Week 1 - overview of social media communication

1. Social Media and
Contemporary
Communication
Week 1: What is social media?

2. Web 2.0 and Social Media
• What is social media and web 2.0?
• Web 2.0 coined in 2005 as the following characteristics: (Tim
O’Reilly)
• Radical decentralization
• Radical trust
• Participation instead of publishing
• Users as contributors
• Rich user experience
• The web as a platform
• Control of one’s own data
• Remixing data
• Better software by more users
• Play

3. A few definitions
• “… sites and services that emerged during the
early 2000s, including social network sites, video
sharing sites, blogging an microblogging
platforms… that allow participants to create and
share their content” (boyd, 2014)
• “Social media means ‘networked information
services designed to support in-depth social
interaction, community formation, collaborative
opportunities and collaborative work’” (Hunsinger
and Senft, 2014)

4. Definitions cont.
• “Social media describes a specific set of internet-
based, networked communication platforms. These
use a business model of a database built by its own
users. And they enable the convergence of public and
personal communication.” (Meikle and Young 2012)
• “Social media and social software are tools that
increase our ability to share, to co-operate, with one
another, and to take collective action outside the
framework of traditional institutional institutions and
organizations” (Shirky, 2008)

5. So, what do all these
definitions have in common?

6. Social Media defined
• websites and applications that enable users to
create and share content or to participate in social
networking through…
• Integrated sociality
• Integrated roles
• Integrated and converging communication on social
media

7. Let’s take a step back and
talk about message and
communication
• What is communication?
• Medium/Message
• Marshall McLuhan “The medium is the
message”
• How does this apply to social media?

8. Social Media Stats 2018
• Pew annual report looks at statistics of social
media users, demographics and what platforms
they are using and how:
• http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/03/01/social-
media-use-in-2018/
• Do these statistics reflect your social media
usage?

9. Where would we be without
social media?
• Let’s discuss!
• Is social media usage good or bad?
• Good
• Bad