10 Social Media: Role of Social Media in Society

Sunetra Narain

1.1 New Media

The term new media itself is difficult to define and contentious. What indeed is ‘new media?’ How is it different from ‘old media’ What are its characteristics and its impact ? These are some of the questions that scholars and lay people are pondering on. It is generally inclusive of devices such as the computer and the mobile phone, but not limited to a technological perspective. It includes the interplay of media, technology, society and culture. Hybrid media such as the Internet have come to exemplify new media. New media can be considered to be synonymous with digital media.

1.2 Social Media

Social media consists of networks which owe their existence to the new media. According to Hunsinger & Seft (2014) “the meaning of ‘social media’is a matter of debate: while some use the term quite narrowly to describe person-to –person relations on social networking services like Facebook and Twitter, others use the term to signal socialization aspects of Web 2.0 sites in general…social media are networked information services, designed to support in-depth social interaction, community formation, collaborative opportunities and collaborative work” (p.1). They believe that Social media users are increasing day by day. In the opinion of these scholars, social media matters because firstly, it supports and extends social interactions in ways which combine both online and offline dimensions, secondly while social media can be used for outreach activities of existing communities, it can also cause the growth of problematic virtual communities and thirdly social media enables collaborative work negating distance, this should lead to a reexamination of the notion of work in a networked world.

1.3 Characteristics

The main characteristics of new media are that they are interactive, two-way communication and generally incorporate some form of computing (Logan, 2010). In contrast to the traditional analogue media, digital media are inherently convergent, compressible and can be manipulated in various ways. Social media is a sub-set of new media. Social Media include applications such as Facebook, Twitter and You Tube, as well as LinkedIn. It also includes blogs and video blogs. In some sense all these mentioned media forms are networks connecting people in some way. These social media networks are changing the way people communicate, socialize, conduct business, educate, inform and entertain themselves. They have also made inroads into domains such as politics and governance, once the bastion of traditional media such as print and broadcast.

1.4 Social Media Landscape

Since the Internet is a prime example of new media, it is instructive to note that according to one estimate the penetration of Internet was 42% of the world population in mid June, 2014. (www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm). It is interesting to see that while the Asian region had the largest number of Internet users in 2014, in terms of penetration of population, it was the second lowest, just above Africa. This represents a huge opportunity for growth in Asia. (Ibid). Facebook users, perhaps the most popular form of social media have increased from 665 million daily active users in the world in 2013 to 936 million daily active users in the world in 2015 (www.internetworldstats.com/facebook.htm).

Mobile phones also exemplify new media. Regarding mobile phones, in 2013, there were approximately 6.8 billion mobile-cellular phone connections in the world, close to the world population of 7.1 billion persons. The Asia –Pacific region accounted for 3.5 billion of these connections. (www.itu.int/en/ITU-/statistics/Documents/facts/ICTFactsFigures2013-e.pdf)

India has seen exponential growth in mobile phones in the last decade. Today it is only second to China in the number of mobiles being used in any country. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Annual Report, 2012-2013) in India, in March 2013, wireless subscribers were about 867.80 million, with a break-up of rural wireless subscribers at 342.5 million, and urban wireless subscribers at about 525.3 million. The overall teledensity stood at 73.32. The number of Internet subscribers (narrow and broadband) was about 21.61 million in March 2013. In terms of a percentage of its population, the penetration figures for the Internet are relatively low currently in India. However, in terms of absolute figures it is large. Secondly it is predicted that with the cost of smart phones dropping, in the future, more and more Indians are going to access the Internet through their smartphones, and not necessarily through their computers.

1.   Theories related to Social Media

New media have been studied extensively in the last decade, with social media being a later day entrant. Broad streams exist within the terrain of theorizing new media, that of technological determinism and cultural determinism. The new media have elevated the importance of participation of the audience. Production, distribution and consumption of media products have all changed radically with the spread of new media. Thus ‘active audience’ theories are useful in theorizing and analyzing various aspects of new media.

The idea that communications technology has spurred mankind on, enmeshing people into a “global village” is not a new idea, as it was enunciated by Marshall McLuhan, as early as the 1960’s. Digital technologies have definitely re-ignited this debate.

Other theories of new media have emphasized aspects such as penetration of the mobile phone, computers or the Internet in societies, and the factors favoring or inhibiting adoption of these technologies or devices. The Diffusion of Innovations concept of Everett Rogers, (1983) has helped us to understand these aspects of new media.

Other perspectives such as the ‘Information Society’ (Schement & Curtis, 1995) which has been proposed as a successor to the industrial society or the post-industrial society debates. In other words, the industrial revolution gave rise to a particular kind of society, with characteristics such as urbanization, factory system, migration, creation of a labour class etc. With the pre-eminent position of information in current times, societies are getting re-structured along these lines, rather than industry. Communications technologies are central to how this process is happening.

Castell’s (2005) concept of the Internet being a ‘network of networks’ or some sort of a global web has again thrown light on how this new medium is restructuring many aspects of human interaction. To elucidate, the network society as articulated by Castell, includes the interaction between communications technologies as well the social organizations.

One view which is pertinent to India is that new media is a ‘disruptive force’ (Jeffrey and Doron, 2013). According to these theorists, the new media such as mobiles have allowed people to escape stereotypes of caste, class and gender in India. Their view is more anthropological, centering on how people use mobiles in India, and how it can be empowering or liberating for many.

One cannot ignore older theories such as Uses and Gratifications theories (Blumler & Katz,1974) which give importance to the active audience. The Uses and Gratifications approach reverses the more traditional media effects approaches which look at the impact of media on audiences. This approach examines questions such as why do people use media? The conjectures made under this approach are that people use media to satisfy certain needs such as knowledge seeking or entertainment, escapism and others. While Uses and Gratifications theories offered a more nuanced understanding of the role of media in society, they were mainly based on older media such as print or broadcast. However,such theories have applicability even in theorizing the role of social media in society. For example, it can be hypothesized that audiences use social media for gratifying needs such as desire for knowledge, entertainment, venting negative feelings, socialization and others.

Still other postmodern theories would argue that one cannot have a grand theory or dominant world view, as the local level of analysis has risen in importance. While all these theories are for new media in general, social media can also be interpreted along these lines, as being a segment of new media.

The jury is still out on theorizing social media since it is a relatively new phenomenon. There is no doubt that social media have given fresh impetus to the idea and the study of communities with on-line and off-line communities increasingly being connected to each other. Social media can be considered in utopian terms, as integrative, empowering, democratization, breaking bonds of class and stereotypes of gender. However, it equally can be looked at in dystopian terms as the digital divide, causing hate or violence, promotion of pornography, or invasion of privacy, along with criminal activities such as cyber fraud and identity theft. Thus it appears to be a double edged sword.

Regulation of new media and specifically social media has been problematic. Regulatory issues range from allocation of spectrum to assertion of copyright and identity theft, hate speech, invasion of privacy and others. The Telecom RegulatoryAuthority of India (TRAI) Act of 1997 established the telecom regulator to facilitate a systematic growth of the telecom sector. The TRAI ‘s mandate is regulatory enforcement. The Information Technology Act (2007) provided the basis of regulation of electronic contracts, cybercrimes and other areas. This was amended in 2008 with the controversial section 66A being added, which had implications for social media in India. The section 66A of the Information Technology Act was recently struck down in April 2015.

2. Impact of Social Media

According to research done by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) There were about 7 million Internet users in India in 2001. In January 2015, there are about 40 million Indians on-line every day. India also is the second largest market in the world for social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn. The rate of adoption of social networks is high in India as is evidenced by the fact that about 58000 new users get connected to a social network every day (www.iamai.in/introductionres.aspx). In 2014, India had approximately 243 million internet users, with the internet penetration of the Indian population being about 19 percent. This can be compared to China which had over 641 milion users with a penetration level of about 46 percent. China was first in the world in terms of both number of mobiles, as well as number of internet users. India came in at third place in comparison to China (www.internetstats.com/internet-users-by-country).

Social Media is impacting everything from marketing, to politics, to commerce and culture. People are turning to social media to connect with their friends, to get news, to express themselves, to learn certain skills etc. While social media can be an integrative force, leading formulation of closer bonds among interest groups, it can also be an arena for vicious bullying, invasion of privacy and hate speech.

It has been suggested that new media, the Internet in particular have the potential to re-vitalise the public sphere, or to provide a virtual public sphere (Papacharissi, 2002). By extension, the social media extend the virtual public sphere even further, allowing a new dimension to public discourse. In terms of politics, politicians in democracies have found social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter a powerful and low cost way to reach out to their citizens. Politicians such as Obama and Modi are popular on the micro-blogging site Twitter. These ‘tweets’ give an impression that they are personally connecting with their followers. Most political parties have an on-line presence and also a presence on social media platforms such as Facebook. The other side of the coin is that the surveillance state can crack down on citizens for their posts on Facebook or Twitter or videos uploaded on to YouTube. This could have a chilling effect on free speech and genuine political participation.

New media have fuelled social movements across the globe as demonstrated by the ‘Arab Spring’ in North Africa and the Anna Hazare anti – corruption movement in India. The ‘Arab Spring’ was the uprising of the citizenry of countries such as Tunisia and Egypt against their respective governments. The anti-rape protest movement in Delhi also garnered support through social media such as Facebook. New and Social media played a key role in the citizen’s protests against the government in Egypt. In fact these events have been referred to as Egypt’s Facebook Revolution. Social media was instrumental in people banding together as a community and creating awareness about the shortcomings of the existing government in Egypt (Schaar, 2011).

According to Putnam (1995) ICT’s have enabled the move from national and vertical information systems to horizontal and international interactions. New media platforms and ICT have also been used for governance by states across the world. While the area of ICT and governance is a vast field in itself, of late there are countless examples of social media being used by governments to improve delivery of services to its citizenry, or to provide information to its citizens. For example, the government of Portugal is using social media to inform citizens about licensing procedures (Tumin, 2011). Social media have been used in many countries to provide participatory development initiatives.

In India, many government organizations have utilized social media to create awareness and interact with citizens:

• the Traffic Police in Delhi have used Facebook to effectively catch traffic offenders, with assistance from the public.
• The Municipal Corporation of Delhi established a Facebook page in 2011, encouraging citizens to comment on progress in garbage collection.
• The External Publicity Department of the Ministry of External Affairs regularly uses Twitter and Facebook to reach out to the Indian diaspora, as well as foreign nationals. These can also be used in times of crisis, to help rescue Indian nationals stationed abroad in need of help. For example, Twitter was useful in getting information about Indian nationals who had to rescued from Libya in 2011. Twitter was again used extensively by the Ministry of External Affairs to inform persons in Nepal after the devastating Earthquake in 2015 about Indian rescue efforts as well as contact information of the Indian missions.

New media and social media have also been utilized by special groups such as the disabled or for gender related issues.

Health and education are two sectors which have been impacted by new media. A lot of educational initiatives involve the use of ICT. Distance education is enabled by the use of new media. In terms of social media, YouTube has emerged as an area which has contributed to informal learning in many ways. For example in learning new languages, or skills such as cooking and others, it has proved to be empowering to many. This social media has also been used for more formal learning outcomes. Agazio &Buckley (2009) suggest that YouTube can be used in nurse education by making students participate, creating a student community and to illustrate theoretical concepts.

The combination of e-commerce and social media is a sub sector called social commerce. Social commerce involves the use of social media to support online interactions and user participation to assist in the purchase of products and services (Liang & Turban, 2011). E-commerce has come into its own in the last year in India, with Sites like Amazon, Flipkart and Snap deal doing brisk business, especially at festival times or by offering sales. These e-commerce giants are aggressively marketing on social media platforms such as Facebook. In fact marketing is increasingly being used to pull in buyers on new media and social media. It is generally a lower cost way of marketing and even brand – building than advertising on traditional media. However the efficacy of social media in translating into sales has yet to be established.

Social media can also impact society in negative ways. It has been used for rumour mongering or spreading false news. In the aftermath of the horrific earthquake in Nepal, in 2015 while Facebook and Twitter were used proactively to get information on missing persons or to locate help, Facebook was also used to spread false rumours about the possibility of more earthquakes. These messages were also circulated via WhatsAp messages (indianexpress.com/article/opinion/web-edits/nepal-earthquake-govts-social- media-response-to-rumour-mongering).

3. Summary

Various aspects of social media are contentious but one trend that is not in doubt is its increasing popularity. Worldwide, the trend is for more and more people to join social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. The role of community has been redefined in this era. With online and offline interactions becoming increasingly interpenetrative, every aspect of society is being impacted by new media and social media. This has implications for everything from politics and governance, to marketing and culture.

While optimists may talk about the emancipating potential or democratizing influence of social media, pessimists, might hold forth about the consumer society, the surveillance state, the electronic Leviathan or repression and invasion of privacy. Both aspects can co-exist and future evolution of social media depends on the context in which it is used.

References

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