Friendster. MySpace. Facebook. Twitter. Instagram. These are all examples of the pervasive phenomenon known today as social media. It is something that most of us buy into, and indeed, find it hard to live without. Social media has become an integral part of our lives since its inception. But how does it affect us?
If we want to talk about the phenomenon, we first need a bit of background:
Via: Online Schools
.
As you can see, social media is not exactly as recent as most people think, though of course when taken in context with the rest of human history, it is a very recent invention. I dare say it affects us in many areas of our lives, but broadly speaking, can be classified in these five ways:
- Social
- Political
- Economic
- Racial
- Media
Sperm, haha. Anyway….
I will try to cover the pros and cons of each aspect briefly.
Social
The most obvious advantage to social networks is that it helps to maintain social circles, in some cases expanding them. Stories abound on the internet about how people have found soul-mates through social media platforms like Facebook, as well as how people have managed to re-establish contact with old acquaintances, some even going as far back as seventy years. I suspect even you yourselves, friends, have found old classmates after losing contact for years through Facebook, or struck up a friendship with someone new online. Social circles can be maintained and even strengthened too. With the introduction of internet chat platforms such as MSN (now Windows Live) Messenger and Skype, conversations can be struck at any time, even with people on the other side of the world. In this way, we are able to keep in touch with what they are doing, and thereby maintain relationships with them. Out of sight, out of mind, after all.
However, to paraphrase a cliche, every strength taken too far becomes a weakness. The same tool that enables us to keep in contact with our friends and social circle also inhibits us from making social contact, if taken to its outer edges. We no longer know how to make face-to-face conversation, because we are too used to having a screen and keyboard hiding the tones and inflections in our speech, so much so that when we meet another person, well, in person, we fear being misinterpreted because of inappropriate tones and words. We can no longer take our time to carefully consider what to say, because life has no backspace key. We fear misinterpreting what the other person has to say, because we have lost the ability to read non-verbal cues such as body language and tone.
Be that as it may, there is no denying that social media has affected us socially, in more ways than the ones listed above. What do you think? Have you experienced any of these, either with your friends or with yourselves?
Political
Does this look familiar?
This is an example of how political parties can leverage on social media. The PAP is not the only one doing this. In point of fact, all the political parties in Singapore have gone onto Facebook and Twitter. This is useful because now, instead of receiving information through e-newsletters or traditional newsletters, people can now get information much faster than previously simply by clicking “follow” or “like”. This is due to the inception of RSS (RDF Site Summary, or more casually, Really Simple Syndication), which allows information to be published once, but viewed by many different programs. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS) Because the same piece of information only needs to be published once, many more diverse pieces of information now may be published in the same span of time.
Another political benefit that social media could bring is that politicians are now obliged to be much more transparent, due to the younger generation being more well-read on the political situations in other countries, as well as the politicians themselves putting themselves in the spotlight by creating fan pages, then posting their thoughts online. As recent events have shown, images can be made or broken by a single sentence online.
How this affects us is, as I said, because much more information is available to us than, say, ten years ago. We can now make an informed choice on the parties available to us, because their manifestos are posted clearly. Unfortunately, because this entire field is still relatively new, the general sentiment online seems to be very strongly against the PAP, just as the general sentiment in the mainstream press appears to be strongly supporting them. Discretion and discernment are therefore necessary to navigate this field, but over time, I believe that by reading both sides of the argument on a specific issue, it is possible to come up with a balanced viewpoint, and from there, make an intelligent decision.
Economic
Meet the corporate Facebook page:
This is the future of businesses who choose to go online — Facebook pages. Gone is the need to purchase a “.net” domain. Gone, too, is the necessity of hiring web designers and technical support staff for the purpose of creating and maintaining your corporate web page, respectively. Instead, simply by following a step-by-step procedure, an enterprising businessman can now establish his online presence on Facebook, absolutely free of charge. This is especially beneficial for small businesses, even personally run ones — with their small profit margin, they can ill afford to spend money in designing and maintaining a web domain. Personal experience, from working in web maintenance last year, coupled with this bit of research, tells me that the costs can run into a comfortable 4-figure sum annually, so the benefits of using Facebook are obvious. On top of that, there is also the huge number of potential clients that Facebook has to offer, meaning that all an online businessman needs to do is to set up a Facebook page, update it fairly regularly (perhaps 3-4 times a week), and he can expect a steady stream of traffic (visitors). If what he sells proves popular, he can expect his traffic to increase, because through hitting the “Share” button, customers are now able to recommend a particular page to other people — an online grapevine of sorts.
That being said, there is a downside to this. Should the page not prove popular, or worse, receive negative reviews, it can be extremely difficult to revive its reputation, because of the many other pages with similar content that are all competing for attention. First impressions, therefore, have become even more important than they ever were, and a page that is merely average is glossed over and forgotten. This is the reason why setting up a Facebook page can be riskier: In addition to failing due to a lack of revenue and failure to read the market, entrepreneurs now have to risk failing due to a lack of imagination on its Facebook site — a risk that used to be mitigated by professional web designers who knew how to make a site stand out.
Because social media platforms can now be used to host companies’ official sites, the reduced maintenance costs and increased availability of products make pricing more competitive than before, essentially making online shopping a buyers’ market. On a wider scale, this means that more money is pumped into the economy, which will then increase overall demand, opening the job market and investment opportunities, making the country wealthier.
Racial
Somewhat to people’s surprise, racism is not a dead concept. Even in Singapore, there are people who have been arrested over racist remarks. Even members of the PAP, thought to be politically invincible, are not spared either. The latent streak of racism that exists in people, however, has been brought out into the open by social media, mostly due to the feeling of anonymity that people get when they cannot see each other in face-to-face conversation. This contributes to much more acerbic and vicious conversations online, where people give vent to their inner demons and say what they normally dare not in real life.
That being said, there are sites against this. ‘Report Hate Crime’ websites (http://www.stopracism.ca/content/report-hate-social-networking-sites) is one of them. These sites, however, are few and far between, but we see few examples of racism getting out of hand in Singapore because of a government that comes down hard on offenders, even online.
Media
Finally, there is the media factor to consider. With the inception of social media, the mainstream media has adapted to it or tried to find some ways and means to incorporate it into its formal structure. Many times, it is successful. Sometimes, well, not so much:
The Washington Post Social Application
allows readers to catch up on the news simply by logging in through Facebook and Twitter. Again, this site uses RSS for its readers to read the news on any platform
|
On the other hand, there are sites known as “Citizen Journalist” sites, of which STOMP is a good example. These sites allow subscribers to post whatever they think is newsworthy onto the site.
|
In addition to creating Facebook apps, some sites have simply created a Facebook or Twitter widget that allows people to use their accounts to log in. All these, again, encourage subscription, allowing more people ready access to information they would normally take days to find using print media.
Evaluation
All this said and covered, the main reason why social media affects us on so many levels is because it is people-centered, and because of the easy availability of the Internet. As people become more and more reliant on computers and the Web, these engines may someday replace mainstream media altogether and, in fact, become the mainstream. That being said, as things stand now, social media platforms are still too poorly regulated to be taken as a replacement for the mainstream media, but someday, when law enforcement laws manage to evolve at the speed of the Web itself, that scenario will become reality. For the moment, social media is an excellent supplement to the mainstream, and, as we have seen, has the potential to be used as either a tool for one’s success or as a cause of failure.