Social media has entered our lives swiftly and changed the idea of communication. Now it is possible to forget about borders and time zones. There are no barriers to contacting the right person at any time. Behind all the visible advantages of such resources, are we able to notice and give an adequate assessment of how our media behavior has changed over the years, as well as define a strategy for the productive use of media in everyday life?
Before talking about such things, you need to come to an understanding of what social media actually is, what their functions are and how they affect a person.
You can often hear the phrase “new media” as a synonym for “social media”. It should immediately be clarified that in the first case we are talking about the emergence of various types of digital technologies (websites, e-mail, chat rooms, etc.), and in the second – the immediate possibility of websites and services to give users a chance to interact.
The principle of operation of the “old media”, despite the fact that they, like the “new” ones, were a social platform, i.e. provided people with the opportunity to speak in public, worked on the one-to-many principle. New media have implemented the “much for many” principle. So, the difference between Web 1.5 and Web 2.0 is obvious for those who in practice felt the change of forums and blogs – social networks.
To date, the most popular ways of using social media are building and maintaining friendly relations, as well as ensuring one’s own career growth. This refers to the “ordinary” use of this kind of resources. In professional circles, social media plays the role of the most powerful tools of marketing, advertising and the implementation of political technologies. If you need to get in-depth and fully informational papers, contact getpsychologyessay.com website and their highly qualified and experienced writers will help you to solve your problem.
In the book “The Power of Communication” Manuel Castells says that network media influence the essential aspects of human nature, from thinking to the sense of reality. “Survive” in a world dominated by communication technologies, can only those people who are able to soberly give themselves an account of changes in their own psyche and the psyche of others, who notice that modern management is carried out through understanding the media, not ignoring, and certainly not wars with them.
A consumer is a person who, entering the Internet, consciously spends his time resources on searching and consuming information.
A communicator is one who produces messages. It is through the activity of communicators that social media and other network structures emerge. These are the creators of the network.
The author is perhaps one of the most important actors in the media sphere, because it is he who “creates the event”. A vivid example is blogging, which blurs the boundary between a real event and a media event. An important point in the activities of the authors is that they do not just create an event online, but also make an attempt to participate in it, changing reality.
The task of navigators is to regulate the flow of information. The Navigator monitors consumers, communicators and authors, and acts for them to benefit or harm, depending on the goal setting. In the media environment, the navigator performs the function of a kind of synchronizer of conflicting meanings in the points of view of the communication participants; it is the head of the negotiating table.
In this case, we can argue that journalists are gradually turning from authors into navigators. Having discovered the ever-increasing amount of information and the lack of their own time to cover it, media workers, taking advantage of the availability of media resources, called on users to “make news with us”. However, the editing of information, as well as its adaptation to classroom inquiries, still requires authoring rather than navigational intervention.
Thus, we come to the understanding that each media personality, in accordance with its sociocultural parameters and goals of being in a virtual environment, not only manifests a certain media behavior, but also forms its own individual image – a virtual personality image.
Particularly vividly, the results of the formation of a virtual image of the user’s identity can be observed in social networks, where a person creates his own Internet portrait, guided by the skills of self-presentation. If you want to be well presented online with witty and well-written posts, or require any other academic writing help, you can address a cheap essay writing service online for fast assistance.
