Social Media in Our Society
Social Media in Order: A Positive or Negative Force?
I teach a college-level introductory sociology course where we discuss the functional function of mass media. Talcott Parsons' functional perspective espouses that society is comprised of interrelated parts in order to promote solidarity and stability. Therefore, the functional role of mass media is to teach and reinforce the norms, values, and conventionalities systems of a order in order to further social solidarity. From a functional lens, social media , a blazon of mass media platform that facilitates the sharing of ideas, thoughts, and data between its users, which had been dismissed as a fad dorsum in 2006 , has had a functional, and arguably positive, effect on guild in recent years by empowering its citizens toward solidarity through commonage action. Social media is now a platform that brings social justice issues to the forefront of the American discourse, and arguably, has helped rectify persistent inequities. To this finish, social media has been a place where social movements of different forms, and their messages of empowerment through collective activeness, are solidified.
1 fashion that social media facilitates social movements' message of empowerment through collective action is through grassroots online fundraising. For example, as a event of a tweet tweeted during the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak, online donors donated money to people who had student-loan and past-due medical bills. Some other method in which social media empowers its users toward collective activism is through the use of hashtags, which then could be retweeted on Twitter. For example, in the article #SayHerName: a case of intersectional social media activism , Melissa Chocolate-brown and her colleagues contend that #SayHerName, which has been retweeted many times over, is used to raise consciousness about the deaths of Black women, especially Black transgender women. As the information from the article demonstrates, hashtags, such as #SayHerName, tin be used to bring awareness, and, in turn, endeavour to rectify systemic injustices that touch hyper marginalized groups whose lived experiences have often been neglected past mainstream media.
Despite these positive impacts of social media, a starting time-year student in my sociology course asked me if I believed that social media was harmful to modern society. Given the importance of this question, I wanted to dedicate some time to answering it here in detail.
Full general Societal Effects of Social Media: The Pervasive Nature of Social Media
While social media was considered every bit a passing trend by researchers merely a footling less than a decade ago, social media has proliferated into mainstream society. Information from Pew Research Center show that five% of the American adult population used social media in 2005, every bit compared to 72% of the public today. They also establish that as social media usage increases and then does the user base. In 2005, the few who used social media in America were young adults, but the user rates amid older adults have as well increased in contempo years. In improver to the change in age among users of social media, the daily usage of social media sites, such as Facebook and Instagram, has too increased. Data from Pew Research Center prove that roughly 75% of users visit Facebook and 60% of users visit Instagram at to the lowest degree once per day.
People use social media for unlike reasons beyond keeping connections with friends and relatives who alive far away. Increasingly social media will exist used to consummate daily tasks, especially in the field of commerce. For example, as of 2019, Facebook is developing a cryptocurrency organisation called Libra, which, some argue, volition soon become mainstream with help from major banks. This is not surprising as social media, such as Facebook, is already irresolute the way nosotros pay . Currently, Facebook users can pay other users through Facebook messenger. In addition to commerce, people use social media to continue up with the latest developments in the The states and abroad. Social media, specifically, has made information more than accessible to consumers . This is evident with Twitter, which is a social media platform where individuals and organizations tin share ideas, thoughts, and information with their followers.
Negative Furnishings of Social Media on Society: Social Media and the Proliferation and Consumption of Sensationalized (Clickbait) Content
While social media tin can be a platform to empower its citizens toward collective activity, social media has also had a negative consequence on society in recent years through the proliferation and consumption of sensationalized content. In fact, in the article The Road to Digital Unfreedom: Three Painful Truths Near Social Media , Ronald Delbert, a professor of political scientific discipline at the University of Toronto, has argued that social media proliferates attention- grabbing, frequently emotionally-driven and divisive fabric, rather than multi-facetted content that present multiple viewpoints. What Delbert is describing here is often known as clickbait. The article Misleading Online Content: Recognizing Clickbait as "False News" defines clickbait as content whose primary purpose is to attract readers in by producing headlines that are often sensational and scandalous .
It tin exist argued that social media websites proliferate clickbait considering social media has get so pervasive in our society that we oftentimes turn to sites on social media to satisfy our impulsive curiosity to become more data about, and react to, shocking events that are unfolding earlier our eyes. In fact, a sensationalized article written most Malia Obama garnered readership from well-known celebrities and commentators, who then posted their equally provocative reactions on their social media pages for their followers to react to. Therefore, clickbait content is rampant on social media because it often exaggerates and scandalizes quotidian events, and turns these every-day events into the unspeakable, which satisfies our impulsive want to get information about, and react to, the abominable. Nevertheless, since clickbait content privileges itself on shocking content, rather than a principled approach to presenting pressing electric current issues, Delbert argues that the proliferation and the consumption of provocative content on social media is a breeding ground for individuals in positions of authority to create confusion and ignorance amid the denizens.
Perspective on Power: The Intersection Between Authority and Misinformation on Social Media
Steven Lukes, political theorist and the author of Power a Radical View , and Charles Lindbloom, the author of Policy Making Process , would probably concord with Ronald Delbert's view on the societal effects of social media. If nosotros use Steven Lukes' perspective on ability , which has its framework based on Karl Marx's conflict perspective , we notice that social media facilitates misinformation . Co-ordinate to Steven Lukes, individuals in positions of dominance can use ideology to control the narrative by exercising considerable command over what issues people choose to care well-nigh and the degree of which they care nigh these problems. According to Charles Lindbloom, individuals in positions of authority can as well use their power to divert attention and misinform the people about their actual circumstances. Social media is frequently used as a means for individuals in positions of potency to put out misinformation . Misinforming the people, which, in turn, could atomic number 82 to defoliation and ignorance amid its citizenry can show to be destructive . This was on full display during the 2020 presidential election where Trump and his followers spread misinformation , which, arguably, led to the insurrection on the Capitol in January.
Teaching the Importance of Evidence Based Enquiry: Fighting the Negative Societal Effects of Social Media
Given the current pandemic and the recent presidential election, my student's question points to a bigger issue on how we fight the negative societal furnishings of social media . While, Trump may be voted out of role, it is likely that there will be other individuals in positions of authority who will spread misinformation on social media which will impact the fabric of American democracy and future elections . I believe that instruction college-aged students , who, according to the Pew Inquiry Center , are the primary users of social media, the importance of evidence-based research is a mode to fight misinformation on social media.
The concept of prove-based research , which is grounded in the field of healthcare, encourages us to use audio inquiry, rather than stance, to make decisions. In practice, show-based research means that nosotros must rely on reputable , oft peer-reviewed, studies published in scientific journals to guide our determination making process. In fact, a recent study conducted by Gordon Pennycook on fighting misinformation plant that people with an increase in science cognition and an inclination for accuracy had a better time weeding out faux information about Covid-nineteen and had an inclination not to share misinformation on social media.
While evidence-based research is primarily discussed in the field of healthcare , it tin can be practical to other disciplines , specially in the social sciences . In addition to teaching the college level introductory sociology grade, I teach a research methods course where I accept students analyze secondary data to improve understand what makes information both valid and reliable. Students in my research methods course are taught to recognize signs that the data they found can be systematically verified every bit a trustworthy source. They are taught the importance and the signs of peer reviewed and fact-checked inquiry. Moreover, they are taught data science methodologies, such as the process of replication and using the right instrument to ensure validity, that advances verified, and trustworthy, knowledge. I use a simple instance to illustrate my point on validity: you would not measure temperature using a ruler. I ofttimes ask my students if the research tin can exist replicated and if the same or similar results can be generated. I also teach them about the importance of sample sizes, stressing that the larger the sample size the better.
Equally an practical sociologist, I put theory into practice. I have students in my research methods courses generate a enquiry newspaper based on a review of peer-reviewed studies and information from the General Social Survey , a nationally representative database. On the whole, my students successfully complete the assignment. They are able to synthesize and employ peer-reviewed studies and information from the General Social Survey to support their arguments. By making students use their knowledge of testify-based research, it is my promise that they will be able to rely on testify-based inquiry to critically analyze the truth near the articles they may come up across on social media.
Decision: How Show-Based Inquiry Tin can Make Social Media a Improve Place
In sum, what I wished I had said in response to my student's question on social media and its negative effects was that social media doesn't accept to be harmful to modern society . Social media can be a corking identify where we can show solidarity in times of need . While social media can be a identify where misinformation is spread , we can teach electric current and future generations of college students the importance of evidence-based research practices equally a means to filter out and non share misinformation on social media, which volition hopefully make social media a improve identify.
Tom Chiang Jr. , is an adjunct kinesthesia member in the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Rowan University. He is besides affiliated with the Criminal Justice Department at the California State Academy, Stanislaus.
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