Social media use in politics refers to the use of online social media platforms in political processes and activities. Social media platforms encompass websites such as Facebook, YouTube, WeChat, Instagram, QQ, QZone, Weibo, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, Baidu Tieba, LinkedIn, LINE, Snapchat, Pinterest, Viber, and VK.
The internet has created channels of communication that play a
key role in circulating news, and social media has the power to change
not just the message, but the dynamics of political corruption, values,
and the dynamics of conflict in politics.
Through the use of social media in election processes, global conflict,
and extreme politics, diplomacy both in the United States and around
the world has become less private and susceptive to the public
perception.
Background
Participatory role
Social media have been championed as allowing anyone with an Internet connection to become a content creator and empowering their users.
The idea of “new media populism” encompasses how citizens can include
disenfranchised citizens, and allow the public to have an engaged and
active role in political discourse. New media, including social media
platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, can enhance people’s access to
political information.
Social media platforms and the internet have facilitated the
dissemination of political information that counters mainstream media
tactics that are often centralized and top-down, and include high
barriers to entry. Writer Howard Rheingold characterized the community created on social networking sites:
"The
political significance of computer mediated communication lies in its
capacity to challenge the existing political hierarchy’s monopoly on
powerful communications media, and perhaps thus revitalize citizen-based
democracy."
Scholar Derrick de Kerckhove described the new technology in media:
"In
a networked society, the real powershift is from the producer to the
consumer, and there is a redistribution of controls and power. On the
Web, Karl Marx’s dream has been realized: the tools and the means of
production are in the hands of the workers."
The role of social media in democratizing media participation, which proponents herald as ushering in a new era of participatory democracy,
with all users able to contribute news and comments, may fall short of
the ideals. International survey data suggest online media audience
members are largely passive consumers, while content creation is
dominated by a small number of users who post comments and write new
content. Others
argue that the effect of social media will vary from one country to
another, with domestic political structures playing a greater role than
social media in determining how citizens express opinions about stories
of current affairs involving the state.
As a news source
Adults in the United States who have access to the internet are
increasingly getting political news and information from social media
platforms. A 2016 Pew Research study found that 62% of adults get news on social media.
In
addition, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, lead the social media platforms in
which the majority of the users use the platforms to acquire news
information. Of all United States adults, 67% use the platform with 44%
who use the platform to get news.
According
to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report in 2013, the percentage of
online news users who blog about news issues ranges from 1–5%. Greater
percentages use social media to comment on news, with participation
ranging from 8% in Germany to 38% in Brazil. But online news users are
most likely to just talk about online news with friends offline or use
social media to share stories without creating content.
The rapid propagation of information on social media, spread by
word of mouth, can impact the perception of political figures quickly
with information that may or may not be true. When political information
is propagated in this manner on purpose, the spread of information on
social media for political means can benefit campaigns. On the other
hand, the word-of-mouth propagation of negative information concerning a
political figure can be damaging. For example, the use of the social media platform Twitter by United States congressman Anthony Weiner to send inappropriate messages played a role in his resignation.
Attention economy
Social media, especially news that is spread through social media sites, plays into the idea of the attention economy.
In which content that attracts more attention will be seen, shared, and
disseminated far more than news content that does gather as much
traction from the public. Tim Wu from Columbia Law School coins the
attention economy as “the resale of human attention.”
A communication platform such as social media is persuasive, and
often works to change or influence opinions when it comes to political
views because of the abundance of ideas, thoughts, and opinions
circulating through the social media platform. It is found that news use
leads to political persuasion, therefore the more that people use
social media platforms for news sources, the more their political
opinions will be affected. Despite that, people are expressing less
trust in their government and others due to media use- therefore social
media directly affects trust in media use. It is proven that while
reading newspapers there is an increase in social trust where on the
contrary watching the news on television weakened trust in others and
news sources.
Social media, or more specifically news media- plays an important role
in democratic societies because they allow for participation among
citizens.Therefore, when it comes to healthy democratic networks, it is
crucial that that news remains true so it doesn’t affect citizens’
levels of trust. A certain amount of trust is necessary for a healthy
and well functioning democratic system.
Younger generations are becoming more involved in politics due to
the increase of political news posted on various types of social media.
Due to the heavier use of social media among younger generations, they
are exposed to politics more frequently, and in a way that is integrated
into their online social lives. While informing younger generations of
political news is important, there are many biases within the realms of
social media. In May 2016, former Facebook Trending News curator
Benjamin Fearnow revealed his job was to "massage the algorithm," but
dismissed any "intentional, outright bias" by either human or automated
efforts within the company.
Fearnow was fired by Facebook after being caught leaking several
internal company debates about Black Lives Matter and presidential
candidate Donald Trump.
As a public utility
A key debate centers on whether or not social media is a public good
based on the premises of non-rival and non-excludable consumption.
Social media can be considered an impure public good as it can be
excludable given the rights of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to
censor content, disable accounts, and filter information based on
algorithms and community standards.
Arguments for platforms such as Google in being treated as a public
utility and public service provider include statements from Benjamin
Barber in The Nation
"For new media to be potential equalizers, they must be treated as
public utilities, recognizing that spectrum abundance (the excuse for
privatization) does not prevent monopoly ownership of hardware and
software platforms and hence cannot guarantee equal civic, educational,
and cultural access to citizens."
Similarly,
Zeynep Tufeckig argues online services are natural monopolies that
underwrite the "corporatization of social commons" and the
"privatization of our publics."
One argument that displays the nature of social media as an
impure public good is the fact that the control over content remains in
the hands of a few large media networks, Google and Facebook, for
example. Google and Facebook have the power to shape the environment
under personal and commercial goals that promotes profitability, as
opposed to promoting citizen voice and public deliberation.
Government regulation
Proponents and aims for regulation of social media are growing due to economic concerns of monopolies
of the platforms, to issues of privacy, censorship, network neutrality
and information storage. The discussion of regulation is complicated due
to the issue how Facebook, and Google are increasingly becoming a
service, information pipeline, and content provider, and thus centers on
how the government would regulate both the platform as a service and
information provider.
Thus, other proponents advocate for “algorithmic neutrality”, or the
aim for search engines on social media platforms to rank data without
human intervention.
Opponents of regulation of social media platforms argue that
platforms such as Facebook and Twitter do not resemble traditional
public utilities, and regulation would harm consumer welfare as public
utility regulation can hinder innovation and competition. Second, as the First Amendment values are criticized on social media platforms, the media providers should retain the power to how the platform is configured.
Role in social conflict
Social
media is revolutionizing the way people communicate, as people around
the world can communicate with each other by accessing a computer
interface and share information across multiple platforms. There are
four ways social media plays a significant role in conflict:.
Social media platforms allow information to be framed in mainstream platforms which limits communication.
Social media enables news stories to quickly go viral and later can lead to misinterpretations that can cause conflict.
Strategies and the adaption of social media has caused a change in
focus amongst leaders from administrative dynamics to new media
technology.
Technological advancements in communication can increase the power
of persuasion leading to corruption, scandals, and violence on social
media platforms.
Map of 2011 Arab Spring Protests
The
role of technological communication and social media in the world can
lead to political, economic, and social conflict due to its unmonitored
system, cheap interface, and accessibility.
Civilian use during the Arab Spring
During the peak of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, the Internet and social media played a huge role in facilitating information. At that time, Hosni Mubarak
was the president of Egypt and head the regime for almost 30 years.
Mubarak was so threatened by the immense power that the Internet and
social media gave the people that the government successfully shut down
the Internet, using the Ramses Exchange, for a period of time in February 2011.
Egyptians used Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube as a means to
communicate and organize demonstrations and rallies to overthrow
President Hosni Mubarak.
Statistics show that during this time the rate of Tweets from Egypt
increased from 2,300 to 230,000 per day and the top 23 protest videos
had approximately 5.5 million views.
Non-state actors and militant groups
As the world is becoming increasingly connected via the power of the
Internet, political movements, including militant groups, have begun to
see social media as a major organizing and recruiting tool. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIL, ISIS, and Daesh, has used social media to promote its cause. ISIS produces an online magazine named the Islamic State Report to recruit more fighters. ISIS produces online materials in a number of languages and uses recruiters to contact potential recruitees over the Internet.
ISIS in Iraq and Syria
In Canada, two girls from Montreal left their country to join ISIS in
Syria after exploring ISIS on social media and eventually being
recruited. On Twitter, there is an app called the Dawn of Glad Tidings that users can download and keep up to date on news about ISIS.
Hundreds of users around the world have signed up for the app, which
once downloaded will post tweets and hash-tags from accounts that are in
support of ISIS. As ISIS marched on the northern region of Iraq, tweets
in support of their efforts reached a high of 40,000 a day. Support of ISIS online is a factor in the radicalization of youth.
Mass media has yet to adopt the view that social media plays a vital
link in the radicalization of people. When tweets supportive of ISIS
make their way onto Twitter, they result in 72 re-tweets to the
original, which further spreads the message of ISIS.
These tweets have made their way to the account known as active
hashtags, which further helps broadcast ISIS's message as the account
sends out to its followers the most popular hashtags of the day. Other
militant groups such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban are increasingly using social media to raise funds, recruit and radicalize persons, and it has become increasingly effective.
Weaponization by state actors
Social media platforms have been weaponized by state-sponsored cyber groups to attack governments in the United States, the European Union, and the Middle East. Although phishing attacks via email are the most commonly used tactic to breach government networks, phishing attacks on social media rose 500% in 2016.
As with email-based phishing attacks, the majority of phishing attacks
on social media are financially motivated cyber crimes that install malware. However, cyber groups associated with Russia, Iran, and China have used social media to conduct cyberattacks
and undermine democratic processes in the West. During the 2017 French
presidential election, for example, Facebook detected and removed fake
accounts linked to the Russian cyber group Fancy Bear, who were posing as "friends of friends" of Emmanuel Macron associates to steal information from them. Cyber groups associated with Iran, China, and Russia have used LinkedIn to steal trade secrets, gain access to critical infrastructure, or recruit spies. These social engineering
attacks can be multi-platform, with threat actors initiating contact on
one platform but continuing communication on more private channel. The
Iranian-backed cyber group COBALT GYPSY created a fake persona across
multiple social media platforms and initiated contact on LinkedIn before
moving to Facebook and email.
The 2016 United States Presidential Election was an example in
which social media was used by the state actor Russia to influence
public opinion. Tactics such as propaganda, trolling, and bots were used
to leak fake news stories that included an "FBI agent had been killed
after leaking Clinton’s emails" and "Pope Francis had endorsed Donald
Trump.” Studies have found that pro-Trump news was as many as four-time more
than pro-Clinton fake news, and a third of the pro-Trump tweets were
generated by bots.
Social externalities of fake news
During the 2016 Presidential Election, Russia utilized disinformation and fake news
to distort the truth and paint the United States Western powers in a
negative light. Though fake news can generate some utility for
consumers, in terms of confirming far-right beliefs and spreading
propaganda in favor of a presidential candidate, it also imposes private
and social costs.
For example, one social cost to consumer is the spread of
disinformation which can make it harder for consumers to seek out the
truth and, in the case of the 2016 Election, for consumers to choose an
electoral candidate. Summarized by a Congressional Research Service Study in 2017,
“Cyber
tools were also used [by Russia] to create psychological effects in the
American population. The likely collateral effects of these activities
include compromising the fidelity of information, sowing discord and
doubt in the American public about the validity of intelligence
community reports, and prompting questions about the democratic process
itself.”
The
marginal social cost of fake news is exponential, as the first article
is shared it can affect a small number of people, but as the article is
circulated more throughout Facebook, the negative externality
multiplies. As a result, the quantity demanded of news can shift up
around election season as consumers seek to find correct news, however
the quantity demanded can also shift down as people have a lower trust
in mainstream media. In the American public, a Gallup poll in 2016 found
“Americans’ trust in the mass media ‘to report the news fully,
accurately and fairly’ was, at 32%, the lowest in the organization’s
polling history.” In addition, trust in mainstream media is lower in
Republican and far-right political viewers at 14%.
The term 'active pixel sensor' is also used to refer to the individual pixel sensor itself, as opposed to the image sensor. In this case, the image sensor is sometimes called an active pixel sensor imager, or active-pixel image sensor.
While researching MOS technology, Willard Boyle and George E. Smith realized that an electric charge could be stored on a tiny MOS capacitor, which became the basic building block of the charge-couple device (CCD), which they invented in 1969. An issue with CCD technology was that it required the need for nearly perfect charge transfer, which, according to Eric Fossum,
"makes their radiation 'soft,' difficult to use under low light
conditions, difficult to manufacture in large array sizes, difficult to
integrate with on-chipelectronics, difficult to use at low temperatures, difficult to use at high frame rates, and difficult to manufacture in non-silicon materials that extend wavelength response."
At RCA Laboratories, a research team including Paul K. Weimer, W.S. Pike and G. Sadasiv in 1969 proposed a solid-state image sensor with scanning circuits using thin-film transistors (TFTs), with photoconductivefilm used for the photodetector. A low-resolution "mostly digital" N-channel MOSFET (NMOS) imager with intra-pixel amplification, for an optical mouse application, was demonstrated by Richard F. Lyon in 1981. Another type of image sensor technology that is related to the APS is the hybrid infrared focal plane array (IRFPA), designed to operate at cryogenic temperatures in the infrared spectrum. The devices are two chips that are put together like a sandwich: one chip contains detector elements made in InGaAs or HgCdTe,
and the other chip is typically made of silicon and is used to read out
the photodetectors. The exact date of origin of these devices is
classified, but they were in use by the mid-1980s.
A key element of the modern CMOS sensor is the pinned photodiode (PPD). It was invented by Nobukazu Teranishi, Hiromitsu Shiraki and Yasuo Ishihara at NEC in 1980, and then publicly reported by Teranishi and Ishihara with A. Kohono, E. Oda and K. Arai in 1982, with the addition of an anti-blooming structure. The pinned photodiode is a photodetector structure with low lag, low noise, high quantum efficiency and low dark current. The new photodetector structure invented at NEC was given the name "pinned photodiode" (PPD) by B.C. Burkey at Kodak in 1984. In 1987, the PPD began to be incorporated into most CCD sensors, becoming a fixture in consumer electronicvideo cameras and then digital still cameras. Since then, the PPD has been used in nearly all CCD sensors and then CMOS sensors.
Passive-pixel sensor
The precursor to the APS was the passive-pixel sensor (PPS), a type of photodiode array (PDA). A passive-pixel sensor consists of passive pixels which are read out without amplification, with each pixel consisting of a photodiode and a MOSFET switch. In a photodiode array, pixels contain a p-n junction, integrated capacitor, and MOSFETs as selection transistors. A photodiode array was proposed by G. Weckler in 1968, predating the CCD. This was the basis for the PPS, which had image sensor elements with in-pixel selection transistors, proposed by Peter J.W. Noble in 1968, and by Savvas G. Chamberlain in 1969.
Passive-pixel sensors were being investigated as a solid-state alternative to vacuum-tube imaging devices. The MOS passive-pixel sensor used just a simple switch in the pixel to read out the photodiode integrated charge.
Pixels were arrayed in a two-dimensional structure, with an access
enable wire shared by pixels in the same row, and output wire shared by
column. At the end of each column was a transistor. Passive-pixel
sensors suffered from many limitations, such as high noise, slow readout, and lack of scalability.
Early photodiode arrays were complex and impractical, requiring
selection transistors to be fabricated within each pixel, along with
on-chip multiplexer circuits. The noise of photodiode arrays was also a limitation to performance, as the photodiode readout bus capacitance resulted in increased noise level. Correlated double sampling (CDS) could also not be used with a photodiode array without external memory. It was not possible to fabricate active pixel sensors with a practical pixel size in the 1970s, due to limited microlithography technology at the time. Because the MOS process was so variable and MOS transistors had characteristics that changed over time (Vth instability), the CCD's charge-domain operation was more manufacturable than MOS passive pixel sensors.
Active-pixel sensor
The active-pixel sensor consists of active pixels, each containing one or more MOSFETamplifiers which convert the photo-generated charge to a voltage, amplify the signal voltage, and reduce noise. The first MOS active-pixel sensor was the Charge Modulation Device (CMD) invented by Olympus in Japan during the mid-1980s. This was enabled by advances in MOSFETsemiconductor device fabrication, with MOSFET scaling reaching smaller micron and then sub-micron levels during the 1980s to early 1990s. The first MOS APS was fabricated by Tsutomu Nakamura's team at Olympus in 1985. The term active pixel sensor (APS) was coined by Nakamura while working on the CMD active-pixel sensor at Olympus.
The CMD imager had a vertical APS structure, which increases
fill-factor (or reduces pixel size) by storing the signal charge under
an output NMOS transistor. Other Japanese semiconductor companies soon followed with their own active pixel sensors during the late 1980s to early 1990s. Between 1988 and 1991, Toshiba developed the "double-gatefloating surface transistor" sensor, which had a lateral APS structure, with each pixel containing a buried-channel MOS photogate and a PMOS output amplifier. Between 1989 and 1992, Canon developed the base-stored image sensor (BASIS), which used a vertical APS structure similar to the Olympus sensor, but with bipolar transistors rather than MOSFETs.
In the early 1990s, American companies began developing practical MOS active pixel sensors. In 1991, Texas Instruments
developed the bulk CMD (BCMD) sensor, which was fabricated at the
company's Japanese branch and had a vertical APS structure similar to
the Olympus CMD sensor, but was more complex and used PMOS rather than
NMOS transistors.
CMOS sensor
By the late 1980s to early 1990s, the CMOS process was well-established as a well-controlled stable semiconductor manufacturing process and was the baseline process for almost all logic and microprocessors. There was a resurgence in the use of passive-pixel sensors for low-end imaging applications, while active-pixel sensors began being used for low-resolution high-function applications such as retina simulation
and high-energy particle detectors. However, CCDs continued to have
much lower temporal noise and fixed-pattern noise and were the dominant
technology for consumer applications such as camcorders as well as for broadcast cameras, where they were displacing video camera tubes.
In 1993, the first practical APS to be successfully fabricated outside of Japan was developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which fabricated a CMOS compatible APS, with its development led by Eric Fossum. It had a lateral APS structure similar to the Toshiba sensor, but was fabricated with CMOS rather than PMOS transistors. It was the first CMOS sensor with intra-pixel charge transfer.
Fossum, who worked at JPL, led the development of an image sensor
that used intra-pixel charge transfer along with an in-pixel amplifier
to achieve true correlated double sampling
(CDS) and low temporal noise operation, and on-chip circuits for
fixed-pattern noise reduction. He also published an extensive 1993
article predicting the emergence of APS imagers as the commercial
successor of CCDs.
The active pixel sensor (APS) was broadly defined by Fossum in this
paper. He classified two types of APS structures, the lateral APS and
the vertical APS. He also gave an overview of the history of APS
technology, from the first APS sensors in Japan to the development of
the CMOS sensor at JPL.
In 1994, Fossum proposed an improvement to the CMOS sensor: the integration of the pinned photodiode (PPD). A CMOS sensor with PPD technology was first fabricated in 1995 by a joint JPL and Kodak team that included Fossum along with P. P. K. Lee, R. C. Gee, R. M. Guidash and T. H. Lee.
Between 1993 and 1995, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed a number
of prototype devices, which validated the key features of the
technology. Though primitive, these devices demonstrated good image
performance with high readout speed and low power consumption.
In 1995, being frustrated by the slow pace of the technology's
adoption, Fossum and his then-wife Dr. Sabrina Kemeny co-founded
Photobit Corporation to commercialize the technology.
It continued to develop and commercialize APS technology for a number
of applications, such as web cams, high speed and motion capture
cameras, digital radiography, endoscopy (pill) cameras, digital single-lens reflex cameras
(DSLRs) and camera-phones. Many other small image sensor companies also
sprang to life shortly thereafter due to the accessibility of the CMOS
process and all quickly adopted the active pixel sensor approach.
Photobit's CMOS sensors found their way into webcams manufactured by Logitech and Intel, before Photobit was purchased by Micron Technology in 2001. The early CMOS sensor market was initially led by American manufacturers such as Micron, GoPro,
and Omnivision, allowing the United States to briefly recapture a
portion of the overall image sensor market from Japan, before the CMOS
sensor market eventually came to be dominated by Japan, South Korea and
China.
The CMOS sensor with PPD technology was further advanced and refined by
R. M. Guidash in 1997, K. Yonemoto and H. Sumi in 2000, and I. Inoue in
2003. This led to CMOS sensors achieve imaging performance on par with
CCD sensors, and later exceeding CCD sensors.
The video industry switched to CMOS cameras with the advent of high-definition video
(HD video), as the large number of pixels would require significantly
higher power consumption with CCD sensors, which would overheat and
drain batteries. Sony
in 2007 commercialized CMOS sensors with an original column A/D
conversion circuit, for fast, low-noise performance, followed in 2009 by
the CMOS back-illuminated sensor (BI sensor), with twice the sensitivity of conventional image sensors and going beyond the human eye.
CMOS sensors went on to have a significant cultural impact, leading to the mass proliferation of digital cameras and camera phones, which bolstered the rise of social media and selfie culture, and impacted social and political movements around the world.
By 2007, sales of CMOS active-pixel sensors had surpassed CCD sensors,
with CMOS sensors accounting for 54% of the global image sensor market
at the time. By 2012, CMOS sensors increased their share to 74% of the
market. As of 2017, CMOS sensors account for 89% of global image sensor
sales. In recent years, the CMOS sensor technology has spread to medium-format photography with Phase One being the first to launch a medium format digital back with a Sony-built CMOS sensor.
In 2012, Sony introduced the stacked CMOS BI sensor. Fossum now performs research on the Quanta Image Sensor (QIS) technology.
The QIS is a revolutionary change in the way we collect images in a
camera that is being invented at Dartmouth. In the QIS, the goal is to
count every photon that strikes the image sensor, and to provide
resolution of 1 billion or more specialized photoelements (called jots)
per sensor, and to read out jot bit planes hundreds or thousands of
times per second resulting in terabits/sec of data.
Comparison to CCDs
APS
pixels solve the speed and scalability issues of the passive-pixel
sensor. They generally consume less power than CCDs, have less image
lag, and require less specialized manufacturing facilities. Unlike CCDs,
APS sensors can combine the image sensor function and image processing
functions within the same integrated circuit. APS sensors have found markets in many consumer applications, especially camera phones. They have also been used in other fields including digital radiography, military ultra high speed image acquisition, security cameras, and optical mice. Manufacturers include Aptina Imaging (independent spinout from Micron Technology, who purchased Photobit in 2001), Canon, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, Toshiba, OmniVision Technologies, Sony, and Foveon,
among others. CMOS-type APS sensors are typically suited to
applications in which packaging, power management, and on-chip
processing are important. CMOS type sensors are widely used, from
high-end digital photography down to mobile-phone cameras.
Advantages of CMOS compared with CCD
Blooming in a CCD image
A big advantage of a CMOS sensor is that it is typically less expensive than a CCD sensor.
A CMOS sensor also typically has better control of blooming (that
is, of bleeding of photo-charge from an over-exposed pixel into other
nearby pixels).
In three-sensor camera systems
that use separate sensors to resolve the red, green, and blue
components of the image in conjunction with beam splitter prisms, the
three CMOS sensors can be identical, whereas most splitter prisms
require that one of the CCD sensors has to be a mirror image of the
other two to read out the image in a compatible order. Unlike CCD
sensors, CMOS sensors have the ability to reverse the addressing of the
sensor elements. CMOS Sensors with a film speed of ISO 4 million exist.
Disadvantages of CMOS compared with CCD
Distortion caused by a rolling shutter
Since a CMOS sensor typically captures a row at a time within
approximately 1/60th or 1/50th of a second (depending on refresh rate)
it may result in a "rolling shutter"
effect, where the image is skewed (tilted to the left or right,
depending on the direction of camera or subject movement). For example,
when tracking a car moving at high speed, the car will not be distorted
but the background will appear to be tilted. A frame-transfer CCD sensor
or "global shutter" CMOS sensor does not have this problem, instead
captures the entire image at once into a frame store.
The active circuitry in CMOS pixels takes some area on the
surface which is not light-sensitive, reducing the photon-detection
efficiency of the device (back-illuminated sensors
can mitigate this problem). But the frame-transfer CCD also has about
half non-sensitive area for the frame store nodes, so the relative
advantages depend on which types of sensors are being compared.
Architecture
Pixel
A three-transistor active pixel sensor.
The standard CMOS APS pixel today consists of a photodetector (pinned photodiode), a floating diffusion, and the so-called 4T cell consisting of four CMOS (complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor) transistors, including a transfer gate, reset gate, selection gate and source-follower readout transistor.
The pinned photodiode was originally used in interline transfer CCDs
due to its low dark current and good blue response, and when coupled
with the transfer gate, allows complete charge transfer from the pinned
photodiode to the floating diffusion (which is further connected to the
gate of the read-out transistor) eliminating lag. The use of intrapixel
charge transfer can offer lower noise by enabling the use of correlated double sampling
(CDS). The Noble 3T pixel is still sometimes used since the fabrication
requirements are less complex. The 3T pixel comprises the same elements
as the 4T pixel except the transfer gate and the photodiode. The reset
transistor, Mrst, acts as a switch to reset the floating diffusion to VRST, which in this case is represented as the gate of the Msf transistor. When the reset transistor is turned on, the photodiode is effectively connected to the power supply, VRST, clearing all integrated charge. Since the reset transistor is n-type, the pixel operates in soft reset. The read-out transistor, Msf, acts as a buffer (specifically, a source follower), an amplifier which allows the pixel voltage to be observed without removing the accumulated charge. Its power supply, VDD, is typically tied to the power supply of the reset transistor VRST. The select transistor, Msel,
allows a single row of the pixel array to be read by the read-out
electronics. Other innovations of the pixels such as 5T and 6T pixels
also exist. By adding extra transistors, functions such as global
shutter, as opposed to the more common rolling shutter,
are possible. In order to increase the pixel densities, shared-row,
four-ways and eight-ways shared read out, and other architectures can be
employed. A variant of the 3T active pixel is the Foveon X3 sensor invented by Dick Merrill. In this device, three photodiodes are stacked on top of each other using planar fabrication techniques,
each photodiode having its own 3T circuit. Each successive layer acts
as a filter for the layer below it shifting the spectrum of absorbed
light in successive layers. By deconvolving the response of each layered
detector, red, green, and blue signals can be reconstructed.
Array
A typical
two-dimensional array of pixels is organized into rows and columns.
Pixels in a given row share reset lines, so that a whole row is reset at
a time. The row select lines of each pixel in a row are tied together
as well. The outputs of each pixel in any given column are tied
together. Since only one row is selected at a given time, no competition
for the output line occurs. Further amplifier circuitry is typically on
a column basis.
Size
The size of the pixel sensor is often given in height and width, but also in the optical format.
Lateral and vertical structures
There are two types of active-pixel sensor (APS) structures, the lateral APS and vertical APS. Eric Fossum defines the lateral APS as follows:
A lateral APS structure is defined
as one that has part of the pixel area used for photodetection and
signal storage, and the other part is used for the active transistor(s).
The advantage of this approach, compared to a vertically integrated
APS, is that the fabrication process is simpler, and is highly
compatible with state-of-the-art CMOS and CCD device processes.
Fossum defines the vertical APS as follows:
A vertical APS structure increases fill-factor (or reduces pixel size) by storing the signal charge under the output transistor.
Thin-film transistors
A two-transistor active/passive pixel sensor
For applications such as large-area digital X-ray imaging, thin-film transistors
(TFTs) can also be used in APS architecture. However, because of the
larger size and lower transconductance gain of TFTs compared with CMOS
transistors, it is necessary to have fewer on-pixel TFTs to maintain
image resolution and quality at an acceptable level. A two-transistor
APS/PPS architecture has been shown to be promising for APS using amorphous silicon TFTs. In the two-transistor APS architecture on the right, TAMP is used as a switched-amplifier integrating functions of both Msf and Msel
in the three-transistor APS. This results in reduced transistor counts
per pixel, as well as increased pixel transconductance gain. Here, Cpix
is the pixel storage capacitance, and it is also used to capacitively
couple the addressing pulse of the "Read" to the gate of TAMP for ON-OFF switching. Such pixel readout circuits work best with low capacitance photoconductor detectors such as amorphous selenium.
Design variants
Many different pixel designs have been proposed and fabricated. The
standard pixel is the most common because it uses the fewest wires and
the fewest, most tightly packed transistors possible for an active
pixel. It is important that the active circuitry in a pixel take up as
little space as possible to allow more room for the photodetector. High
transistor count hurts fill factor, that is, the percentage of the pixel
area that is sensitive to light. Pixel size can be traded for desirable
qualities such as noise reduction or reduced image lag. Noise is a
measure of the accuracy with which the incident light can be measured.
Lag occurs when traces of a previous frame remain in future frames, i.e.
the pixel is not fully reset. The voltage noise variance in a
soft-reset (gate-voltage regulated) pixel is , but image lag and fixed pattern noise may be problematic. In rms electrons, the noise is .
Hard reset
Operating the pixel via hard reset results in a Johnson–Nyquist noise on the photodiode of or , but prevents image lag, sometimes a desirable tradeoff. One way to use hard reset is replace Mrst
with a p-type transistor and invert the polarity of the RST signal. The
presence of the p-type device reduces fill factor, as extra space is
required between p- and n-devices; it also removes the possibility of
using the reset transistor as an overflow anti-blooming drain, which is a
commonly exploited benefit of the n-type reset FET. Another way to
achieve hard reset, with the n-type FET, is to lower the voltage of VRST
relative to the on-voltage of RST. This reduction may reduce headroom,
or full-well charge capacity, but does not affect fill factor, unless VDD is then routed on a separate wire with its original voltage.
Combinations of hard and soft reset
Techniques
such as flushed reset, pseudo-flash reset, and hard-to-soft reset
combine soft and hard reset. The details of these methods differ, but
the basic idea is the same. First, a hard reset is done, eliminating
image lag. Next, a soft reset is done, causing a low noise reset without
adding any lag. Pseudo-flash reset requires separating VRST from VDD,
while the other two techniques add more complicated column circuitry.
Specifically, pseudo-flash reset and hard-to-soft reset both add
transistors between the pixel power supplies and the actual VDD. The result is lower headroom, without affecting fill factor.
Active reset
A
more radical pixel design is the active-reset pixel. Active reset can
result in much lower noise levels. The tradeoff is a complicated reset
scheme, as well as either a much larger pixel or extra column-level
circuitry.
Social media are interactive computer-mediated technologies
that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career
interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks.
The variety of stand-alone and built-in social media services currently
available introduces challenges of definition; however, there are some
common features:
Social media are interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications.
Users create service-specific profiles and identities for the website or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization.
Social media facilitate the development of online social networks by connecting a user's profile with those of other individuals or groups.
Users usually access social media services via web-based technologies on desktops and laptops, or download services that offer social media functionality to their mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets). As users engage with these electronic
services, they create highly interactive platforms through which
individuals, communities, and organizations can share, co-create,
discuss, participate and modify user-generated content or self-curated
content posted online.
Networks formed through social media change the way groups of
people interact and communicate or stand with the votes. They "introduce
substantial and pervasive changes to communication between
organizations, communities, and individuals." These changes are the focus of the emerging fields of technoself studies. Social media differ from paper-based media (e.g., magazines and newspapers) and traditional electronic media such as TV broadcasting, Radio broadcasting in many ways, including quality, reach, frequency,
interactivity, usability, immediacy, and performance. Social media
outlets operate in a dialogic transmission system (many sources to many
receivers). This is in contrast to traditional media
which operates under a mono-logic transmission model (one source to
many receivers), such as a newspaper which is delivered to many
subscribers, or a radio station which broadcasts the same programs to an
entire city. Some of the most popular social media websites, with over
100 million registered users, include Facebook (and its associated Facebook Messenger), YouTube, WeChat, Instagram, QQ, QZone, Weibo, Twitter, Tumblr, Telegram, Baidu Tieba, LinkedIn, LINE, Snapchat, Pinterest, Viber and VK, reddit and more.
Observers have noted a range of positive and negative impacts of
social media use. 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.
History
Front panel of the 1969-era ARPANET Interface Message Processor.
IMP log for the first message sent over the Internet, using ARPANET.
Social media may have roots in the 1840s introduction of the telegraph, which connected the United States.
The PLATO system launched in 1960, which was developed at the University of Illinois and subsequently commercially marketed by Control Data Corporation,
offered early forms of social media features with 1973-era innovations
such as Notes, PLATO's message-forum application; TERM-talk, its
instant-messaging feature; Talkomatic,
perhaps the first online chat room; News Report, a crowd-sourced online
newspaper and blog; and Access Lists, enabling the owner of a note file
or other application to limit access to a certain set of users, for
example, only friends, classmates, or co-workers.
A precursor of the electronic bulletin board system (BBS), known as Community Memory,
had already appeared by 1973. True electronic bulletin board systems
arrived with the Computer Bulletin Board System in Chicago, which first
came online on February 16, 1978. Before long, most major cities had
more than one BBS running on TRS-80, Apple II, Atari, IBM PC, Commodore 64, Sinclair, and similar personal computers.
The IBM PC was introduced in 1981, and subsequent models of both Mac
computers and PCs were used throughout the 1980s. Multiple modems,
followed by specialized telecommunication hardware, allowed many users
to be online simultaneously. Compuserve, Prodigy and AOL
were three of the largest BBS companies and were the first to migrate
to the Internet in the 1990s. Between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s,
BBSes numbered in the tens of thousands in North America alone.
Message forums (a specific structure of social media) arose with the
BBS phenomenon throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. When the Internet
proliferated with the World Wide Web (WWW) in the mid-1990s, message forums migrated online, becoming Internet forums,
primarily due to cheaper per-person access as well as the ability to
handle far more people simultaneously than telco modem banks.
An important feature of social media is digital mediadata compression, due to the impractically high memory and bandwidth requirements of uncompressed media. The most important compression algorithm is the discrete cosine transform (DCT), a lossy compression technique that was first proposed by Nasir Ahmed in 1972. DCT-based compression standards include the H.26x and MPEGvideo coding standards introduced from 1988 onwards, and the JPEGimage compression standard introduced in 1992. JPEG was largely responsible for the proliferation of digital images and digital photos which lie at the heart of social media, and the MPEG standards did the same for digital video content on social media. The JPEG image format is used more than a billion times on social networks every day, as of 2014.
SixDegrees.com, launched in 1997, is often regarded as the first social media site.
GeoCities was one of the Internet's earliest social networking websites, appearing in November 1994, followed by Classmates in December 1995 and Six Degrees
in May 1997. According to CBS news, Six Degrees is "widely considered
to be the very first social networking site", as it included "profiles,
friends lists and school affiliations" that could be used by registered
users. Open Diary was launched in October 1998; LiveJournal in April 1999; Ryze in October 2001; Friendster in March 2002; the corporate and job-oriented site LinkedIn in May 2003; hi5 in June 2003; MySpace in August 2003; Orkut in January 2004; Facebook in February 2004; Yahoo! 360° in March 2005; Bebo in July 2005; the text-based service Twitter, in which posts, called "tweets", were limited to 140 characters, in July 2006; Tumblr in February 2007; and Google+ in July 2011.
Definition and classification
The variety of evolving stand-alone and built-in social media services makes it challenging to define them. However, marketing and social media experts broadly agree that social media includes the following 13 types of social media:
The idea that social media are defined simply by their ability to
bring people together has been seen as too broad, as this would suggest
that fundamentally different technologies like the telegraph and telephone are also social media. The terminology is unclear, with some early researchers referring to social media as social networks or social networking services in the mid 2000s. A more recent paper from 2015 reviewed the prominent literature in the area and identified four common features unique to then-current social media services:
Social media are Web 2.0 Internet-based applications.
Users create service-specific profiles for the site or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization.
Social media facilitate the development of online social networks by connecting a user's profile with those of other individuals or groups.
In 2019, Merriam-Webster
defined "social media" as "forms of electronic communication (such as
websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users
create online communities to share information, ideas, personal
messages, and other content (such as videos)"
Classification of social media and overview of how important different types of social media (e.g. blogs) are for each of a company's operational functions (e.g. marketing)
The development of social media started off with simple platforms such as sixdegrees.com.
Unlike instant messaging clients, such as ICQ and AOL's AIM, or chat
clients like IRC, iChat or Chat Television, sixdegrees.com was the first
online business that was created for real people, using their real
names. The first social networks were short-lived, however, because
their users lost interest. The Social Network Revolution has led to the
rise of networking sites. Research
shows that the audience spends 22% of their time on social networks,
thus proving how popular social media platforms have become. This
increase is because of the widespread daily use of smartphones.
Social media are used to document memories, learn about and explore
things, advertise oneself and form friendships as well as the growth of
ideas from the creation of blogs, podcasts, videos, and gaming sites.
Networked individuals create, edit, and manage content in collaboration
with other networked individuals. This way they contribute to expanding
knowledge. Wikis are examples of collaborative content creation.
Mobile social media
The
heavy usage of smartphones among young people relates to the
significant percentage of social media users who are from this
demographic.
Mobile social media refer to the use of social media on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Mobile social media are a useful application of mobile marketing
because the creation, exchange, and circulation of user-generated
content can assist companies with marketing research, communication, and
relationship development.
Mobile social media differ from others because they incorporate the
current location of the user (location-sensitivity) or the time delay
between sending and receiving messages (time-sensitivity). According to Andreas Kaplan, mobile social media applications can be differentiated among four types:
Space-timers (location and time sensitive): Exchange of
messages with relevance mostly for one specific location at one specific
point in time (e.g. Facebook PlacesWhatsApp; Foursquare)
Space-locators (only location sensitive): Exchange of
messages, with relevance for one specific location, which is tagged to a
certain place and read later by others (e.g. Yelp; Qype, Tumblr, Fishbrain)
Quick-timers (only time sensitive): Transfer of traditional social media mobile apps to increase immediacy (e.g. posting Twitter messages or Facebook status updates)
Slow-timers (neither location nor time sensitive): Transfer of traditional social media applications to [[mobile devices (e.g. watching a YouTube video or reading/editing a Wikipedia article)
Elements and function
Viral content
Some social media sites have potential for content posted there to spread virally over social networks. The term is an analogy to the concept of viral infections,
which can spread rapidly from person to person. In a social media
context, content or websites that are "viral" (or which "go viral") are
those with a greater likelihood that users will reshare content posted
(by another user) to their social network, leading to further sharing.
In some cases, posts containing popular content or fast-breaking news
have been rapidly shared and reshared by a huge number of users. Many
social media sites provide specific functionality to help users reshare
content, such as Twitter's retweet button, Pinterest's pin function, Facebook's share option or Tumblr's reblog function. Businesses have a particular interest in viral marketing
tactics because a viral campaign can achieve widespread advertising
coverage (particularly if the viral reposting itself makes the news) for
a fraction of the cost of a traditional marketing campaign, which
typically uses printed materials, like newspapers, magazines, mailings, and billboards, and television and radio commercials. Nonprofit organizations and activists
may have similar interests in posting content on social media sites
with the aim of it going viral. A popular component and feature of
Twitter is retweeting. Twitter allows other people to keep up with
important events, stay connected with their peers, and can contribute in
various ways throughout social media. When certain posts become popular, they start to get retweeted
over and over again, becoming viral. Hashtags can be used in tweets,
and can also be used to take count of how many people have used that
hashtag.
Bots
Social media can enable companies to get in the form of greater market share and increased audiences. Internet bots have been developed which facilitate social media marketing. Bots are automated programs that run over the Internet. Chatbots and social bots are programmed to mimic natural human interactions such as liking, commenting, following, and unfollowing on social media platforms. A new industry of bot providers has been created. Social bots and chatbots have created an analytical crisis in the marketing industry as they make it difficult to differentiate between human interactions and automated bot interactions.
Some bots are negatively affecting their marketing data causing a
"digital cannibalism" in social media marketing. Additionally, some bots
violate the terms of use on many social mediums such as Instagram, which can result in profiles being taken down and banned.
"Cyborgs", a combination of a human and a bot, are used to spread fake news or create a marketing "buzz". Cyborgs can be bot-assisted humans or human-assisted bots.
An example is a human who registers an account for which they set
automated programs to post, for instance, tweets, during their
absence. From time to time, the human participates to tweet and interact with friends.
Cyborgs make it easier to spread fake news, as it blends automated activity with human input.
When the automated accounts are publicly identified, the human part of
the cyborg is able to take over and could protest that the account has
been used manually all along. Such accounts try to pose as real people;
in particular, the number of their friends or followers should be
resembling that of a real person.
Patents of social media technology
Number
of U.S. social network patent applications published and patents issued
per year since 2003. The chart shows that the number of software applications published (the green bars) increased steadily from 2003 to 2007, and then shot up from 2008 to 2010.
There has been rapid growth in the number of U.S. patent applications
that cover new technologies related to social media, and the number of
them that are published has been growing rapidly over the past five
years. There are now over 2000 published patent applications.
As many as 7000 applications may be currently on file including those
that haven't been published yet. Only slightly over 100 of these
applications have issued as patents, however, largely due to the
multi-year backlog in examination of business method patents, patents which outline and claim new methods of doing business.
Statistics on usage and membership
Social media websites are popular on mobile devices such as smartphones.
According to Statista,
in 2019, it is estimated that there will be around 2.77 billion social
media users around the globe, up from 2.46 billion in 2017.
Most popular social networks
The following list of the leading social networks shows the number of active users as of July 2019.
According
to a survey conducted by Pew Research in 2018, Facebook and YouTube
dominate the social media landscape, as notable majorities of U.S.
adults use each of these sites. At the same time, younger Americans
(especially those ages 18 to 24) stand out for embracing a variety of
platforms and using them frequently. Some 78% of 18 - 24-year-old
youngsters use Snapchat, and a sizeable majority of these users (71%)
visit the platform multiple times per day. Similarly, 71% of Americans
in this age group now use Instagram and close to half (45%) are Twitter
users. However, Facebook remains the primary platform for most
Americans. Roughly two-thirds of U.S. adults (68%) now report that they
are Facebook users, and roughly three-quarters of those users access
Facebook on a daily basis. With the exception of those 65 and older, a
majority of Americans across a wide range of demographic groups now use
Facebook.
After this rapid growth, the number of new U.S. Facebook accounts
created has plateaued, with not much observable growth in the 2016-18
period.
Use by organizations
Use by governments
Governments may use social media to (for example):
Marketplace actors can use social-media tools for marketing research, communication, sales promotions/discounts, informal employee-learning/organizational development, relationship development/loyalty programs, and e-Commerce. Often social media can become a good source of information and/or explanation of industry trends for a business
to embrace change. Trends in social-media technology and usage change
rapidly, making it crucial for businesses to have a set of guidelines
that can apply to many social media platforms.
Companies are increasingly using social-media monitoring
tools to monitor, track, and analyze online conversations on the Web
about their brand or products or about related topics of interest. This
can prove useful in public relations management and advertising-campaign tracking, allowing analysts to measure return on investment for their social media ad spending, competitor-auditing, and for public engagement. Tools range from free, basic applications to subscription-based, more in-depth tools.
Social media becomes effective through a process called "building social authority". One of the foundation concepts in social media has become
that one cannot completely control one's message through social media
but rather one can simply begin to participate in the "conversation"
expecting that one can achieve a significant influence in that
conversation.
Social media mining
Social media "mining" is a type of data mining, a technique of analyzing data
to detect patterns. Social media mining is a process of representing,
analyzing, and extracting actionable patterns from data collected from
people's activities on social media. Google mines data in many ways
including using an algorithm in Gmail
to analyze information in emails. This use of the information will then
affect the type of advertisements shown to the user when they use
Gmail. Facebook has partnered with many data mining companies such as Datalogix and BlueKai to use customer information for targeted advertising. Ethical questions of the extent to which a company should be able to utilize a user's information have been called "big data".
Users tend to click through Terms of Use agreements when signing up on
social media platforms, and they do not know how their information will
be used by companies. This leads to questions of privacy and
surveillance when user data is recorded. Some social media outlets have
added capture time and Geotagging that helps provide information about the context of the data as well as making their data more accurate.
In politics
Social media has a range of uses in political processes and
activities. Social media have been championed as allowing anyone with an
Internet connection to become a content creator[58] and empowering their users. The role of social media in democratizing media participation, which proponents herald as ushering in a new era of participatory democracy,
with all users able to contribute news and comments, may fall short of
the ideals, given that many often follow like-minded individuals, as
noted by Philip Pond and Jeff Lewis.
Online media audience members are largely passive consumers, while
content creation is dominated by a small number of users who post
comments and write new content.
Younger generations are becoming more involved in politics due to
the increase of political news posted on social media. Political
campaigns are targeting Millennials online via social media posts in
hope that they will increase their political engagement. Social media was influential in the widespread attention given to the revolutionary outbreaks in the Middle East and North Africa during 2011. During the Tunisian revolution in 2011, people used Facebook to organize meetings and protests. However, there is debate about the extent to which social media facilitated this kind of political change.
Social Media footprints of candidates have grown during the last
decade and the 2016 United States Presidential election provides a good
example. Dounoucos et al. noted that Twitter use by the candidates was
unprecedented during that election cycle. Most candidates in the United
States have a Twitter account. The public has also increased their reliance on social media sites for political information. In the European Union, social media has amplified political messages.
One challenge is that militant groups have begun to see social media as a major organizing and recruiting tool. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,
also known as ISIL, ISIS, and Daesh, has used social media to promote
its cause. In 2014, #AllEyesonISIS went viral on Arabic Twitter. ISIS produces an online magazine named the Islamic State Report to recruit more fighters. Social media platforms have been weaponized by state-sponsored cyber groups to attack governments in the United States, European Union, and Middle East. Although phishing attacks via email are the most commonly used tactic to breach government networks, phishing attacks on social media rose 500% in 2016.
Use in hiring
If
a college applicant has posted photos of engaging in activities that
are contrary to college rules or values, it could adversely affect their
chances of getting in.
Some employers examine job applicants' social media profiles as part
of the hiring assessment. This issue raises many ethical questions that
some consider an employer's right and others consider discrimination.
Many Western European countries have already implemented laws that
restrict the regulation of social media in the workplace. States
including Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan,
Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin have
passed legislation that protects potential employees and current
employees from employers that demand that they provide their usernames
and/or passwords for any social media accounts.
Use of social media by young people has caused significant problems for
some applicants who are active on social media when they try to enter
the job market. A survey of 17,000 young people in six countries in 2013
found that 1 in 10 people aged 16 to 34 have been rejected for a job
because of online comments they made on social media websites.
Use in school admissions
It
is not only an issue in the workplace but an issue in post-secondary
school admissions as well. There have been situations where students
have been forced to give up their social media passwords to school
administrators.
There are inadequate laws to protect a student's social media privacy,
and organizations such as the ACLU are pushing for more privacy
protection, as it is an invasion. They urge students who are pressured
to give up their account information to tell the administrators to
contact a parent or lawyer before they take the matter any further.
Although they are students, they still have the right to keep their
password-protected information private.
Before social media, admissions officials in the United States used SAT and other standardized test scores, extra-curricular activities, letters of recommendation, and high school report cards
to determine whether to accept or deny an applicant. In the 2010s,
while colleges and universities still use these traditional methods to
evaluate applicants, these institutions are increasingly accessing
applicants' social media profiles to learn about their character and
activities. According to Kaplan, Inc, a corporation that provides higher education preparation, in 2012 27% of admissions officers used Google to learn more about an applicant, with 26% checking Facebook.
Students whose social media pages include offensive jokes or photos,
racist or homophobic comments, photos depicting the applicant engaging
in illegal drug use or drunkenness, and so on, may be screened out from
admission processes.
Use by law enforcement agencies
Social media have been used to assist in searches for missing persons. When a University of Cincinnati student disappeared in 2014, his friends and family used social media to organize and fund a search effort. when their efforts went viral on Facebook, Twitter, GoFundMe, and The Huffington Post during the week-long search. Dulle's body was eventually found in a building next door to his apartment.
Social media was brought up as a strategy to try to help bring together
the community and police force. It is a way for the police force to show
their progress to the community on issues they are dealing with. In some cases law enforcement has used social media to show accountability for officers who have broken the law.
In the United States U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
identifies and track individuals via social media, and also has
apprehended some people via social media based sting operations. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (also known as CPB) and the United States Department of Homeland Security use social media data as influencing factors during the visa process, and continue to monitor individuals after they have entered the country.
CPB officers have also been documented performing searches of
electronics and social media behavior at the border, searching both
citizens and non-citizens without first obtaining a warrant.
Use in court cases
Social
media comments and images are being used in a range of court cases
including employment law, child custody/child support and insurance
disability claims. After an Apple employee criticized his employer on
Facebook, he was fired. When the former employee sued Apple for unfair
dismissal, the court, after seeing the man's Facebook posts, found in
favor of Apple, as the man's social media comments breached Apple's
policies.
After a heterosexual couple broke up, the man posted "violent rap
lyrics from a song that talked about fantasies of killing the rapper's
ex-wife" and made threats against him. The court found him guilty and he
was sentenced to jail.
In a disability claims case, a woman who fell at work claimed that she
was permanently injured; the employer used her social media posts of her
travels and activities to counter her claims.
Courts do not always admit social media evidence, in part because screenshots can be faked or tampered with. Judges are taking emojis
into account to assess statements made on social media; in one Michigan
case where a person alleged that another person had defamed them in an
online comment, the judge disagreed, noting that there was an emoji
after the comment which indicated that it was a joke.
In a 2014 case in Ontario against a police officer regarding alleged
assault of a protester during the G20 summit, the court rejected the
Crown's application to use a digital photo of the protest that was
anonymously posted online, because there was no metadata proving when the photo was taken and it could have been digitally altered.
Social media marketing
Social media websites can also use "traditional" marketing approaches, as seen in these LinkedIn-branded chocolates.
Social media marketing has increased due to the growing active user rates on social media sites. For example, Facebook currently has 2.2 billion users, Twitter has 330 million active users and Instagram has 800 million users.
One of the main uses is to interact with audiences to create awareness
of their brand or service, with the main idea of creating a two-way
communication system where the audience and/or customers can interact
back; providing feedback as just one example.
Social media can be used to advertise; placing an advert on Facebook's
Newsfeed, for example, can allow a vast number of people to see it or
targeting specific audiences from their usage to encourage awareness of
the product or brand. Users of social media are then able to like, share
and comment on the advert, becoming message senders as they can keep
passing the advert's message on to their friends and onwards.
The use of new media put consumers on the position of spreading
opinions, sharing experience, and has shift power from organization to
consumers for it allows transparency and different opinions to be heard.
media marketing has to keep up with all the different platforms. They
also have to keep up with the ongoing trends that are set by big
influencers and draw many peoples attention. The type of audience a
business is going for will determine the social media site they use.
Social media personalities have been employed by marketers to promote products online. Research shows that digital endorsements seem to be successfully targeting social media users, especially younger consumers who have grown up in the digital age. Celebrities with large social media followings, such as Kylie Jenner, regularly endorse products to their followers on their social media pages. In 2013, the United Kingdom Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)
began to advise celebrities and sports stars to make it clear if they
had been paid to tweet about a product or service by using the hashtag
#spon or #ad within tweets containing endorsements. The practice of
harnessing social media personalities to market or promote a product or
service to their following is commonly referred to as Influencer Marketing.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines an "influencer" as any person
(personality, blogger, journalist, celebrity) who has the ability to
affect the opinions, behaviors, or purchases of others through the use
of social media.
Companies such as fast food franchise Wendy's have used humor to advertise their products by poking fun at competitors such as McDonald's and Burger King. Other companies such as Juul have used hashtags to promote themselves and their products.
On social media, consumers are exposed to the purchasing
practices of peers through messages from a peer's account, which may be
peer-written. Such messages may be part of an interactive marketing
strategy involving modeling, reinforcement, and social interaction
mechanisms.
A 2011 study focusing on peer communication through social media
described how communication between peers through social media can
affect purchase intentions: a direct impact through conformity, and an
indirect impact by stressing product engagement.
The study indicated that social media communication between peers about
a product had a positive relationship with product engagement.
Use in science
Signals from social media are used to assess academic publications, as well as for evaluation of the quality of the Wikipedia articles and their sources.
Data from social media can be also used for different scientific
approaches. One of the studies examined how millions of users interact
with socially shared news and show that individuals’ choices played a
stronger role in limiting exposure to cross-cutting content. Another study found that most of the health science students acquiring academic materials from others through social media. Massive amounts of data from social platforms allows scientists and machine learning researchers to extract insights and build product features. Using social media can help to shape patterns of deception in resumes.
Use by individuals
As a news source
In the United States, 81% of look online for news of the weather,
first and foremost, with the percentage seeking national news at 73%,
52% for sports news, and 41% for entertainment or celebrity news.
According to CNN, in 2010 75% of people got their news forwarded through
e-mail or social media posts, whereas 37% of people shared a news item
via Facebook or Twitter. Facebook and Twitter
make news a more participatory experience than before as people share
news articles and comment on other people's posts. Rainie and Wellman
have argued that media making now has become a participation work, which changes communication systems. However, 27% of respondents worry about the accuracy of a story on a blog.
From a 2019 poll, Pew Research Center found that Americans are wary
about the ways that social media sites share news and certain content.
Effects on individual and collective memory
News
media and television journalism have been a key feature in the shaping
of American collective memory for much of the twentieth century.
Indeed, since the United States' colonial era, news media has
influenced collective memory and discourse about national development
and trauma. In many ways, mainstream journalists have maintained an
authoritative voice as the storytellers of the American past. Their
documentary style narratives, detailed exposes, and their positions in
the present make them prime sources for public memory. Specifically,
news media journalists have shaped collective memory on nearly every
major national event – from the deaths of social and political figures
to the progression of political hopefuls. Journalists provide elaborate
descriptions of commemorative events in U.S. history and contemporary
popular cultural sensations. Many Americans learn the significance of
historical events and political issues through news media, as they are
presented on popular news stations. However, journalistic influence is growing less important, whereas social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, provide a constant supply of alternative news sources for users.
As social networking
becomes more popular among older and younger generations, sites such as
Facebook and YouTube, gradually undermine the traditionally
authoritative voices of news media. For example, American citizens
contest media coverage of various social and political events as they
see fit, inserting their voices into the narratives about America's past
and present and shaping their own collective memories. An example of this is the public explosion of the Trayvon Martin
shooting in Sanford, Florida. News media coverage of the incident was
minimal until social media users made the story recognizable through
their constant discussion of the case. Approximately one month after the
fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, its online coverage by everyday Americans garnered national attention from mainstream media journalists, in turn exemplifying media activism. In some ways, the spread of this tragic event through alternative news sources parallels that of Emmitt Till
– whose murder by lynching in 1955 became a national story after it was
circulated in African-American and Communist newspapers.
Interpersonal relationships
Modern day teenagers interacting
Social media is used to fulfill perceived social needs, but not all needs can be fulfilled by social media. For example, lonely individuals are more likely to use the Internet for emotional support than those who are not lonely. Sherry Turkle explores these issues in her book Alone Together
as she discusses how people confuse social media usage with authentic
communication. She posits that people tend to act differently online and
are less afraid to hurt each other's feelings. Additionally, studies on
who interacts on the internet have shown that extraversion and openness
have a positive relationship with social media, while emotional
stability has a negative sloping relationship with social media.
Some online behaviors can cause stress and anxiety, due to the
permanence of online posts, the fear of being hacked, or of universities
and employers exploring social media pages. Turkle also speculates that
people are beginning to prefer texting to face-to-face communication,
which can contribute to feelings of loneliness.
Some researchers have also found that exchanges that involved direct
communication and reciprocation of messages correlated with less
feelings of loneliness. However, passively using social media without
sending or receiving messages does not make people feel less lonely
unless they were lonely to begin with.
Checking updates on friends' activities on social media is associated with the "fear of missing out" (FOMO), the "pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent". FOMO is a social anxiety characterized by "a desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing".
It has negative influences on people's psychological health and
well-being because it could contribute to negative mood and depressed
feelings.
Concerns have been raised about online "stalking" or "creeping"
of people on social media, which means looking at the person's
"timeline, status updates, tweets, and online bios" to find information
about them and their activities.
While social media creeping is common, it is considered to be poor form
to admit to a new acquaintance or new date that you have looked through
his or her social media posts, particularly older posts, as this will
indicate that you were going through their old history.
A sub-category of creeping is creeping ex-partners' social media posts
after a breakup to investigate if there is a new partner or new dating;
this can lead to preoccupation with the ex, rumination and negative
feelings, all of which postpone recovery and increase feelings of loss. Catfishing
has become more prevalent since the advent of social media.
Relationships formed with catfish can lead to actions such as supporting
them with money and catfish will typically make excuses as to why they
cannot meet up or be viewed on camera.
According to research from UCLA, teenage brains' reward circuits
were more active when teenager's photos were liked by more peers. This
has both positive and negative features. Teenagers and young adults
befriend people online whom they do not know well. This opens the
possibility of a child being influenced by people who engage in
risk-taking behavior. When children have several hundred online
connections there is no way for parents to know who they are.
Self-presentation
The more time people spend on Facebook, the less satisfied they feel about their life.
Self-presentational theory explains that people will consciously manage
their self-image or identity related information in social contexts.
When people are not accepted or are criticized online they feel
emotional pain. This may lead to some form of online retaliation such as online bullying.
Trudy Hui Hui Chua and Leanne Chang's article, "Follow Me and Like My
Beautiful Selfies: Singapore Teenage Girls' Engagement in
Self-Presentation and Peer Comparison on Social Media"
states that teenage girls manipulate their self-presentation on social
media to achieve a sense of beauty that is projected by their peers.
These authors also discovered that teenage girls compare themselves to
their peers on social media and present themselves in certain ways in
effort to earn regard and acceptance, which can actually lead to
problems with self-confidence and self-satisfaction.
Users also tend to segment their audiences based on the image
they want to present, pseudonymity and use of multiple accounts across
the same platform remain popular ways to negotiate platform expectations
and segment audiences.
Health improvement and behavior reinforcement
Social
media can also function as a supportive system for adolescents' health,
because by using social media, adolescents are able to mobilize around
health issues that they themselves deem relevant. For example, in a clinical study among adolescent patients undergoing treatment for obesity, the participants' expressed that through social media, they could find personalized weight-loss content as well as social support among other adolescents with obesity
The same authors also found that as with other types of online
information, the adolescents need to possess necessary skills to
evaluate and identify reliable health information, competencies commonly
known as health literacy.
Other social media, such as pro-anorexia
sites, have been found in studies to cause significant risk of harm by
reinforcing negative health-related behaviors through social networking,
especially in adolescents.
Social impact
Disparity
People who live in poverty, such as homeless people,
have low levels of access to computers and Internet or a lack of
familiarity with these technologies. This means that these marginalized
people are not able to use social media tools to find information, jobs,
housing, and other necessities.
The digital divide
is a measure of disparity in the level of access to technology between
households, socioeconomic levels or other demographic categories. People who are homeless,
living in poverty, elderly people and those living in rural or remote
communities may have little or no access to computers and the Internet;
in contrast, middle class and upper-class people in urban areas have
very high rates of computer and Internet access. Other models argue that
within a modern information society, some individuals produce Internet content while others only consume it,
which could be a result of disparities in the education system where
only some teachers integrate technology into the classroom and teach
critical thinking. While social media has differences among age groups, a 2010 study in the United States found no racial divide. Some zero-rating
programs offer subsidized data access to certain websites on low-cost
plans. Critics say that this is an anti-competitive program that
undermines net neutrality and creates a "walled garden" for platforms like Facebook Zero.
A 2015 study found that 65% of Nigerians, 61% of Indonesians, and 58%
of Indians agree with the statement that "Facebook is the Internet"
compared with only 5% in the US.
Eric Ehrmann contends that social media in the form of public diplomacy create a patina of inclusiveness that covers
traditional economic interests that are structured to ensure that
wealth is pumped up to the top of the economic pyramid, perpetuating the
digital divide and post Marxian class conflict. He also voices concern
over the trend that finds social utilities operating in a quasi-libertarian
global environment of oligopoly that requires users in economically
challenged nations to spend high percentages of annual income to pay for
devices and services to participate in the social media lifestyle. Neil Postman
also contends that social media will increase an information disparity
between "winners" – who are able to use the social media actively – and
"losers" – who are not familiar with modern technologies or who do not
have access to them. People with high social media skills may have
better access to information about job opportunities, potential new
friends, and social activities in their area, which may enable them to
improve their standard of living and their quality of life.
Political polarization
According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans at least occasionally receive news from social media. Because of algorithms
on social media which filter and display news content which are likely
to match their users’ political preferences, a potential impact of
receiving news from social media includes an increase in political polarization due to selective exposure.
Political polarization refers to when an individual's stance on a topic
is more likely to be strictly defined by their identification with a
specific political party or ideology than on other factors. Selective
exposure occurs when an individual favors information which supports
their beliefs and avoids information which conflicts with their beliefs.
A study by Hayat and Samuel-Azran conducted during the 2016 U.S. presidential election observed an “echo chamber” effect of selective exposure among 27,811 Twitter users following the content of cable news shows.
The Twitter users observed in the study were found to have little
interaction with users and content whose beliefs were different from
their own, possibly heightening polarization effects.
Efforts to combat selective exposure in social media may also cause an increase in political polarization.
A study examining Twitter activity conducted by Bail et al. paid
Democrat and Republican participants to follow Twitter handles whose
content was different from their political beliefs (Republicans received
liberal content and Democrats received conservative content) over a
six-week period.
At the end of the study, both Democrat and Republican participants were
found to have increased political polarization in favor of their own
parties, though only Republican participants had an increase that was
statistically significant.
Though research has shown evidence that social media plays a role
in increasing political polarization, it has also shown evidence that
social media use leads to a persuasion of political beliefs.
An online survey consisting of 1,024 U.S. participants was conducted by
Diehl, Weeks, and Gil de Zuñiga, which found that individuals who use
social media were more likely to have their political beliefs persuaded
than those who did not.
In particular, those using social media as a means to receive their
news were the most likely to have their political beliefs changed.
Diehl et al. found that the persuasion reported by participants was
influenced by the exposure to diverse viewpoints they experienced, both
in the content they saw as well as the political discussions they
participated in.
Similarly, a study by Hardy and colleagues conducted with 189 students
from a Midwestern state university examined the persuasive effect of
watching a political comedy video on Facebook. Hardy et al. found that after watching a Facebook video of the comedian/political commentator John Oliver
performing a segment on his show, participants were likely to be
persuaded to change their viewpoint on the topic they watched (either payday lending or the Ferguson protests) to one that was closer to the opinion expressed by Oliver.
Furthermore, the persuasion experienced by the participants was found
to be reduced if they viewed comments by Facebook users which
contradicted the arguments made by Oliver.
Research has also shown that social media use may not have an effect on polarization at all.
A U.S. national survey of 1,032 participants conducted by Lee et al.
found that participants who used social media were more likely to be
exposed to a diverse number of people and amount of opinion than those
who did not, although using social media was not correlated with a
change in political polarization for these participants.
In a study examining the potential polarizing effects of social
media on the political views of its users, Mihailidis and Viotty suggest
that a new way of engaging with social media must occur to avoid
polarization. The authors note that media literacies
(described as methods which give people skills to critique and create
media) are important to using social media in a responsible and
productive way, and state that these literacies must be changed further
in order to have the most effectiveness.
In order to decrease polarization and encourage cooperation among
social media users, Mihailidis and Viotty suggest that media literacies
must focus on teaching individuals how to connect with other people in a
caring way, embrace differences, and understand the ways in which
social media has a realistic impact on the political, social, and
cultural issues of the society they are a part of.
Stereotyping
Recent
research has demonstrated that social media, and media in general, have
the power to increase the scope of stereotypes not only in children but
people all ages.
Three researchers at Blanquerna University, Spain, examined how
adolescents interact with social media and specifically Facebook. They
suggest that interactions on the website encourage representing oneself
in the traditional gender constructs, which helps maintain gender
stereotypes.
The authors noted that girls generally show more emotion in their posts
and more frequently change their profile pictures, which according to
some psychologists can lead to self-objectification. On the other hand, the researchers found that boys prefer to portray themselves as strong, independent, and powerful.
For example, men often post pictures of objects and not themselves, and
rarely change their profile pictures; using the pages more for
entertainment and pragmatic reasons. In contrast girls generally post
more images that include themselves, friends and things they have
emotional ties to, which the researchers attributed that to the higher
emotional intelligence of girls at a younger age. The authors sampled
over 632 girls and boys from the ages of 12–16 from Spain in an effort
to confirm their beliefs. The researchers concluded that masculinity is
more commonly associated with a positive psychological well-being, while
femininity displays less psychological well-being.
Furthermore, the researchers discovered that people tend not to
completely conform to either stereotype, and encompass desirable parts
of both. Users of Facebook generally use their profile to reflect that
they are a "normal" person. Social media was found to uphold gender
stereotypes both feminine and masculine. The researchers also noted that
the traditional stereotypes are often upheld by boys more so than
girls. The authors described how neither stereotype was entirely
positive, but most people viewed masculine values as more positive.
Cognition and memory
According
to writer Christine Rosen in "Virtual Friendship, and the New
Narcissism," many social media sites encourage status-seeking.
According to Rosen, the practice and definition of "friendship" changes
in virtuality. Friendship "in these virtual spaces is thoroughly
different from real-world friendship. In its traditional sense,
friendship is a relationship which, broadly speaking, involves the
sharing of mutual interests, reciprocity, trust, and the revelation of
intimate details over time and within specific social (and cultural)
contexts. Because friendship depends on mutual revelations that are
concealed from the rest of the world, it can only flourish within the
boundaries of privacy; the idea of public friendship is an oxymoron."
Rosen also cites Brigham Young University researchers who "recently
surveyed 184 users of social networking sites and found that heavy users
'feel less socially involved with the community around them.'"
Critic Nicholas G. Carr in "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" questions how
technology affects cognition and memory.
"The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is
valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author's words
but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own
minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted
reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that
matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and
analogies, foster our own ideas... If we lose those quiet spaces, or
fill them up with "content," we will sacrifice something important not
only in ourselves but in our culture."
Physical and mental health
There are several negative effects to social media which receive criticism, for example regarding privacy issues, information overload and Internet fraud.
Social media can also have negative social effects on users. Angry or
emotional conversations can lead to real-world interactions outside of
the Internet, which can get users into dangerous situations. Some users
have experienced threats of violence online and have feared these
threats manifesting themselves offline. At the same time, concerns have
been raised about possible links between heavy social media use and depression, and even the issues of cyberbullying, online harassment and "trolling".
According to cyber bullying statistics from the i-Safe Foundation, over
half of adolescents and teens have been bullied online, and about the
same number have engaged in cyber bullying.
Both the bully and the victim are negatively affected, and the
intensity, duration, and frequency of bullying are the three aspects
that increase the negative effects on both of them.
Studies also show that social media have negative effects on peoples'
self-esteem and self-worth. The authors of "Who Compares and Despairs?
The Effect of Social Comparison Orientation on Social Media Use and its
Outcomes"
found that people with a higher social comparison orientation appear to
use social media more heavily than people with low social comparison
orientation. This finding was consistent with other studies that found
people with high social comparison orientation make more social
comparisons once on social media.
People compare their own lives to the lives of their friends
through their friends' posts. People are motivated to portray themselves
in a way that is appropriate to the situation and serves their best
interest. Often the things posted online are the positive aspects of
people's lives, making other people question why their own lives are not
as exciting or fulfilling. This can lead to depression and other
self-esteem issues as well as decrease their satisfaction of life as
they feel if their life is not exciting enough to put online it is not
as good as their friends or family.
Studies have shown that self comparison on social media can have
dire effects on physical and mental health because they give us the
ability to seek approval and compare ourselves. Social media has both a practical usage- to connect us with others, but also can lead to fulfillment of gratification.
In fact, one study suggests that because a critical aspect of social
networking sites involve spending hours, if not months customizing a
personal profile, and encourage a sort of social currency based on
likes, followers and comments- they provide a forum for persistent
"appearance conversations".
These appearance centered conversations that forums like Facebook,
Instagram among others provide can lead to feelings of disappointment in
looks and personality when not enough likes or comments are achieved.
In addition, social media use can lead to detrimental physical health
effects. A large body of literature associates body image and disordered
eating with social networking platforms. Specifically, literature
suggests that social media can breed a negative feedback loop of viewing
and uploading photos, self comparison, feelings of disappointment when
perceived social success is not achieved, and disordered body
perception.
In fact, one study shows that the microblogging platform, Pinterest is
directly associated with disordered dieting behavior, indicating that
for those who frequently look at exercise or dieting "pins" there is a
greater chance that they will engage in extreme weight-loss and dieting
behavior.
Bo Han, a social media researcher at Texas A&M
University-Commerce, finds that users are likely to experience the
"social media burnout" issue.
Ambivalence, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization are usually
the main symptoms if a user experiences social media burnout.
Ambivalence refers to a user's confusion about the benefits she can get
from using a social media site. Emotional exhaustion refers to the
stress a user has when using a social media site. Depersonalization
refers to the emotional detachment from a social media site a user
experiences. The three burnout factors can all negatively influence the
user's social media continuance. This study provides an instrument to
measure the burnout a user can experience, when his or her social media
"friends" are generating an overwhelming amount of useless information
(e.g., "what I had for dinner", "where I am now").
Adolescents
Excessive
use of digital technology, like social media, by adolescents can cause
disruptions in their physical and mental health, in sleeping patterns,
their weight and levels of exercise and notably in their academic
performance. Research has continued to demonstrate that long hours spent
on mobile devices have shown a positive relationship with an increase
in teenagers' BMI and a lack of physical activity. Moreover, excessive
internet usage has been linked to lower grades compared to users who do
not spend an excessive amount of time online, even with a control over
age, gender, race, parent education and personal contentment factors
that may affect the study. In a recent study, it was found that time spent on Facebook has a strong negative relationship with overall GPA.
The use of multiple social media platforms is more strongly associated
with depression and anxiety among young adults than time spent online.
The analysis showed that people who reported using the most platforms (7
to 11) had more than three times the risk of depression and anxiety
than people who used the fewest (0 to 2). Social media addiction
and its sub-dimensions have a high positive correlation. The more the
participants are addicted to social media, the less satisfied they are
with life. Some parents restrict their children's access to social media for these reasons.
Sleep disturbances
According to a study released in 2017 by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh,
the link between sleep disturbance and the use of social media was
clear. It concluded that blue light had a part to play—and how often
they logged on, rather than time spent on social media sites, was a
higher predictor of disturbed sleep, suggesting "an obsessive
'checking'".
The strong relationship of social media use and sleep disturbance has
significant clinical ramifications for a young adults health and
well-being. In a recent study, we have learned that people in the
highest quartile for social media use per week report the most sleep
disturbance. The median number of minutes of social media use per day is
61 minutes. Lastly, we have learned that females are more inclined to
experience high levels of sleep disturbance than males.
Changes in mood
Many
teenagers suffer from sleep deprivation as they spend long hours at
night on their phones, and this, in turn, could affect grades as they
will be tired and unfocused in school. Social media has generated a
phenomenon known as " Facebook depression", which is a type of
depression that affects adolescents who spend too much of their free
time engaging with social media sites. "Facebook depression" leads to
problems such as reclusiveness which can negatively damage ones health
by creating feelings of loneliness and low self-esteem among young
people.
At the same time, a 2017 shown that there is a link between social
media addiction and negative mental health effects. In this study,
almost 6,000 adolescent students were examined using the Bergen Social
Media Addiction Scale. 4.5% of these students were found to be "at risk"
of social media addiction. Furthermore, this same 4.5% reported low
self-esteem and high levels of depressive symptoms.
UK researchers used a data set of more than 800 million Twitter
messages to evaluate how collective mood changes over the course of 24
hours and across the seasons. The research team collected 800 million
anonymous Tweets from 33,576 time points over four years, to examine
anger and sadness and compare them with fatigue. The "research revealed
strong circadian patterns for both positive and negative moods. The
profiles of anger and fatigue were found remarkably stable across the
seasons or between the weekdays/weekend." The "positive emotions and
sadness showed more variability in response to these changing conditions
and higher levels of interaction with the onset of sunlight exposure."
Effects on youth communication
Social
media has allowed for mass cultural exchange and intercultural
communication. As different cultures have different value systems, cultural themes, grammar, and world views, they also communicate differently.
The emergence of social media platforms fused together different
cultures and their communication methods, blending together various
cultural thinking patterns and expression styles.
Social media has affected the way youth communicate, by
introducing new forms of language. Abbreviations have been introduced to
cut down on the time it takes to respond online. The commonly known "LOL" has become globally recognized as the abbreviation for "laugh out loud" thanks to social media.
Another trend that influences the way youth communicates is
(through) the use of hashtags. With the introduction of social media
platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram,
the hashtag was created to easily organize and search for information.
Hashtags can be used when people want to advocate for a movement, store
content or tweets from a movement for future use, and allow other social
media users to contribute to a discussion about a certain movement by
using existing hashtags. Using hashtags as a way to advocate for
something online makes it easier and more accessible for more people to
acknowledge it around the world. As hashtags such as #tbt ("throwback Thursday")
become a part of online communication, it influenced the way in which
youth share and communicate in their daily lives. Because of these
changes in linguistics and communication etiquette, researchers of media
semiotics have found that this has altered youth's communications habits and more.
Social media has offered a new platform for peer pressure
with both positive and negative communication. From Facebook comments
to likes on Instagram, how the youth communicate and what is socially
acceptable is now heavily based on social media.
Social media does make kids and young adults more susceptible to peer
pressure. The American Academy of Pediatrics has also shown that
bullying, the making of non-inclusive friend groups, and sexual
experimentation have increased situations related to cyberbullying,
issues with privacy, and the act of sending sexual images or messages to
someone's mobile device. On the other hand, social media also benefits
the youth and how they communicate.
Through the use of social media, kids and young adults are able to keep
in touch with friends and family, make more friends, participate in
community engagement activities and services, expand on certain ideas
with like-minded individuals, and many other countless tasks.
Criticism, debate and controversy
Criticisms
of social media range from criticisms of the ease of use of specific
platforms and their capabilities, disparity of information available,
issues with trustworthiness and reliability of information presented, the impact of social media use on an individual's concentration,
ownership of media content, and the meaning of interactions created by
social media. Although some social media platforms offer users the
opportunity to cross-post simultaneously, some social network platforms
have been criticized for poor interoperability between platforms, which
leads to the creation of information silos, viz. isolated pockets of
data contained in one social media platform. However, it is also argued that social media have positive effects such as allowing the democratization of the Internet while also allowing individuals to advertise themselves and form friendships. Others
have noted that the term "social" cannot account for technological
features of a platform alone, hence the level of sociability should be
determined by the actual performances of its users. There has been a
dramatic decrease in face-to-face interactions as more and more social
media platforms have been introduced with the threat of cyber-bullying
and online sexual predators being more prevalent. Social media may expose children to images of alcohol, tobacco, and sexual behaviors.
In regards to cyber-bullying, it has been proven that individuals who
have no experience with cyber-bullying often have a better well-being
than individuals who have been bullied online.
Twitter is increasingly a target of heavy activity of marketers.
Their actions, focused on gaining massive numbers of followers, include
use of advanced scripts and manipulation techniques that distort the
prime idea of social media by abusing human trustfulness. British-American entrepreneur and author Andrew Keen criticizes social media in his book The Cult of the Amateur,
writing, "Out of this anarchy, it suddenly became clear that what was
governing the infinite monkeys now inputting away on the Internet was
the law of digital Darwinism, the survival of the loudest and most
opinionated. Under these rules, the only way to intellectually prevail
is by infinite filibustering."
This is also relative to the issue "justice" in the social network. For example, the phenomenon "Human flesh search engine" in Asia raised the discussion of "private-law" brought by social network platform. Comparative media professor José van Dijck contends in her book "The Culture of Connectivity"
(2013) that to understand the full weight of social media, their
technological dimensions should be connected to the social and the
cultural. She critically describes six social media platforms. One of
her findings is the way Facebook had been successful in framing the term
'sharing' in such a way that third party use of user data is neglected
in favor of intra-user connectedness.
Essena O'Neill attracted international coverage when she explicitly left social media.
Trustworthiness and reliability
There has been speculation that social media has become perceived as a trustworthy source of information by a large number of people.
The continuous interpersonal connectivity on social media, for example,
may lead to people regarding peer recommendations as indicators of the
reliability of information sources. This trust can be exploited by
marketers, who can utilize consumer-created content about brands and
products to influence public perceptions.
Evgeny Morozov, a 2009–2010 Yahoo fellow at Georgetown University,
contended that information uploaded to Twitter may have little
relevance to the masses of people who do not use Twitter. In an article
for the magazine Dissent titled "Iran: Downside to the 'Twitter Revolution'", Morozov wrote:
[B]y its very design Twitter only
adds to the noise: it's simply impossible to pack much context into its
140 characters. All other biases are present as well: in a country like
Iran it's mostly pro-Western, technology-friendly and iPod-carrying
young people who are the natural and most frequent users of Twitter.
They are a tiny and, most important, extremely untypical segment of the
Iranian population (the number of Twitter users in Iran — a country of
more than seventy million people — was estimated at less than twenty
thousand before the protests).
In contrast, in the United States (where Twitter originated), the social network had 306 million accounts as of 2012. The number of accounts, though sizable in proportion to the U.S. population of 314.7 million in 2012, may not be fairly comparable, since an undisclosed number of Twitter users operate multiple accounts.
Professor Matthew Auer of Bates College
casts doubt on the conventional wisdom that social media are open and
participatory. He also speculates on the emergence of "anti-social
media" used as "instruments of pure control."
Criticism of data harvesting on Facebook
On April 10, 2018, in a hearing held in response to revelations of data harvesting by Cambridge Analytica, Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook
chief executive, faced questions from senators on a variety of issues,
from privacy to the company's business model and the company's
mishandling of data. This was Mr. Zuckerberg's first appearance before
Congress, prompted by the revelation that Cambridge Analytica, a
political consulting firm linked to the Trump campaign, harvested the
data of an estimated 87 million Facebook users to psychologically
profile voters during the 2016 election. Zuckerburg was pressed to
account for how third-party partners could take data without users’
knowledge. Lawmakers grilled the 33-year-old executive on the
proliferation of so-called fake news on Facebook, Russian interference
during the 2016 presidential election and censorship of conservative media.
Critique of activism
For Malcolm Gladwell, the role of social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, in revolutions and protests is overstated.
On one hand, social media make it easier for individuals, and in this
case activists, to express themselves. On the other hand, it is harder
for that expression to have an impact.
Gladwell distinguishes between social media activism and high risk
activism, which brings real changes. Activism and especially high-risk
activism involves strong-tie relationships, hierarchies, coordination,
motivation, exposing oneself to high risks, making sacrifices.
Gladwell discusses that social media are built around weak ties and he
argues that "social networks are effective at increasing participation —
by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires".
According to him "Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people
to make a real sacrifice, but by motivating them to do the things that
people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice".
Disputing Gladwell's theory, in the study "Perceptions of Social
Media for Politics: Testing the Slacktivism Hypothesis," Kwak and
colleagues conducted a survey which found that people who are
politically expressive on social media are also more likely to
participate in offline political activity.
Ownership of content
Social
media content is generated through social media interactions done by
the users through the site. There has always been a huge debate on the
ownership of the content on social media platforms because it is
generated by the users and hosted by the company. Added to this is the
danger to security of information, which can be leaked to third parties
with economic interests in the platform, or parasites who comb the data
for their own databases. The author of Social Media Is Bullshit, Brandon Mendelson,
claims that the "true" owners of content created on social media sites
only benefits the large corporations who own those sites and rarely the
users that created them.
Privacy
Privacy
rights advocates warn users on social media about the collection of
their personal data. Some information is captured without the user's
knowledge or consent
through electronic tracking and third party applications. Data may also
be collected for law enforcement and governmental purposes, by social media intelligence using data mining techniques.
Data and information may also be collected for third party use. When
information is shared on social media, that information is no longer
private. There have been many cases in which young persons especially,
share personal information, which can attract predators. It is very
important to monitor what you share, and to be aware of who you could
potentially be sharing that information with. Teens especially share
significantly more information on the internet now than they have in the
past. Teens are much more likely to share their personal information,
such as email address, phone number, and school names.
Studies suggest that teens are not aware of what they are posting and
how much of that information can be accessed by third parties.
There are arguments that "privacy is dead" and that with social
media growing more and more, some heavy social media users appear to
have become quite unconcerned with privacy. Others argue, however, that
people are still very concerned about their privacy, but are being
ignored by the companies running these social networks, who can
sometimes make a profit off of sharing someone's personal information.
There is also a disconnect between social media user's words and their
actions. Studies suggest that surveys show that people want to keep
their lives private, but their actions on social media suggest
otherwise. Another factor is ignorance of how accessible social media
posts are. Some social media users who have been criticized for
inappropriate comments stated that they did not realize that anyone
outside their circle of friends would read their post; in fact, on some
social media sites, unless a user selects higher privacy settings, their
content is shared with a wide audience.
According to a 2016 article diving into the topic of sharing
privately and the effect social media has on expectations of privacy,
"1.18 billion people will log into their Facebook accounts, 500 million tweets will be sent, and there will be 95 million photos and videos posted on Instagram"
in a day. Much of the privacy concerns individuals face stem from their
own posts on a form of social network. Users have the choice to share
voluntarily, and has been ingrained into society as routine and
normative. Social media is a snapshot of our lives; a community we have
created on the behaviors of sharing, posting, liking, and communicating.
Sharing has become a phenomenon which social media and networks have
uprooted and introduced to the world.
The idea of privacy is redundant; once something is posted, its
accessibility remains constant even if we select who is potentially able
to view it. People desire privacy in some shape or form, yet also
contribute to social media, which makes it difficult to maintain
privacy.
Mills offers options for reform which include copyright and the
application of the law of confidence; more radically, a change to the
concept of privacy itself.
A 2014 Pew Research Center
survey found that 91% of Americans "agree" or "strongly agree" that
people have lost control over how personal information is collected and
used by all kinds of entities. Some 80% of social media users said they
were concerned about advertisers and businesses accessing the data they
share on social media platforms, and 64% said the government should do
more to regulate advertisers.
According to the wall street journal published on February 17,
2019 According to the UK law, Facebook did not protect certain aspects
of the user data.
Criticism of commercialization
The
commercial development of social media has been criticized as the
actions of consumers in these settings has become increasingly
value-creating, for example when consumers contribute to the marketing
and branding of specific products by posting positive reviews. As such,
value-creating activities also increase the value of a specific product,
which could, according to the marketing professors Bernad Cova and
Daniele Dalli, lead to what they refer to as "double exploitation". Companies are getting consumers to create content for the companies' websites for which the consumers are not paid.
As social media usage has become increasingly widespread, social
media has to a large extent come to be subjected to commercialization by
marketing companies and advertising agencies.
Christofer Laurell, a digital marketing researcher, suggested that the
social media landscape currently consists of three types of places
because of this development: consumer-dominated places, professionally
dominated places and places undergoing commercialization.
As social media becomes commercialized, this process have been shown to
create novel forms of value networks stretching between consumer and
producer in which a combination of personal, private and commercial contents are created.
Debate over addiction
As
one of the biggest preoccupations among adolescents is social media
usage, researchers have begun using the term "F.A.D.," or "Facebook
addiction disorder," a form of internet addiction disorder.
FAD is characterized by a compulsive use of the social networking site
Facebook, which generally results in physical or psychological
complications. The disorder, although not classified in the latest
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) or by the
World Health Organization, has been the subject of several studies
focusing on the negative effects on the psyche. One German study,
published in 2017, investigated a correlation between extensive use of
the social networking site and narcissism; the results were published in
the journal PLoS One. According to the findings: "FAD was significantly
positively related to the personality trait narcissism and to negative
mental health variables (depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms)."
While these issues regarding social media addiction are continuous and
increasing, there are ways to help reduce and curb one's social media
obsessions. Turning off notifications (temporary or long-term) is one
solution that is deemed beneficial in attempts to lessen social media
addiction by resolving issues of distraction, for those who struggle
with the habit of constantly refreshing social media platforms and
checking for new notifications.
Debate over use in academic settings
Having social media in the classroom was a controversial topic in the
2010s. Many parents and educators have been fearful of the
repercussions of having social media in the classroom. There are concerns that social media tools can be misused for cyberbullying
or sharing inappropriate content. As result, cell phones have been
banned from some classrooms, and some schools have blocked many popular
social media websites. Many schools have realized that they need to
loosen restrictions, teach digital citizenship skills, and even
incorporate these tools into classrooms. Some schools permit students to
use smartphones or tablet computers
in class, as long as the students are using these devices for academic
purposes, such as doing research. Using Facebook in class allows for
integration of multimodal content such as student-created photographs
and video and URLs to other texts, in a platform that many students are
already familiar with. Twitter can be used to enhance communication
building and critical thinking and it provides students with an informal
"back channel"), and extend discussion outside of class time.
Censorship by governments
Banner in Bangkok, observed on June 30, 2014, informing the Thai public that 'like' or 'share' activity on social media may land them in jail
Social media often features in political struggles to control public perception and online activity. In some countries, Internet police or secret police monitor or control citizens' use of social media. For example, in 2013 some social media was banned in Turkey after the Taksim Gezi Park protests. Both Twitter and YouTube were temporarily suspended in the country by a court's decision. A new law, passed by Turkish Parliament,
has granted immunity to Telecommunications Directorate (TİB) personnel.
The TİB was also given the authority to block access to specific
websites without the need for a court order. Yet TİB's 2014 blocking of Twitter was ruled by the constitutional court to violate free speech. More recently, in the 2014 Thai coup d'état,
the public was explicitly instructed not to 'share' or 'like'
dissenting views on social media or face prison. In July of that same
year, in response to WikiLeaks' release of a secret suppression order made by the Victorian Supreme Court, media lawyers were quoted in the Australian
media to the effect that "anyone who tweets a link to the Wikileaks
report, posts it on Facebook, or shares it in any way online could also
face charges".
Self-censorship by social media platforms
Deplatforming
is a form of Internet censorship in which controversial speakers or
speech are suspended, banned, or otherwise shut down by social media
platforms and other service providers that normally provide a venue for
free expression. As early as 2015, platforms such as Reddit began to enforce selective bans based, for example, on terms of service that prohibit "hate speech". According to technology journalist Declan McCullagh, "Silicon Valley's efforts to pull the plug on dissenting opinions" have included, as of 2018, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube "devising excuses to suspend ideologically disfavored accounts."
Law professor Glenn Reynolds dubbed 2018 the "Year of Deplatforming", in an August 2018 article in The Wall Street Journal.
According to Reynolds, in 2018 "the internet giants decided to slam the
gates on a number of people and ideas they don't like. If you rely on
someone else's platform to express unpopular ideas, especially ideas on
the right, you're now at risk." Reynolds cited Alex Jones, Gavin McInnes and Dennis Prager
as prominent 2018 victims of deplatforming based on their political
views, noting, "Extremists and controversialists on the left have been
relatively safe from deplatforming."
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