, provide information and communicate via social media. People are connected to each other and can make good use of these platforms for the working on their education, social development, political development, literary development and other issues. They build social relationships because social media is not just about brands connecting with their customers. Social media provides good platform to share your expertise, gives you an opportunity to talk about what you know and what you want to be known for, facilitate you to increase your visibility, give you opportunity to educate yourself and connect yourself to whole world anytime.

People who are addicted or habituated to social media may experience negative side effects such as relation break-up, time wastage, psychological disorders, eye strain, social withdrawal or lack of sleep, stress and other complaints. If you spend your time in investigating problems of others or arguing and quarrelling with people, you may experience stress, which can have a negative impact on your health. However, if someone uses social media with positive intents than he or she become more informed about current affairs, study and carry out research work, boosts self-esteem, assists others in getting jobs and etc. Social media helps people to keep up to date with the current technology updates, world social and political issues and etc. There are several impacts even the emotional impacts of social media because people use social media for many things, such as socializing, finding and sharing information, shopping and simply as a diversion. These are just a few of the ways that social media can improve people's lives. On the other hand, social media can cause stress and other negative emotions which may be the negative impacts. Therefore, social media is not a way which provide you emotional connections completely. It lacks emotional connection, decreases face-to-face communication skills and causes face-to-face interactions to feel disconnected, conveys inauthentic expression of feelings, diminishes understanding and thoughtfulness and facilitates Laziness.

Social media enables us to interact with each other anywhere and anytime – allowing us to observe human behaviour in an unprecedented scale with a new lens. The social media lens provides us with golden opportunities to understand individuals at scale and to mine human behavioural patterns. Social media world has no geographical boundaries therefore; everyone can be connected with any one all over the world. Social media tools are suitable for research and analysis. Data mining techniques may be used to rescue the destroying data. Though, social media data is significantly different from the traditional data that we are familiar with in data mining. Apart from vast size, the mainly user-generated data is noisy and unstructured, with abundant social relations such as friendships and followers. This new type of data mandates new computational data analysis approaches that can combine social theories with statistical and data mining methods.