Social Media and Communication

                                                                                               

WhatsApp! Follow me on Twitter! Check my status on Facebook page! These are the buzz words of today’s generation. In the age of Information and Communication Technologies whosoever is unaware of these terms is considered illiterate or outdated. Once obsessed with capital intensive mass media technologies, development planners as well as advertisers are finding new means and tools to reach out their tech savvy target audience. Educators are engrossed in new means to use the updated technology in their class rooms. In an age when there are one billion users inter connected through Facebook this is one of the most powerful participatory medium of communication. In this scenario whosoever is educated and is having means to use this simple technology can’t ignore it.

Media has become more interactive in virtual space and there is no sense of place while communicating with others in virtual world. Unlimited media access and interactivity is leading to less social mediated communication in real world. We are moving towards an age of ‘networked individualism’. More interactivity is leading to more divide between haves and have nots as owner of new media is having more sources of multimedia truths. Media technologies have made great impact on how we communicate personally and professionally.  Technological convergence has accelerated the speed of media technologies.  It is important that we understand the different new media technologies that are available today.  This is because our lives and our global economies have become dependent on them.

These contemporary technologies are reshaping and transforming social, cultural, political and economic concept of space and place. Media has always been considered as watchdog of society. New media is acting as “watchdog of watchdogs” in the sense when something controversial does not find space in traditional media, someone from the general public highlights on social media sites or micro blogs and mass media has to cover the issue. The buzz created on social media sites sets the agenda for traditional media.

As there is an economic transmission of information and culture, new media has become new mass culture and every other youth is using it because his friend is also using it. Today’s youth is spending more time on instant chatting rather than communicating to the family and friends sitting in real space. He is living in ‘Communities of choice’ rather than compulsive community in which he was born and brought up. Situation is devastating for him when someone is un-friended on social networking sites. The viewpoint of parents is ambivalent on the virtual reality as it has become a necessity for them but due to lack of parental control it is hard to figure out the dimensions of freedom provided by new media.

 It is disturbing to learn from the findings of a national survey of media conditions among American children aged two through eighteen years that “the average child spent six hours and thirty-two minutes per day exposed to media of all kinds, of which the time spent reading books and magazines— not counting school work—averaged about forty-five minutes”.

Although the new media technologies are more available than ever imagined, the digital divide that we are experiencing today will continue to widen in the next few years. This gap between haves and have nots will lead to disharmony and social disorder amongst communities, age groups and social classes.

(Disclaimer: Some of the content of this article is taken from author’s paper ‘Social Media and Changing Communication Patterns’ published in Global Media Journal, Jan- June, 2014)

Dr. Kiran Bala

AssociateProfessor

Dept. of Communication Studies