What are social media, and why are they important?

The term "social media" gets tossed around a lot in today's discourse. Moreover, the concept is often dismissed as a passing fad and associated with a particular application, such as Myspace, Facebook or Twitter.

However, social media (and the roles of social media in contemporary society) go far deeper than any one trendy internet site or application. And all signs show that social media are here to stay and that they are on their way to becoming the primary mode of media communication in the near future. Social media are fundamentally different from most traditional media (like newspaper, magazines, books, movies and television programs, which are produced or published, and then distributed to consumers in a one-way communication).

Social media are inherently interactive and participatory, allowing for dialogic communication rather than one author or artist issuing a statement, report or artistic vision to an audience. In fact, the concept of audience is truly problematized in social media, because we are all both senders and receivers, producers and consumers. And with the increasing emphasis on collaborative production that is enabled by many social media platforms, we are learning to be co-producers and not just individual artists or authors. The notion of authorship and authority is undergoing a major paradigm shift.

This new form of interactive media is called by many names: social media, Web 2.0, new new media (Paul Levinson), spreadable media (Henry Jenkins), and so on. And these forms of media are multiple and varied, especially as to their purpose. Contrary to the narrow view of them as just being sites for insignificant chatting or making friends, social media are doing some serious work in our own culture, and in global society, today.

What are some of the goals of social media?

• Knowledge sharing (wikis, opensourcing, crowdsourcing) and collaborative knowledge building. My favorite (and the one in which I am most deeply involved) is Geni.com, a collaborative family history site.



• Identity construction and display (Goffman's “Presentation of Self”) for purposes as diverse as friendship and romance on the one hand (Facebook, eHarmony) to professional development and networking on the other (Linked In)

• Community building: in person (e.g., Meetup) and online communities

• Corporate profit, marketing, advertising (social media marketing is the latest business and career trend)

• Consumer need fulfillment (i.e., finding and getting what we want to attain, be it through online commercial sites such as Amazon, personal auction sites such as eBay, nonprofit exchanges such as Freecycle, and all of the consumer-oriented ratings and evaluation sites that allow us to recommend or rate our experiences

• Artistic creativity and expression that allows and encourages interactive sharing and feedback, such as Deviant Art for art and photography, Scribd for writing, and Vimeo for film and video artists.

• Political and public activism and social change, ranging from the use of social media in political campaigns to the use of internet activism to mobilize a following and raise funds (examples include MoveOn and Greenpeace) as well as the use of social media and mobile technology to mobilize and organize real political movements and even revolutions, as recent events in Tunisia and Egypt are demonstrating

• Expressing our opinions and sharing information: Vlogs, blogs, feedback blogs on news stories, customer reviews and feedback -- social media are quickly becoming a mechanism for citizen journalism, self-publishing and distribution, and reputation-building for both individuals and corporate brands

• Knowledge and information management and organizing (tools such as Diigo are among my favorites for personal information management; new technological tagging and ranking tools such as Digg and De.licio.us are behind the movement that is turning the Enlightenment-based paradigm of classification on its head, with the shift from taxonomies to "folksonomies"

What many of these social media tools, however different they may be, have in common is that they allow and encourage a bottom-up and collaborative development of structures and systems that is dynamic and flexible rather than an inflexible, imposed, top-down structure. This too reflects the flux surrounding the relative roles of experts/authorities and ordinary people--who become amateur or lay experts, in many cases.

Many developments in social media are here now, with many more on the horizon.