Chapter Five
Are Social Media Temporary Phenomena?
Social Media are the target of critics today who believe that they are unnecessary for societal change and that they do not bring any real or tangible benefit, and from others who really believe in them because are part of technology and of social revolution.
The fact is that they are part of media in general and have specific characteristics, which were described in chapter 2. They are young trend and are under study and development to explore their limits and applications. New research and investment has made it possible to associate SM to artificial intelligence, in the sense that they support communication between smart devices supporting these to take decisions on the base of specific input received. This chapter analyses all of the above aspects and give ideas for possible future scenarios.
5.1 Critics
SM are an extraordinary collection of innovative communication tools and in my opinion (as I will show in the next section) they still have room for improvement because their application can be extended also to objects and not only humans.
In contrast, there are people who are very critical about SM because they maintain SM do not improve society.
Some of the worst critiques come from two different categories of people:
a) People close to traditional media corporations, who are not fully objective because they are in conflict with the new media;
b) The older generation that, in some cases, finds it hard to even turn on a desktop.
One of my favourite writers, Malcom Gladwell, wrote an article in The New Yorker regarding his thoughts about SM (Gladwell, 2010). I want to recall a few key points of this article that have impressed me. In particular, the author supports the idea that SM are not important for society to change, and he uses historic cases to demonstrate this theory. He maintains that the many cases of activisms, or civil-rights, movements were successful without the use of SM. However, I must say that the events described in the article, happened when SM were not even developed or conceived of.
For example, during the civil-right movement and environmental movement of 1960s, only traditional media, like local TV, radio and newspapers, existed to spread opinions and make people aware of events. What I am saying is that any human era has its form of media and others will be developed based on the technology available at the time. For the complexity, the size and the organisation of today’s society, traditional media is probably not sufficient for communication. Today, SM can trigger revolutions, punish police brutality (caught on video), and support a candidate’s election campaign.
SM are part of media’s group and their scope set by the users to use it for good or bad goals.
Gladwell also wrote: “social media are not about this kind of hierarchical organization [e.g. civil-right movements]. Facebook and the like are tools for building networks, which are the opposite, in structure and character, of hierarchies. Unlike hierarchies, with their rules and procedures, networks aren’t controlled by a single central authority. Decisions are made through consensus, and the ties that bind people to the group are loose”.
In the author’s view, an achievement is possible only if there is a leader that coordinates the public demand and support. He points to the absence of hierarchy in social media system with a central authority able to think strategically.
To give an idea, the author believes that social media are able to provide pieces of a puzzle and there is nobody able to put all together in order to get the final picture.
In my opinion, the power of SM is regarding its scope and utility more than, for example, the quality of relationships between contacts. To say this in another way: the aim of SM is to establish collaborative connections in order to benefit from them. Furthermore, SM is a group of media, and therefore they must be evaluated as such. This means the evaluation must be done through a comparison with other media.
The logic behind SM is to be an alternative to hierarchies approach and to guarantee that every member of the social network is the leader. Contrary to the hierarchical approach, SM favor democracy and every user can express opinion and the decisions are taken on majority bases. For example, the groups are created for common needs, common goals or social movement (e.g. anti-globalisation, anti-water privatisation, anti-Genetically Modified Organism) and their strategy is agreed by members.
SM are applications that facilitate the communication, for example they can record conversations, make documents sharable, comment life events and group's decisions. Sometimes a group spokesman is necessary but this is agreed and voted by the members. Contrary to the hierarchical organization, SM favour a bottom-up approach.
Looking back at media’s history, there is a close relationship with technology; specifically, a medium maintains its popularity until a new and more effective technology is developed.
Moreover, people tend to use the most appropriate medium which they believe will get the information they need and in the time they want. This means that nowadays, SM represent the most advanced source of information, as they can provide information quickly and accurately.
5.2 SM and Artificial Intelligence
SM were created with the purpose of connecting people but, with recent developments of technology and software applications, it is possible also the interaction with smart devices and establish a communication between them. This is a