Making Use of Social Media Platforms Such as Facebook and Twitter - Research Paper Example

? Media Table of Contents I. Introduction 3 II. Discussion 3 References 10 I. Introduction This paper examines the way media impacts the present generation, with a focus on contrasting the way past generations leaned on media for various needs, versus the way people at present lean on media for those same needs. Along the way, the paper attempts at finding answers to the following key issues of import to discussions of media: is media biased, or in other words can we trust it given that some media put a spin or a bias to their reports? What are the advantages and disadvantages of taking news reports at face value, whether on TV, in print, or in other forms of mass media? What is the extent of the reach of mass media in all of its forms? What is the impact of mass media advertising on the perceptions of people of themselves, their self-image? How does marketing affect decisions to purchase? How do mass media images and coverage influence court decisions, as typified by the effects of mass media images on high profile cases involving celebrities like OJ Simpson? What are the negative effects on the social skills of people from using social media, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of making use of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter? (Katz et al., 1973, pp. 164-181; Newton, 1999, pp. 577-599; Mutz and Martin, 2001). II. Discussion There is no doubt that there are subtle as well as titanic shifts in mass media brought about by the proliferation of alternative media channels online, such as YouTube, changes in the way people consume news with the decline of print and the shift to digital, the surge of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter in terms of mind share and use on a global scale, and a host of other developments. Mass media can be construed as not being something that is static and well-defined, but rather is something that is now undergoing a radical process of change, and it can be argued that rather than being a static reality mass media in fact is in a state of constant flux (Barkow et al., 2012, pp. 121-133). The advances in communications technology facilitated by the Internet will accelerate this upheaval and change process no doubt, and the future shape and form of the dominant mass media platforms are not yet prognosticated with any degree of confidence. There are winners and losers to be sure, but who those are is anybody’s guess at the moment. With the exception of social media platforms maybe, and some established media juggernauts such as Google, it can be said that mass media as a whole, including its stakeholders and its consumers, is up for grabs and no one knows ultimately what its future shape and form will be (Prat and Stromberg, 2011; Crokidakis, 2013). On the one hand there are those who predict the decline in the power of mass media over the masses, and in this regard new and more potent forms of marketing are taking the place of marketing strategies that are overly focused on reaching target markets making use of mass media. On the other hand, the continued rise in revenues from advertising making use of emergent social and online media platforms, such as Facebook and the various Google search properties, attest to power not moving away from mass media per se, but moving away from the traditional mass media platforms, such as print, in favor of digital media platforms and social media platforms. What is true is that even here the landscape is not well-described, as there are differences in the ways that people make use of the new dominant social media platforms for different purposes, in different geographies and cultures (Katz et al., 1973, pp. 164-181; Newton, 1999, pp. 577-599; Mutz and Martin, 2001; Webster et al., 2005; Surani and Shroff, 2012). What is clear is that the new media platforms are indeed putting clear demarcation lines between old ways of consuming and reacting to media and the new ways that people have come to interact with media as represented by the digital and social media platforms of the present time. These latter social media and digital media platforms have content delivered to users via the Internet. The rise of digital media has translated to the availability of mass data for analytical purposes, for instance, that is not possible with the older use cases and interactions with mass media, changing the dynamic of content curation, content creation, and content analysis. Mass media data can be subjected to complex and powerful analytical processes to ferret insights into consumer behavior, that can then be used for crafting more effective marketing strategies and programs. On the other hand, social media also has made it possible to make sense of consumer attitudes, perceptions, buying habits, and future behavior on the strength of the analytics done on social media data (Shirky, 2011; Lenhart et al., 2010). These latter exercises are simply not possible under the old regimes of media interaction, where ordinary citizens used to be passive consumers with no access to the data and no means of sharing their findings and insights over the phone. Whereas the old regime of the mass media relied on time-worn media channels, such as TV, radio and print, which were passive in nature and with the communication being one-way from the media content generators to the general public. On the other hand the big contrast is that in the new mass media paradigms all users are potentially generators of media content, as well as potentially large audiences for such shared content. Social media has done this and made innovations along those lines in media possible (Asur and Huberman, 2010; Kaplan and Heinlein, 2010). The topic of media bias is something that has come to ignite countless debates and learned discussions through time, and media bias is of course nowadays taken to be something of a given rather than something that can still be debated, The question nowadays is not whether media is biased or not in the way it reports stories of national and international import, say the elections and the state of the national economy, but rather just how much bias every mass media organization has towards either the left or the right. One talks about different mass media organizations having slants or biases in this way, and those biases influence in stark and more subtle ways the kind of reporting that is done on particular topics, extending all the way to the presentation of aspects of issues and to choosing the right kinds of experts and public figures from which to draw “authoritative” conclusions and insights into supposedly neutral public issues. The short of it is that intelligent discussions on mass media now take for granted the fact that different mass media organizations in the US and the rest of the world have certain ideological slants that color the way they report the news, and the wise consumer of content is well-served by getting his news not from one source but from many sources coming from different viewpoints and ideologies (Douthat, 2013; Princeton, 2013).. This is to be able to arrive at a personal and impartial view of what is really happening in the world at large. The same goes not just for traditional mass media platforms but also for emerging social media platforms, where for instance individual and group posts on certain political topics obviously are colored by the political views of the groups and individuals espousing them. The obvious disadvantages of taking the media version of events at face value is that without comparing sources one gets a biased version of events. Meanwhile, the advantages include that as long as people are mindful of the bias particular reporting on events give us a flavor of the perspective of various ideologies with regard to pressing national stories and issues. With regard to the reporting on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, for instance, reporting from various parties give us an indication of how parties such as those in favor of war use certain versions of the facts to justify aggression, and those against the war make use of their own version of the facts as well (TED Conferences, 2013; Shah, 2007). On the other hand, outside of the Internet, the reach of the mass media machines from the establishment is said to be total, with profound effects on what the general public accepts to be the truth (Asur and Huberman, 2010; Shirky, 2011; Lenhart et al., 2010; Kaplan and Heinlein, 2010; Kull et al., 2002). Meanwhile, an aspect of mass media is the use of such mass media platforms as social media, and the traditional mass media channels of print, radio and TV, to market goods and services and the creative use of marketing techniques to reach target audiences of the different mass media platforms (Lenhart et al, 2010; Barkow et al., 2012, pp. 121-133). . It is a testament to the growing power of social media platforms such as Facebook and online digital platforms such as Google that their stocks are thriving as their advertising revenues continue to grow. Mass media in turn is powered by revenues from such marketing and advertising, and the two can be said to go hand in hand (Webster et al., 2011). The literature on the effects of mass media advertising and marketing on decisions to buy, and on the self-image of people, is very vast indeed, and given the positive correlation between purchase decisions and exposure to advertising and marketing through the various media channels, one can say with a high degree of confidence that indeed the effects are large and very visible (Tafawa et al., 2012). Meanwhile, carefully orchestrated attempts at peddling certain versions of events make use of the smart use of mass media to sway public opinion, as in the case of the OJ Simpson trial, with the defense resorting to such tactics as discrediting Marcia Clark through photographs (Uelmen, 2010). Turning to social media and the impact of social media on social skills, new data from studies suggest that there are large and pernicious negative social effects on persistent social media use, especially among teenagers, who have come to rely on social media as a means of social interaction in preference to actual human contact. The result of this arrangement, it is said from the studies, is a large disconnect between what teenagers ought to be developing in terms of social skills interacting with real people on the one hand, and the flawed social skills that are developed from relying on Facebook and other social media platforms, including texting (Crosby, 2012). Other experts note that the total effect of social media is to make vulnerable people like teenagers and children anti-social (Diaz et al, 2013). With regard to current uses of Twitter and Facebook, there is little doubt that it has brought about a profound revolution in the way people stay connected and share information and vital things about their lives. It is true that the social media platforms have made the world more social in some respects. Twitter and Facebook too has contributed to making institutions of power more honest and upfront, due to the power of collaboration and information sharing among ordinary citizens that the social media platforms have spawned (Asur and Huberman, 2010; Shirky, 2011; Lenhart et al., 2010; Kaplan and Heinlein, 2010; Kull et al., 2002).. On the other hand, these media platforms come with their own baggage, including that they lead to stunted social skills growth for young people most especially (Crosby, 2012; Douthat, 2013; Princeton, 2013; Shah, 2007; TED Conferences, 2013). References Asur, S. and Huberman, B. (2010). Predicting the Future with Social Media. Arxiv.org. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/pdf/1003.5699.pdf Barkow, J. et al. (2012). Are the New Mass Media Subverting Cultural Transmission? Review of General Psychology 16(2). Retrieved from http://www.essex.ac.uk/psychology/department/people/OGorman_files/Barkow%20et%20al.%20-%202012%20-%20Are%20new%20mass%20media%20subverting%20cultural%20transmission.pdf Crokidakis, N. (2013). Effects of mass media on opinion spreading in the Sznajd sociophysics model. Elsevier. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/pdf/1111.5750.pdf Crosby, C. (2012). The Effects of Social Media on Teenagers. Socially Active. Retrieved from http://sociallyactive.com/social-media-effect/ Diaz, Y. et al. (2013). Anti-Social Networking: How do texting and social media affect our children? A panel discussion by CSC clinicians at the Nightingale-Bamford School. The Child Study Center NYU/Langone Medical Center. Retrieved from http://www.aboutourkids.org/articles/antisocial_networking_how_do_texting_social_media_affect_our_children_panel_discussion_csc_ Douthat, R. (2013). Balance and Bias. The New York Times Sunday Review. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/opinion/sunday/douthat-media-balance-and-bias.html?_r=0 Kaplan, A. and Heinlein, M. (2010). Users of the world unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Elsevier/Business Horizons 53. Retrieved from http://michaelhaenlein.com/Publications/Kaplan,%20Andreas%20-%20Users%20of%20the%20world,%20unite.pdf Katz, E. et al. (1973). On the Use of the Mass Media for Important Things Annenberg School for Communication University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved from http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1275&context=asc_papers&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fstart%3D20%26q%3Dmodern%2Bmass%2Bmedia%26hl%3Den%26as_sdt%3D0%2C5#search=%22modern%20mass%20media%22 Kull, S. et al. (2002). Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War. The Academy of Political Science. Retrieved from http://www.abdn.ac.uk/sociology/notes06/Level4/SO4530/Assigned-Readings/Seminar%2011.2.pdf Lenhart, A. et al. (2010). Social Media & Mobile Internet Use Among Teens and Young Adults. Pew Internet/Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://web.pewinternet.org/~/media/Files/Reports/2010/PIP_Social_Media_and_Young_Adults_Report_Final_with_toplines.pdf Mutz, D. and Martin, P. (2001). Facilitating Communication Across Lines of Political Difference: The Role of Mass Media. Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved from http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1125&context=asc_papers&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fstart%3D30%26q%3Dmodern%2Bmass%2Bmedia%26hl%3Den%26as_sdt%3D0%2C5#search=%22modern%20mass%20media%22 Newton, K. (1999). Mass Media Effects: Mobilization or Media Malaise? British Journal of Political Science 29(4). Retrieved from http://www.students.uni-mainz.de/bonea001/Dokumente/newton-mass-media-effects.pdf Prat and Stromberg (2011). The Political Economy of Mass Media. London School of Economics. Retrieved from http://econ.lse.ac.uk/staff/prat/papers/mediasurvey11.pdf Princeton (2013). Media Bias. Princeton.edu. Retrieved from http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Media_bias.html Shah, A. (2007). Iraq War Media Reporting, Journalism and Propaganda. Global Issues. Retrieved from http://www.globalissues.org/article/461/media-reporting-journalism-and-propaganda Shirky, C. (2011). The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change Foreign Affairs. Retrieved from http://www.bendevane.com/FRDC2011/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/The-Political-Power-of-Social-Media-Clay-Sirky.pdf Surani, N. and Shroff, H. (2012). Mass media exposure to tobacco messages among secondary school children in Mumbai. Indian Journal of Public Health 56 (2). Retrieved from http://ijph.in/article.asp?issn=0019-557X;year=2012;volume=56;issue=2;spage=159;epage=162;aulast=Surani Tafawa, A. et al. (2012). Mass media exposure, social stratification, and tobacco consumption among Nigerian adults. Cancer Causes Control 23. Retrieved from http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/davidrwilliams/files/2012-mass_media_exposure-williams.pdf TED Conferences (2013). Does our mass media act as propaganda? TED Conversations. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/conversations/14713/does_our_mass_media_act_as_pro.html Uelmen, G. (2010). The Five Hardest Lessons from the OJ Trial. Santa Clara University. Retrieved from http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v7n1/lessons.html Webster, F. et al. (2005). The Decline and Dispersion of Marketing Competence. MITSloan Management Review. Retrieved from http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-decline-and-dispersion-of-marketing-competence/ Read More