Social Media: Means without End

“It turns out that we don’t use computers to enhance our math skills – we use them to expand our people skills.”

Will Wright

To deny the impact of social media on society is to deny a hypothesis familiar in sociology that also makes intuitive sense.  That is behavior norms and ways of thinking are more uniform within than between groups.  “So people connected to otherwise segregated groups are more likely to be familiar with alternative ways of thinking and behaving, which gives them the option of selecting and synthesizing alternatives” (p.1, Burt, 2003).    Since the mixing of cultures and ideas is the nexus point of creativity, social media is rapidly facilitating this confluence with ever lowering barrier thresholds of cost, distance and time (Shirky, 2008).  In so doing we are facing a transformation in society that will lead to more knowledge, innovation, creativity and one hopes, wisdom as well.  

The Social Networking Tidal Wave

Can Facebook be Stopped?

              Facebook reports approximately 600,000 new users register with the world’s largest social networking site every day.  As Facebook recently crossed the half-billion users mark, it’s clear that many competitors such as MySpace and Bebo are in rapid decline (BBC, July 2010).   According to the BBC, (July,21, 2010) influential blogger Robert Scoble believes privacy issues are of little concern to the average user of the service.   He sees Facebook as the place for keeping up to date with friends while Twitter is used to get information out and talk to a community that cares about similar issues.   

Dynamic shifts in communication have always impacted society in profound ways.  Shirky (2008) points out as we moved from printing bibles to mass printing presses literature and knowledge erupted across Europe ushering in the Renaissance.  Marconi’s radio led to the creation of a massive music recording and distribution industry.  Television, the beginning of the entertainment culture sixty years ago and mass consumption through ever more sophisticated advertising.

What communication history teaches us is communication technologies lay the groundwork for innovation.  The process itself, like all human learning, is one of experimentation and revision.    The consequences of this technology are neither universally positive nor negative (Shirky, 2008).

Real World versus Virtual World: Influencing Each Other

  As this image of internet use today shows, we know about peer-to-peer influence of social networks and internet use, but what is clear is that video is becoming the dominant (51%) online medium according to internet traffic measures.   What makes video a unique media is it’s singular power to access human psyches through visual and auditory inputs, activating inner emotional stimuli usually without much conscious awareness.   While video used to be the purview of media elite because of cost it is becoming much more affordable and widely available.  Using music, moving image, digital sound and video effects and all of the other tools of filmmaking and digital manipulation, video content producers have immense power to trigger, influence and manipulate emotion.  This is significant because video media, including gaming, is perhaps the most effective media tool today for emotional engagement and hence manipulation.  This  emotional charge often then leads to action as outlined below: 

The flaw in reacting to Twitter and other web 2.0 innovations as sea changes in the world of marketing/communications/transactions/fill-in-the-blank is thinking that somehow the medium changes the customer.  Yet, customers were socially networked human beings before MySpace.  They sought to compare and research products before the Internet.   They passed notes in high school before texting existed.

The real change, as Arussy (2010) argues, is how internet users connect with each other and can form new strong foundation building emotional bonds via directly and interactively connecting with a brand or issue.   This is achieved by tapping into core emotions that lead to action in the real world.  Some common types of action are those that would be constructive, as in the case of a positive social cause like organizing over concern for the environment.  Destructive like radicalizing American Muslim youth by exploiting their feelings of isolation and it’s concomitant resentment.  Or consumption oriented action as manufactured branding excitement at becoming a ‘rebel’ and reclaiming youth leads one to joining a motorcycle blog and buying a Harley Davidson motorcycle.  All actions have the common connection to core emotions fostered and enabled by social media, which then provide the fuel leading to an action.  While this is not new, the potential scale is clearly staggering simply by looking to Facebook’s phenomenal exponential growth.


Mobile Social Networking: Future Web

On Becoming a Social X-Ray

TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington argues proximity detection will play a key role in mobile social networking (Arrington, 2009).  Our mobile devises will help us remember details of acquaintances.  They will aid in meeting new people for dating, business and friendship.   Imagine not just location based mapping information overlaying on your daily travels with a service like FourSquare and Facebook Places but having both personal Facebook style information and Linked In professional resume backgrounds available as you meet others for the first time via mobile-to-mobile interaction.   What will that feel like, having all those near to you at a meeting, laying revealed for your browsing pleasure as our mobile devises link locations and trade pings about us?    

The interface with our mobile device itself will become evermore easier.  Perhaps it will be more like how Star Trek characters relate with the USS Enterprise’s computer…

The future of mobile computing user interface ease and integration with everyday life raises many questions.  Will we become so distracted by our mobile window to the virtual world that we disengage with the real time one we are in?  Will we become walking social x-rays with massive amounts of personal information available to the majority?  What impacts this will have on our interactions with others, our sense of self, the size of our social and business networks and other transactional impacts we can only make educated guesses at this point.   What will be the social consequences for those who choose to opt out of such interaction, social seppuku?  What about those who cannot afford such technical mobility devices and service plans - will society have a new domain of digital poverty?

As media psychologists, our future will entail studying and understanding these impacts and suggesting means of adaptation, remediation and best practice articulating the macro and micro influences of media on individuals and our societies.   Thomas Szasz famously said, “Some people say they haven't yet found themselves. But the self is not something one finds; it is something one creates.”  With the coming social networking tsunami, the means to meaningful self-creation has never been more accessible or as empowering.