[Air-L] Re Understanding Social Media

[Julian Hopkins]

I have found the following definition and paper to be useful when trying to
define 'social media'.

“Social Media is a group of Internet-based applications that build on the
ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the
creation and exchange of User Generated Content” (Kaplan & Haenlein 2010:
61)
They also do a handy "Classification of Social Media by social
presence/media richness and self-presentation/self-disclosure" - e.g. blogs
are high in self-presentation/self-disclosure, but low in social
presence/media richness.

Kaplan, A. M. & M. Haenlein 2010. Users of the world, unite! The challenges
and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons 53, 59–68 (available
on-line: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681309001232,
accessed 1 October 2012).

regards,
Julian


On 6 June 2013 08:32, <air-l-request at listserv.aoir.org> wrote:

>
> Message: 3
> Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 01:21:05 +0100
> From: Christian Fuchs <christian.fuchs at uti.at>
> To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Re Understanding Social Media
> Message-ID: <51AFD5F1.6020807 at uti.at>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> My own view is that everyone uses the term "social media" quite
> confidently as if there is only one meaning of the term "social" and as
> a consequence only one definition of "social media".
>
> Internet Studies lacks grounding in philosophy and social theory and
> therefore lacks an understanding of the circumstance that sociality has
> multiple meanings in social theory.
>
> If we want to understand social media, we need to engage with social
> theory. Internet Studies is way too much a positivist science without
> acknowledgement of sociology's and the social sciences' roots in
> philosophy.
>
> In order to understand social media we need social theory. Almost all
> definitions of "social media" are simplistic and lack social theory...
>
> Best, CF




++++++++++
Dr Julian Hopkins
Lecturer
School of Arts & Social Sciences
Monash University, Sunway campus
www.sass.monash.edu.my
Blog: www.julianhopkins.net
Twitter: @julianhopkins