Social Media Communication. Bu Zhong

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these approaches are oversimplistic and have been challenged since their introduction. A good reminder concerning technological determinism comes from Thurlow and colleagues (2004): It is always useful to remind you of the trap of being too deterministic about technology whenever you come across someone making a claim about the overwhelming effect of technology on certain aspects of social activities, no matter if the technology is a steam engine or social media.

      It is worth noting that this book aims to explore the impact of social media and the latest application of media technology on people and their social activities. However, this approach may not be labeled as technological determinism because the book does not intend to ignore or overlook the dynamics of social, cultural, and psychological influences on human society. Rather, it sidesteps the complexities of the process of social influences by addressing the impact of technology on social media users and related social implications. During the process, social, political, and cultural activities have imposed an essential effect on social development, but, obviously, it is out of the scope of the current book.

      Summary

      This chapter lays the groundwork for a detailed discussion on how social media are transforming human communication and businesses in the coming chapters. It first defines two key terms: social media and technology. Both terms will be thoroughly examined later in the context of analyzing the sociality features of social media. For a better understanding of the social media impact on people and their societies, this chapter proposes the four eras of human civilization and investigates the broad social use of new technologies in each of the eras:

      1 Agricultural civilization – farming, printing, geographic discoveries

      2 Industrial civilization – steam machines, electricity, mobile transportation

      3 Information civilization – PC, mobile communication, network technology

      4 Internet civilization – ICT, social media, Wi-Fi, mobile technology

      This chapter suggests that a profound knowledge of the social media mechanism is critical to one’s life, career, and social activities in the era of Internet Civilization. Like it or not, social media are starting to exert a growing impact on human society, something that no one can ignore. The chapter also reminds us of the trap of technological determinism. In this chapter, technological determinism is discussed as a useful theoretical framework for studying the technological perspectives in social media activities.

      Looking Ahead

      Discussion

      Suppose you would like to spend one day (24 hours) without using any social media, including, but not limited to, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Slack, Signal, and LinkedIn. You can use phone, email, text message, and traditional media – radio, magazines, newspapers, and television. For minimizing any interruption, please inform your parents and friends in advance after you choose a date for the experiment so that no one panics when they cannot find you on social media. Then write an essay about how you survive the 24 hours without social media. Your essays should address the following questions. If you cannot write such an essay, please imagine such a day without social media and then answer the following questions:

      1 How difficult is it not to use social media for 24 hours?

      2 Which social media platform do you miss the most, and why?

      3 What happens to you during the experiment? What feelings do you have after you make it?

      4 Do you experience any mood or behavior changes, positive or negative?

      References

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      3 Bell, D. (1973). The coming of post-industrial society: A venture in social forecasting. Basic Books.

      4 boyd, d. m. (2009). Social media is here to stay … now what? Microsoft Research Tech Fest. http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/MSRTechFest2009.html.

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      11 Chandler, D. (1995). Technological or media determinism . Retrieved November 28, 2014, from http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/tecdet.

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      13 Dijk, J. (2012). The network society (3rd ed.). SAGE.

      14 Drucker, P. F. (1993). Post-capitalist society. Harper Business.

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      16 Ellison, N. B., & boyd, D. M. (2013). Sociality through social network sites. In W. H. Dutton (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of internet studies (pp. 151–172). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199589074.013.0008.

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