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- 1. Sam Sheils Social Media The article Social Media Explosion by Marcia Clemmitt talked about how social media affects society and the positives and negatives that come from it. The article gives the background, current situation, and the outlook on social media. It also contains many graphs showing statistics on social media. The key issues it talked about with social media were: does social media make personal relationships more difficult and is social media eroding privacy. The first issue the article talked about was how social media is eroding privacy. It starts off with a story about how Mark Zuckerberg’s sister posted a picture for her Facebook friends to see and she later saw it on her twitter feed posted by someone she didn’t know. The article states that Mark Zuckerberg said that because of social networking, privacy is no longer a social norm. It then goes on to say that some analysts argue that privacy is crucial. There is a quote from Alice Marwick, assistant professor in communication and media studies at Fordham University, stating that she thinks the two biggest problems in the United States are that we don’t have data protection requirements and that market impulse goes in the opposite direction from privacy protection to social media companies that sell users’ information for targeted marketing efforts and the like. The next big issue the article talks about is how social media is affecting human relationships. It says that some analysts fear that social media is being seen as a replacement to face to face conversations. In a survey on favorite communication modes people born in the 90’s preferred texting over any other forms of communication with Facebook, phone calls and instant
- 2. messaging tied for 2nd and face to face in last. This is completely different from the preferences of the people born from between 1946 and 1989. These people chose face to face as their most preferred method of communicating and didn’t even list a social media. The article states that some worry that more people preferring to communicate over social media than face to face may make it easier to cause identity fraud and hoaxes. In 2013 it was found that Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o had a two year online relationship with a woman who he thought was real and said had died of cancer. He says he did not know it was a hoax. Notre Dame athletic director said the situation constitutes “a terrible statement about where we are today and how social media is a tool in some really bad stuff.” Other people see no reason to worry. Kaveri Subrahmanyam, a professor of psychology at California State University Los Angeles, says that most people use social media to connect to people already in their lives and do things they already do anyway. The article also talks about the positives of social media. One thing it talks about is that research shows that social media is leading to increased political activity. In a survey 41 percent of young people reported in engaging in “participatory politics” a term meaning individual efforts to influence public policy outside the sphere of institutions such as political parties. Ways they do this include tweeting support for a cause or forwarding a news article. An example of this happened in 2012 when the Susan G. Komen foundation announced it would no longer fund programs offered by Planned Parenthood. This announcement caused a lot of angry comments on social media from many different people and organizations and three days later the foundation reverted back to funding Planned Parenthood. However, despite this some people are saying that social media is probably not causing more people to become involved in politics because the people who engage in participatory politics were probably already following it. Another benefit
- 3. of social media that the article talks about is that it may foster more community involvement. During the London riots in 2011 about economic unrest and a police shooting, a twitter campaign under the hashtag #riotcleanup “rallied people to clean up the streets,” wrote Kate Crawford, a principal researcher at the corporate think tank Microsoft Research. Social media makes supporting and organizing causes easier than ever. For example Daniel Kreiss, an assistant professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said, “Thanks to social media, I can give a small donation much easier – instantaneously in fact”. President Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaign operation used Facebook to encourage supporters to contact Facebook friends who were determined to be promising target to vote for Obama, Kreiss says. However, some people argue that the role of social media isn’t that important when it comes to organizing protests. Commentators have claimed that Iranians used Twitter to organize protests after the June 2009 election. But, according to Golnaz Esfandiari,an Iranian-born blogger and a senior correspondent for the U.S. funded agency Radio Free Europe, Twitter was only used minimally and did not play a major role in organizing protests. Most of the Twitter feeds quoted as evidence of Twitter’s role were in English. Efsndiari said, “no one seemed to wonder why people trying to coordinate protests in Iran would be writing in a language other Farsi.” She also said that Twitter may have actually had a negative effect on the protest because it made it easier to spread unsubstantiated rumors. There are many other ways that social media has a negative influence on society. Some of the ways are online deception, cyber-bullying, and it can cause self-esteem issues. Anybody can use social media so there are a lot of bad people on there. Social media is not safe for everybody of all ages to use.
- 4. Online deception is a major problem with social media. Due to the ease of creating an account on a social media website this makes it very easy to deceive people. There have been many cases in the past where people have used social media to deceive others. Between 2005 and 2013 there has been a 64 percent increase in social media users (Tsikerdekis, Michail) and with this comes more people trying to deceive other people. Software design on the social media websites can cause users to feel safer and more secure when this isn’t always the case. For example, some people may assume that profile information is hard to fake due to verification methods such as email conformation, but it is not (Tsikerdekis, Michail). However, there are assurance mechanisms in place that either decrease the probability of somebody deceiving or increase the penalty if they get caught. High penalties increase the difficulty for deceivers (Tsikerdekis, Michail). Another factor that may determine the difficulty in deceiving is the targets is the targets ability to detect deception. In social media a targets ability to detect deception may depend on his or her Information Communication Technology (ICT) Literacy (Tiskeradis, Michail). Individuals with a high ICT literacy can have a significant advantage over normal internet users (Tiskeradis, Michail). Some of the ways reported to be used in deception are bluffs, mimicry, fakery, white lies, evasions, exagerrations, and more (Tiskeradis, Michail). Another way social media has a negative effect on society is cyber-bullying. Studies have shown that the victim in cyber-bullying often doesn’t know who the person bullying them is (Slonje, Robert). However, when the victim does know the bully it is usually someone from their school or local area (Slonje, Robert). Cyber-bullying differs from traditional bullying in many different ways. P.K. Smith described seven features of cyber-bullying: it depends on some degree of technological expertise; it is primarily indirect rather than face to face; the bully usually does not see the victim’s reaction; the variety of bystander roles in cyber-bullying is
- 5. more complex than in traditional bullying; the bully often lacks the motive to gain status by showing power over others; the audience size is often increased; it is difficult to escape from cyber-bullying (Slonje, Robert). All forms of bullying negatively impact the victims, however the relative impact of traditional and cyber bullying may be affected by the differences between them (Slonje, Robert). An example would be if the bully does not see the victim then he or she may have less awareness of the consequences their actions are causing. Cyberbullying can cause a lasting impact on the victims. One victim that was interviewed stated that even one and a half years later if they saw their perpetrator out in public they would avoid them. The next issue that social media can cause is that it can cause self-esteem issues. Social acceptance and approval by peers and close friends are crucial to the development of adolescents’ self-concept and self-esteem (Koutamanis, Maria). During early and middle adolescence kids can be extremely preoccupied with how their peers perceive them (Koutamanis, Maria). A big part of adolescent’s communication with friends and peers takes place over social media. Although in social media positive reactions from peers are far more common than negative, research has shown that about seven percent of adolescents mainly receive negative feedback on their profiles and that their self-esteem suffers from this (Koutamanis, Maria). There are several explanations why online feedback may be worse than face to face. First the reduced audiovisual cues online may make people feel less inhibited, and therefore may be more ruthless with their feedback. Next online feedback is more pubic than face to face, although they can adjust privacy settings on their profiles, there is still a large amount of people who can see their profiles. Lastly, compared to face to face feedback, online feedback is more persistent and visible to others after it has been communicated.
- 6. There are multiple sides to nearly everything, and social media is not an exception. Some people think social media is helpful for society and some think it’s harmful. There are many arguments for both sides. Some of the arguments against it are online deception, cyber-bullying, and it can cause self-esteem issues. These issues may outweigh the benefits social media brings.