Social Media Has Helped in Advancing Communication - Research Paper Example

? Social Media Social Media Introduction Social media refers to the way people interact to create, share, and exchange information and issues via computer networks and virtual community. Most authors refer social media as a combination of internet-based programs that build on technological and ideological foundations on website. These internet-based applications allow a large group of internet users to exchange-user-generated information using social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Emails, Skype, and many others (Gupta, Brooks & Vines, 2013). Furthermore, social media involves the use of web-based and mobile technologies to build highly interactive applications whereby users can share, create, discuss, and amend user-generated contents. Social media, however, brings about pervasive and substantial advancements to communicate between individuals, communities, and organizations. Despite the broad used of social media, it has disadvantages as well as the advantages it has brought into communication. This research paper discusses various perspectives concerning social media, its growth, advantages, and disadvantages it has brought to the current generation. Social media is different from industrial/traditional media in a number of ways including, reach, usability, quality, frequency, permanence, and immediacy (Mandiberg, 2012). Studies depict that, there are many positive and negative effects, which stem from social media usage. Such studies show that many people spend more time on social media sites than the time they spend on other internet sites (Gupta, Brooks & Vines, 2013). Simultaneously, the total time that Americans spent on social media networks using computers and portable devices increased by thirty-seven percent to an approximate of hundred and twenty-one billion minutes in the year 2012, with comparison of eighty-eight billion in the year 2011 (Mandiberg, 2012). According to the contributions of many articles, the effectiveness of using social media networks is more than just sharing information but also reputation building and giving career chances and financial income as discussed in Friedman (2011), Mangle & Zaveri (2013), and Social Media (2012) reports. Friedman (2011) article discusses how a mobile food seller had problems of advertising his business to the world. The mobile food owner was not interested in using social media networks. Afterwards, he decided to give Twitter a try. Using this social media network as an advertising tool, he was able to keep his customers up to date about his new location, new types of food, and special offers of each day. Because of using social media networks to advertise his business, his sales gradually increased since he was able to reach new and a large group of customers more easily. This means that social media is useful to the US people since entrepreneurs are now able to advertise their business at a low cost advertising approach hence increase their sales through offline and online marketing. Many business owners are currently making use of social media networks as a means of advertising their businesses. This is through posting business blogs and uploading product’s images on various social media applications as well as creating business websites. Friedman (2011) tries to show how social media networks have really contributed to the advancement of many businesses across the world. Mangle & Zaveri (2013) article explains how social media has resulted reputation building, career opportunities, and increase of monetary income. The article talks about a case study of how the current large private and public companies employ social media to engage and attract new customers. Students at a certain college use the case study to determine the issues that social media can bring to the world. The students use social media in their project to teach them how to determine goals and for planning a supportive strategy to help them reach their goals. Mangle & Zaveri (2013) try to outline that, social media poses more advantages to the current companies and business than the disadvantages. The two authors argue that everyone one ‘using social media should be free to interact and post all his or her ideas on social media accounts of any company or any individual. Talking about the negative feedbacks accompany can receive from social media accounts including posting abusive messages, one can report such matter to the community police or even delete any inappropriate posts (Noor & Hendricks, 2012). Social media networks have highly helped American populations although there some disadvantages associated with the use of these fast growing network technologies. Both private and public sectors use social media networks in advertising their goods and services to engage and attract new customers both in domestic and global markets (Noor & Hendricks, 2012). Other perspectives why social media is advantageous to American people comes from Social Media (2012) reports. These reports analyze several ways that show how social media use enable businesses to reach out to more potential customers. The report however gives discussion on how one should use social media network to make the experience more effective. The reports argue against posting abusive information on companies’ or individual accounts. This remains to be one of the major disadvantages of using social media (Noor & Hendricks, 2012). Social media users tend to post negative information on other companies’ wall with the aim of destructing the companies’ customers or even posting abusive information and photos on individuals’ accounts. The most essential part of this material is the education that it gives on complex and simple reasons on why one should be using social media networks (Noor & Hendricks, 2012). According to King (2012), Facebook.com is one of the most used and successful social media network sites currently. Internet users adopted the use of Facebook.com in the year 2004 soon after the establishment of MySpace.com. Mark Zuckerberg introduced the use of Facebook.com in Harvard University to enable students keep in touch via the social network. Later on the Facebook.com technology spread to other universities. Facebook.com was more successful such that the site became useful to high schools and other institutions in the year 2005. In the year 2006, use of Facebook.com was free for users over thirteen years of age. By the end of 2006, Facebook.com users increased to twelve million users (Informationweek.com, 2012). The fast growth of social networking has resulted to nine hundred million subscribers by the year 2012 and the number of Facebook.com users continues to increase (King, 2012). History of Social Media Spellos (2013) journal gives us information on the history of social media networking and the way its advancement has grown into a multifaceted tool in today’s life. The topics of this journal focus on MySpace.com, twitter, and Facebook. The journal gives a contrast between Twitter and Facebook, which is essential to the readers of this journal because they acquire a solid base about the two social media networks. According to the content of this journal, Twitter usage is high with most of the users’ main aim being to stay signed in to update with the current news and gossip. Whereas there is no particular networking site that defines the beginning of social networking one site, completely changed peoples thought of what social media could do. Foundation of MySpace.com took place in the year 2003 and influenced the growth of all other social media network sites (Peters & Simonson, 2004). A group of friends who were working on a certain internet project created MySpace.com after encountering another social media site called Friendster.com. Freindster.com made these friends to feel that creating a social media site like MySpace.com would be an effective venture. The launch of MySpace.com was in the year 2004 and within a duration of one month, the total of registered users mounted to one million. MySpace.com popularity continued to become widely used and its usage reached its climax visitor mark in the year 2008 with an approximately seventy-six million unique users monthly (Peters & Simonson, 2004). This social media site was of great success since it influenced contribution of other social network sites such as Facebook.com, Twitter, mails, and many others but unfortunately, the success of MySpace.com failed to last for long (Peters & Simonson, 2004). This social media program initially could cost $580 million dollars in, the year 2005, to News corporations. MySpace.com downfall began in the year 2008 and ended in the year 2011 when its price lowered to $35 million dollars. This was less than ten percent of MySpace.com price within duration of five years. Currently, there are so many social media network sites, which are in broad use (Peters & Simonson, 2004). A large population of current job seekers relies on social media networks to look for jobs. Ullman (2012) article gives a discussion of what takes place when a new company develops with job vacancies. In such a case, industries are social media networks by themselves. This article explains how jobs have increased in the field of social media networks by over forty-five percent over the last years since its foundation. Social media has turned out to a new approach and strategy of making companies’ advertisements currently introduced in colleges and university syllabuses in the entire world. With the digital era, most companies nowadays advertise job vacancies using social media networks since this advert may reach out to a large group of job seekers. Additionally, social media has led to advancement in education sector in America and other developed countries as well. For instance, YouTube is one of the most used social media applications in learning sessions and most lectures daily routines. YouTube allows both teachers and students to create videos and upload (Peters & Simonson, 2004). Teachers and students can watch and share these videos with anyone who has a network connection. The foundation of YouTube was in the year 2005 and continues to be the leading social network site that can provide videos for a large group of audience (Peters & Simonson, 2004). You tube.com currently has an educational site providing thousands of educational videos targeted to all educational levels. This educational site enables lecturers to sign up free accounts where they have access to links of other educational videos and they can create and upload their videos and link them from their sites. This application is effective for instructors, but there is a need of mentioning the type of videos that students should watch in school (Peters & Simonson, 2004). Advantages and disadvantages of using social media networks Many people tend to relate social media with effective outcomes forgetting that such media networks are also disadvantageous (Noor & Hendricks, 2012). Due to the broad use of social media sites, there is a positive relation between the usages of these sites with online sexual predators, cyber bullying, and this has negatively affected face-to-face interaction. Social media interaction exposes young people to images of tobacco, alcohol, and sexual habits. Much of the social media usage criticism relies on its exclusiveness since many social media sites fail to allow convey of information from one social media site to another site, disparity of available information, issues with reliability and trustworthiness of posted information, concentration, media content ownership, and the aim of interactions resulting from social media (Noor & Hendricks, 2012). However, many people claim that social media networks are more advantageous since they allow internet democratization and give users an opportunity to advertise themselves, find new friends, and keep in touch with the existing friends. In America, social media is not just as a platform for simple and easy development of online marketing but also becomes part of the country’s revolution. A large group of American people is currently making use of different social media sites and has tried to understand these sites’ importance with no information about the advantages and disadvantages of using such site (Noor & Hendricks, 2012). Discussed below are the advantages and disadvantages of using social media networking in both America and other nations. Advantages of social media There are a number of issues, which make social media networks advantageous. The advantages of using social networks include bringing people together, breadth of knowledge, technology literacy, and many others (Peters & Simonson, 2004). Bringing people together- We all understand that use of social media sites such as Facebook enhances interactivity and information delivery and discovery. Social media network sites enable users to find new friend, keep in touch with these friends, and chat with their loved ones across the world (Spellos &James, 2013). When discussing about ideas and campaigns, social media sites enable people from varying geographical areas to express their ideas and views hence using such sites as meeting points. Business organizations also use social networks to promote and advertise their global products and services under low cost compared to other means of advertising (Spellos &James, 2013). Breadth of knowledge- People by social media networks can achieve knowledge from others since people use such media sites to exchange ideas and post current news and concepts. Users of social media networks experience connectedness and knowledge broadness through usage of social sites (Comstock & Scharrer, 2007). It is cheaper and easier for social media network users to find and know different know how about anything in the world. With the aid of these connected media sites, students are able to acquire essential information because of the exposure to technology (Zarrella, 2010). Students also connect to a wider range of worldviews and opinions using global connection media sites. Additionally, social media avails tools for assisting students to study together and come up with their own understandings in some environment, academic subjects, and especially social contexts. Disadvantages of social media There are a number of issues, which make social media networks disadvantageous. The disadvantages of using social networks include negativity on worker outcome, commits illegal crimes, distraction, and many others (Spellos &James, 2013). Negative impact on worker outcome- Outcomes in lost production and workers may use social media network sites to attack the reputation of a company. Instead of utilizing their full working hours, employees can waste the company’s essential time through using social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter (Spellos &James, 2013). This can also result to employees posting negative comments about the company’s management or potential challenges they experience if the workers use these media sites to view illicit, objectionable, and offensive information. Distraction- Social media network users tend to use all their time on the sites hence distracting their normal duties (Comstock & Scharrer, 2007). Most users who suffer from using these social media sites are students. Instead of completing their homework, they spend all time on connected sites. This results to such students failing their endeavors examination because of misuse of social media sites. Apart from students working people also fail to accomplish their duties at the required time because of the time they spend chatting via social networks (Comstock & Scharrer, 2007). Conclusion To sum up, the content of this research paper shows that social media has really helped in advancing communication. The social media network is a communication technology that is still exploring (DiPiazza, 2012). These internet-based applications allow a large group of internet users to exchange-user-generated information using social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Emails, Skype, and many others. Although many social media users tend to relate social media with effective outcomes, they should also understand that usage of social media networks has negative effects as well. Social networking together with its incantations can result to be positive as outlined by LeNoue, Hall, & Eighmy (2011) “these connected applications have provided users with the ability to create, distribute, communicate, and make new friends”. Because of the continued use of social media networks, people should watch the impacts this can cause to their life such as time wastage and distractions (DiPiazza, 2012). References Comstock, G., & Scharrer, E. (2007). Media and the American Child. Burlington: Elsevier. DiPiazza, F. (2012). Friend me!: Six hundred years of social networking in America. Minneapolis, MN: Twenty-First Century Books. Friedman, M. (2011). Social media. Arkansas Business, 28(45), 1. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/910212216?accountid=458 Gupta, R., Brooks, H., & Vines, R. D. (2013). Using social media for global security. Indianapolis, Ind: John Wiley & Sons. Informationweek.com (2012). Facebook History: From Dorm to IPO Darling. Retrieved from http://www.informationweek.com/security/privacy/facebooks-history-from-dorm-to-ipo-darli/240000615?pgno=1. King, D.L. (2012). Social media. Library Technology Reports, 48(6), 23-27, 2. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1080534281?accountid=10559. LeNoue, M., Hall, T., & Eighmy, M. A. (2011). Adult Education and the Social Media Revolution. Adult Learning, 22(2), 4-12. Retrieved from http://www.google.co.ke/url/57155469,d.bGE Mandiberg, M. (2012). The social media reader. New York: New York University Press. Mangle, A., & Zaveri, J. (2013). Social Media Implementation: Directive To Action. Journal Of Business Case Studies, 9(2), 141-144. Noor, A.-D. H. S., & Hendricks, J. A. (2012). Social media: Usage and impact. Lanham, Md: Lexington Books. Peters, J. D., & Simonson, P. (2004). Mass communication and American social thought: Key texts, 1919-1968. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield. Spellos, James,M.O.S., C.M.P. (2013). Using social media. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 44(6), 240-241. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.3928/00220124-20130523-73 Ullman, E. (2012). The social MEDIA] network. Community College Journal, 82(3), 24-26,28. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1039272486?accountid=458 Zarrella, D. (2010). The social media marketing book. Beijing: O'Reilly. Read More