Solutional new logo (1)
Book a meeting

Social media

By /
ALL0-9ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Share This
Share
« Back to Glossary Index

Social media is a broad term encompassing a variety of digital tools and platforms that facilitate the sharing of information and the creation of virtual communities. Emerging from early systems like PLATO and ARPANET, it has evolved into modern platforms like Facebook[2] and Twitter[3]. These platforms offer unique features that differentiate them from traditional media, including the ability for users to generate content and engage in dialogic communication. They cater to over 100 million users globally and offer different forms of services, such as messaging apps and collaborative content creation[1] platforms. The use of social media has far-reaching impacts on individuals, society, and businesses, influencing everything from marketing practices to political processes. However, it's also associated with ethical concerns, such as the spread of misinformation and potential addiction.

Terms definitions
1. ↑ content creation. Content creation refers to the process of generating and sharing information, ideas, or messages in various formats across diverse platforms. It involves individuals, organizations, or institutions like news outlets, universities, businesses, artists, writers, and governments. These entities use different methods such as creating articles, reports, academic papers, cultural works, and government data. The information is shared on platforms like social media, the internet, and digital platforms like Twitter, facilitating broad distribution and accessibility. Content creation aims at various goals including spreading information, marketing, artistic expression, and promoting government transparency. It's influenced by technology evolution, ethical issues, intellectual property laws, and social movements. Additionally, content creation has significant impacts on sectors like marketing, social protests, academic research, and public engagement.
2. ↑ Facebook ( Facebook ) Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms, is a major Internet company that started as a social networking platform. Founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, Facebook expanded rapidly from Harvard to other universities and later to the general public, becoming a global phenomenon. It is known for its user-friendly interface and various features such as Groups, the Developer Platform, and Facebook Dating. Despite facing criticism for issues like privacy breaches and the spread of fake news, Facebook has remained a dominant player in the online world. It has made significant strides in the field of technology, including the development of its unique data storage system, the use of PHP for its platform, and the launch of the Hack programming language. In recent years, the company has shifted its focus to the metaverse, a virtual reality space where users can interact with a computer-generated environment.
Related Articles:
Social media (Wikipedia)

Social media Are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation or content, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. Social media refer to new forms of media that involve interactive participation. While challenges to the definition of social media arise due to the variety of stand-alone and built-in social media services currently available, there are some common features:

  1. Social media apps are online platforms that enable users to create and share content and participate in social networking.
  2. User-generated content-such as text posts or comments, digital photos or videos, and data generated through all online interactions-is the lifeblood of social media.
  3. Users create service-specific profiles for the website or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization.
  4. Social media helps the development of online social networks by connecting a user's profile with those of other individuals or groups.
Social media app icons on a smartphone screen

The term social in regard to media suggests that platforms are user-centric and enable communal activity. As such, social media can be viewed as online facilitators or enhancers of human networks-webs of individuals who enhance social connectivity.

Users usually access social media services through web-based apps on desktops or services that offer social media functionality to their mobile devices (e.g. smartphones and tablets). As users engage with these online services, they create highly interactive platforms in which individuals, communities, and organizations can share, co-create, discuss, participate, and modify user-generated or self-curated content posted online. Additionally, social media are used to document memories, learn about and explore things, do self promotion and form friendships along with promotion of ideas through blogs, podcasts, videos, and gaming sites.

The change in relationship between humans and technology is the focus of the emerging field of technoself studies. Some of the most popular social media platforms, with more than 100 million registered users, include Twitter, Facebook (and its associated Messenger), WeChat, ShareChat, Instagram (and its associated app Threads), QZone, Weibo, VK, Tumblr, Baidu Tieba, and LinkedIn. Depending on interpretation, other popular platforms that are sometimes referred to as social media services include YouTube, Letterboxd, QQ, Quora, Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, LINE, Snapchat, Pinterest, Viber, Reddit, Discord, TikTok, Microsoft Teams, and more. Wikis are examples of collaborative content creation.

Social media outlets differ from traditional media (e.g. print magazines and newspapers, TV, and radio broadcasting) in many ways, including quality, reach, frequency, usability, relevancy, and permanence. Additionally, social media outlets operate in a dialogic transmission system (i.e., many sources to many receivers) while traditional media outlets operate under a monologic transmission model (i.e., one source to many receivers). For instance, a newspaper is delivered to many subscribers, and a radio station broadcasts the same programs to an entire city.

Since the dramatic expansion of the Internet, digital media or digital rhetoric can be used to represent or identify a culture. Studying the rhetoric that exists in the digital environment has become a crucial new process for many scholars.

Observers have noted a wide range of positive and negative impacts when it comes to the use of social media. Social media can help to improve an individual's sense of connectedness with real or online communities and can be an effective communication (or marketing) tool for corporations, entrepreneurs, non-profit organizations, advocacy groups, political parties, and governments. Observers have also seen that there has been a rise in social movements using social media as a tool for communicating and organizing in times of political unrest.

Social media can also be used to read or share news, whether it is true or false.

« Back to Glossary Index
en_USEN
nl_BENL fr_FRFR pt_PT_ao90PT en_USEN
Scroll to Top