How are our social experiences bound up with social media platforms and their affordances, and how we make use of them?

 

image resource:https://martechseries.com/mts-insights/staff-writers/should-you-have-a-stronger-organic-social-media-marketing-strategy/

Do you use social media in your daily life?

"Social media" is a phrase we often use now. It is usually used to describe the content we publish on Wechat, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other websites and applications. So we can see that social media is a web-based website that allows people to communicate with each other.

What is the function of social media?

Social media allows individuals to stay in touch with friends and extended families. Many people use social media applications to build networks, find career opportunities, connect with like-minded people worldwide, and share their thoughts, feelings,s and insights.

Social platforms such as Instagram and Twitter provide their users with direct "connect" functions. With Instagram, you can send messages, use theme tags, pin images, and communicate with other users. Creating an "online community" allows users with similar interests to find relevant posts using the topic tag, empathising and interacting with each other.

Social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram allow users to share their life moments and stories through photos, text, and videos. However, these stories do not represent the "chaos" or "need" of the actual relationship (Turker, 2013). Instead, they control the spread of our "personal, cultural, and online self-awareness" (McCosker, 2014, P. 292). Because we now spend a lot of time in the virtual world and often ignore interpersonal communication in the real world.

 Image resources https://www.searchenginejournal.com/top-reasons-why-you-need-social-media-manager/273333/

How do our social experiences relate to social media platforms and their capabilities, and how do we leverage them?

According to Benkler (2006), individuals can reposition themselves from passive listeners and readers to potential speakers and participants in the public domain. With the Internet, citizens can become both creators and main subjects. This is how the Internet democratises the world. " (Benkler, 2006, 272)

According to Papacharissi (2009, P244), the emergence of "virtual sphere 2.0" allows citizens to express their objections to public plans through blogs, YouTube videos, and online discussion groups.

Castells (2009, p125) emphasised the novelty of this field: "the construction of a new public sphere in the network society is carried out by establishing communication protocols between different communication processes."

According to Burgess and Green (2009, 77), YouTube is a "cultural public sphere" because it allows people to encounter cultural differences and "listen" to different belief systems and identities.

We can change the world through social media by creating, publishing, sharing, and discussing content. Our ability to connect with people worldwide through our equipment ideas and discussions is further expanding. Public platforms also allow us to participate in political issues.

references list

Benkler,. 2006. pp272 The Wealth of Networks. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Burgess, Jean and Joshua Green. 2009. pp77 YouTube. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Castells, Manuel. 2009.pp125 Communication Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Papacharissi, Zizi. 2009. The Virtual Sphere 2.0. The Internet, the Public Shpere, and Beyond. In Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics, eds. Andrew Chadwick and Philip N. Howard, 230-245. New York: Routledge.

McCosker, A & Graham, T 2018, ‘Data publics: Urban protest, analytics and the courts’, M/C Journal, vol. 21, no. 1.

TED-Ed 2013, Connected, but alone?- Sherry Turkle, 19 April, viewed 16 March 2022 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv0g8TsnA6c>.