Divided Democracy in Age of Social Media †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Divided Democracy in Age of Social Media. Answer: Introduction From technology concept, social media often used as a synonym of web 2.0 can be define as an infrastructure which focuses on the mutual exchange and cooperation of values. It can be considered as give to get environment where platform is based on free exchange of contents. However, it is practically impossible to define social media as there is no academic context exist that provides one unified definition. The utilization of social media is growing rapidly as stated by a survey of internet world stats data, among twenty one billion internet users 82 % of them is Social media user. Social media has become a daily life aspect to most of the people as it is highly addictive and provides a dynamic virtual world. Not only individuals, social media also utilized by organizations, websites and SME for marketing, represent new trend and to gain customer loyalty. In this decade, the most popular social media platforms are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Snap chat has estimated following 1000, 800, 974 and 400 million user globally. According to Burston-Marsteller research results, 84% of the companies uses at least one of the four social media platform while 25% of them used all four for marketing and advertising. Social media has highly impact on the current society and culture. Its influence on the individuals and companies are spreading gradually. It is changing the way of communication between peoples in an effective manner. Peoples can easily share information between them. For organizations, social media enables the advertising and marketing communication prospects. Social media is effecting the regulation of timing, content and frequency that helps organizations to increase individual product sale, direct marketing and public loyalty. It also enables the opportunists to communicate with consumer in an efficient manner. Organizations are utilizing Social media to advertise their products and spread relative information world-wide. The table 1 shows the comparison between traditional and social media. Social Media Traditional Media Rapidly updateable Unchangeable, Fixed Infinite Finite Freedom Control Encouraged Participation and sharing Not that much encouragement for sharing. All media can be mixed. Limited media mix. Archives Accessible Archives poorly Accessible. E-Tourism: In this decade, tourism business are going through a huge evolution as they cannot depend on the typical media for advertising process. The e-visitor are the same as any other visitor, have same needs and the number is also increasing. However, the difference is they utilize social media for each stage of the journey. They gather information about the travelling process and the destination through the past experiences of other peoples who share relevant information in the social media platform. Once they evaluate all the alternatives they books the perfect journey associate with their desired and budget. While the tourist in the destination they often share their experiences, feelings in the form of image, blogs and video about the places. For this kind of activities YouTube, Facebook is mostly used. Each stage of the journey in e-tourism is shown in the figure below Business: Nowadays, every business has realized the social media importance to stay in the market. They utilized social media as marketing platform to enhance the advertising process. There are other certain advantage of social media such it increased traffic, exposure, loyal fans. It has been a game changer by improving the search ranking, improve sales and also provide marketplace insight. It is also obvious that significance of social media will be continued nevertheless it will increase. Business that utilizes social media are more satisfied than others hoc users who are more doubtful about the worth of social media. According to some research, this business are gaining 1.5 to 2 times more revenue growth than ad hoc users. Communication: Social media offers a different number of platform from where user can communicate with each other in variety ways. Online communication tools are changing the typical way of communication in an effective and efficient manner. Facebook, twitter provide suitable platforms for user to communicate in more frequent and effective way. It also change the definition of communication (Fuchs, 2017, p. 56). In social media, user are not only just stay connected with each other through voice and text exchange. They can also communicate with each other by showing appropriation for a particular post and comment their thoughts. There are several other activities and components describes in figure no 2. These platforms are helping users to increase the awareness of movements. Components of the Social Media Blogs: Blogs are one of the earliest social media platform, grew from the personal webpage. This pages are mostly filled with text and images. Blogger describes many different aspects on their webpage which could be useful to many visitors of the page to gain any relevant information. Are Visitors can also share their perspective in form of comments. However, written blogs are not very popular now. Vlog as video blogs are replaced the typical blog and widely popular in the society. Content communities: This type of platforms are widely popular now. In this platform, there are mainly two type of user, one known as creator others visitors. Creators are mainly create content and publish it on certain platforms where they have followers who view their content. The visitors have the option to create a user profile to able to rate and comment on the content. YouTube, Flickr, Slide Share is famous platforms in this type of media. Social network sites: This type of platforms allows user to interact with each other by creating personal account. This type of platforms are most famous among others in the social media. Every user have the same level of access as they can create post and also review others post including the rate and comment. This contents are usually consist of image, video and audios Facebook and Myspace are example of this this type of networking sites. Virtual Game world: This is one of the emerging social media platform where user can interact with each other virtually by utilizing a replica of three dimensional environment. Where they ca appear as their chosen avatar (Gerbaudo, 2018, p. 79). The popularity of this games are growing gradually because it provides a real time interaction between users and also award systems are available as typical games. Microsofts XBOX, Sonys PlayStation and virtual reality are the mostly used for playing this kind of games. Warcraft is one of the popular game in this category. Impact of social media on society Social media has a huge impact on the society especially on the young generation. Almost four chunk of the total population use social media on regular basis. Social media is effect as it feed off interaction among people. Social media also lessen the loneliness to a certain level. However, teenagers are getting addictive with social media. It is slowly killing the real activism. This is the one of the emerging issue to consider associate with Social media. Teenagers are sending most of their valuable time in the social network sites that surely effecting their carrier and lifestyle. Also there are some argue that social media encourage user to use computer and mobile devices to express their concern about social dilemma without interacting with campaign in real life. According to the 2013 study by university of British Columbias Sauder School of business, the appearance of like option is increasing social dilemma as user are using it as alternative rather than providing actual sympathy or contribution (Duggan Brenner, 2013, p. 36). On other hand its enable the flow of information throughout the whole world. In social media, the cyber bullying and harassment cases are also increasing that is effecting young girls, women and school children. However, there is no effective legal actions available in many countries. Social media also has a huge impact on the privacy. If user is not careful about his posts, can lose personal information. On other hand, vital information related with any on-going case can be gathered from social media that could assist to identify attacker or theft. The social media technology has advanced so much that even while sitting back at home, one can order anything from anywhere. (Moreno-Munoz et al., 2016, p. 109). The use of social media and the social media platform and websites is reaching a stage where everything would be automated. This world of automation, other than the great advantages, will bring along with it a large number of disadvantages as well. The application of the use of social media has spread to the field of online payment. The use of the various applications and the websites for online payment has increased. However, at the same time there are dangers of being attacked by the hackers. There had been reports when the hackers were able to draw large amount of money during transaction between two people. The same case may take place in the case of the various organizations. In the case of the organizations, money is not only involved but large amount of sensitive information were involved. The hackers get hold of thes e sensitive information, which may lead to the downfall of the company. The use of social media websites often include links in the websites, on clicking which the page gets redirected to other sites. There are key logger or other software present in these websites, which can track the passwords or the PINS that is entered in the fields present in the website (Sagiroglu Canbek, 2015, p. 225). Conclusion: This world of ease has reached a stage where people seek the help of social media for simple works as well. Thus social media on the other hand, keeping aside all the advantages it provides, it can play a big role in making people lethargic towards work and can also be largely responsible in decreasing the confidence level of people. The social media has extended its application to the mobile phones. The continuous use of mobile phone may cause various health issues in the user. The radiation that is emitted from the mobile phone harms the health of the user. The use of social media is made by the user of various age. 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