May 16th, 2020

​The Final Blog Post Extravaganza: Social Media Edition 

 ​At last, we have finally arrived at the final blog post for the Journalism 150 course. It has been a great semester. I happen to be a communication major and did not realize that this course was based around mass communication until the semester had started so I was happy to be able to learn a little more about my major in a journalism course that I was not quite expecting to tie into my major. The industry we will be looking at in this blog post is the social media industry, as of late I have been very into social media with the COVID-19 outbreak because I really have nothing else to do aside from working out and schoolwork. Now with the semester ending, my use of social media will most likely increase even more. The social media industry allows people around the world to connect with each other in unique ways. The social media industry also allows news to be spread in ways that have never been conducted before. Social media has even allowed people to watch sports on a few different social media platforms. Since the beginning of the introduction of social media, the industry has changed a lot since then and some of these changes have been beneficial, and some of these changes have been not been too beneficial. Overall, these changes that have been made since the introduction have lead to the fact the social media industry or just social media in general has developed into a very essential part to everyday to life and reaps many benefits however, these benefits come with some negatives but the benefits that social media brings do outweigh the negatives that the industry brings. Social media and it's industry has gone from a simple yet very efficient way of contacting people anywhere to a very powerful, if used correctly, tool in today's society. 

The beginning of social media can be traced back as far as the year of 1844. According to Irfan Ahmad of SocialMediaToday, “Samuel Morse made the first steps towards some resemblance of social media when he sent a telegraph from Washington D.C. to Baltimore. Morse’s first message read “What have God wrought”” (Ahmad). Another one of the very first types of social media was launched by France in 1980.  According to John Pavlik and Shawn McIntosh of Covering Media, “In 1980, France launched its videotext  service—test delivery over the air or by cable for presentation on television screens or other electronic displays—known them as Teletel and later as Minitel” (McIntosh, Pavlik, 196). As we can see, the purpose of social media has always remained the same since the very first types of social media being introduced with the purpose being to communicate with people in unique technological ways. These types of social media lead to the emergence of types of social medias such as email and chat rooms. Chat rooms and email have allowed people to contact with each other more directly over the internet. These platforms come with their side effects, however. Things such as spam which is “unwanted mass emailing from advertisers” (McIntosh, Pavlik, 198). These spam messages could even be scam messages in order to deceive people in order to gain money and private information such as social security numbers and such. While the social media industry was active well before one might think, the industry did not really start to boom until the mid-2000s. The first prominent social media platform to break the surface would be Facebook in 2005 (McIntosh, Pavlik, 204). As we all know, Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook during his time at Harvard University. But what some people may not know is that Facebook was not used the way it is today originally. When Facebook was first developed, it was more for students to connect with their professors at colleges all around the United States. For reference, Facebook was more like Edmodo in its early years (McIntosh, Pavlik, 204). Following Facebook, YouTube was launched in 2005, and Twitter was launched in 2006 (McIntosh, Pavlik, 204). Instagram was launched in 2010 (Instagram.com). Since then, the social media industry has evolved every year.

Today, the social media industry today is the second most popular industry in the world behind television (medialandscapes.org). In fact, “Today around seven-in-ten Americans use social media to connect with one another, engage with news content, share information and entertain themselves.” (pewresearch.org). In the context of politics, the social media industry really serves as a place for people to express and share their political beliefs. A lot of movements fighting against racial injustice are played out on social media platforms. In July 2013, Jordan Zimmerman, a white male, was acquitted of charges for the murder of Trayvon Martin, a black male. In response to this, people fled to Twitter and used the hashtag “#BlackLivesMatter” (Bonilla, Rosa, 12) in order to spread awareness of the clear case of racial injustice that had just occurred. Surprisingly, this up rise against something so horrific actually received backlash from some members of Twitter. People simply did not understand the hashtag. These people read it as “black lives are superior to other lives, when the hashtag really meant “black lives matter just as much as any other life”. (Bonilla, Rosa, 12). In the context of politics, the social media industry can be a great place to spread awareness for causes that is near and dear to most to everyone’s heart, but there are always going to be people who disagree with these causes and with that disagreement and even misunderstanding, create even more conflict. The social media industry in the context of economics can be considered to be a gold mine. In today’s world we use social media excessively, as “today’s consumer spends up to nine hours per day online” (LaHaye). Because of that, “social media has proven to be the most effective way for businesses to reach new audiences on a global scale.” (LaHaye). To me there are no downsides to the social media industry in the context of economics, as it has opened up so many opportunities. According to Felix LaHaye of adweek.com, “Social media is also helping to fuel the global economy by creating new jobs, democratizing information and pushing brands far beyond their borders.” (LaHaye). In the context of society, the social media industry may not be as beneficial as everyone suspects. Jacob Amedie of Santa Clara University wrote a scholarly article highlighting the negative impacts that the social media industry has had on society. In his article, Amedie mentions that “Several researchers have proposed a new phenomenon called “ ‘Facebook depression’, which is defined as depression that develops when individuals spend an excessive amounts of time on social media sites, such as Facebook, and then begin to exhibit classic symptoms of depression.” (Amedie, 7). The social media industry also brings about stress on society. According to Jacob Amedie, “social media is also a common source of stress to its users” (Amedie, 9), and that “Another survey performed on 7,000 mothers, found that 42% of mothers using the photo-sharing site Pinterest, reported occasionally suffering from Pinterest Stress” (Amedie, 9). Social media is a great tool for society to use in many different ways, but it can also be mentally damaging. Social media and technology have seemed to develop at the same pace. Back when social media first began to gain attention, it was nothing more than just a way for people to communicate with others essentially, which is what technology was if you think about phones, computers, and television. Now social media has caught up to a technology such as television because social media can provide entertainment just like television does. However, just like we discussed in the society context, social media can be mentally damaging. Social media can cause people to become addicted to technology and developing the symptoms of excessive use of technology previously mentioned (Anderson, Jiang, 4). In the context of culture, social media can be very powerful. According to Frank Furedi of the aspen review, “The Internet and social media are very powerful tools that can influence and shape human behavior. The social media has played a significant role in recent outbreaks of social protest and resistance.” (Furedi). Social media can help push for changes, but it can also change human behavior, which is not always a very good thing.

​If I were to provide an outlook on social media and the social media industry it would be that we have developed a very powerful tool for today’s society and culture. Social media can be used to inform, entertain, and fight for causes. But social media needs to be used carefully as we learned with the side effects of excessive use of technology. The industry is powerful, so powerful that it can cause one’s mental well being to take massive hit in a negative way.

Looking back, we saw how social media first started. Social media was first mainly a way to communicate with others directly, which was plain and simple. No real harm to the people doing it. Then came the mid to late 2000s when the industry started to boom with many different social media platforms designed to have people interact with each other and even more people at once but while this is great for a society that needs efficient communication like any living organism needs water, it does bring some pretty harmful side effect to the table. But overall, if social media is used properly, then the positives will always outweigh the negatives. From here, I do not really see the industry changing in anyway. The only way I see the industry changing is if ways to limit the amount of time people use it are created so we can cut down on mental health issues caused by the use of social media.

Bibliography 

-“About Us: Official Site.” Instagram, about.instagram.com/about-us.
 
-Ahmad, Irfan. “The History of Social Media [Infographic].” Social Media Today, 27 Apr. 2018,
www.socialmediatoday.com/news/the-history-of-social-media-infographic-1/522285/.
 
-Amedie, Jacob, "The Impact of Social Media on Society" (2015). Advanced Writing: Pop
Culture Intersections. 2. https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/engl_176/2
 
-Anderson, Monica, and JingJing Jiang. “Teens, Social Media & Technology 2018.” Pew
Research Center, 2018, pp. 1–10.
 
-Bonilla, Yarimar, and Jonathan Rosa. “#Ferguson: Digital Protest, Hashtag Ethnography, and t
he Racial Politics of Social Media in the United States.” American Ethnologist, vol. 42,
no. 1, 15 Jan. 2015, pp. 4–17., doi:10.1111/amet.12112.
 
-“Demographics of Social Media Users and Adoption in the United States.” Pew Research
Center: Internet, Science & Tech, Pew Research Center, 12 June 2019,
www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/social-media/.
 
-Furedi, Frank. “How Internet and Social Media Are Changing Culture.” Aspen Institute Central
Europe, Apr. 2014, www.aspenreview.com/article/2017/internet-social-media-changing-
culture/.
 
-LaHaye, Felix. “The Digital Gold Rush: How Social Media Fuels the Economy.” Adweek,
Adweek, 2 Apr. 2018, www.adweek.com/digital/the-digital-gold-rush-how-social-media-
fuels-the-economy/.
 
-Pavlik, John V., and Shawn McIntosh. Converging Media: a New Introduction to Mass
Communication. Oxford University Press, 2019.