Social Media: An Antidote for Social Confinement

Social Media: An Antidote for Social Confinement

We have come a long way since 1999 when the Blogger and Napster was born, social media has brought a flurry of innovation and advancement personal interaction, shrinking the world into a “global village” which contains the hustle and bustle of a suburban city yet providing enhanced opportunities. Social media   as according to Jandle (1973) is a “reciprocal of time-space convergence”, that allows its users to interact amongst individuals, communities and organizations (Wikipedia).

As a generalization Social Media is largely known as a social site a medium where people can be social, get to know what is happening in the lives of friends, family, get in touch with old mates, or make new mates, enlarging the social interactions and circles of people. However according to CNET there is a growing interest in Companies in utilizing Social Media for marketing purposes, In 2013, 77 percent of the Fortune 2000 companies are using Social Media  a 8%  jump from 69% in 2012. The major apps in use being Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Blog, Pineinterest, Foursquare and Instagram.  This is estimated to increase as most have expressed interest in utilizing Social Media more, as it facilitates international advertising in three major ways (1) Networking Capacitating , cutting across geographic boundaries, and cultures.;(2) Enabling Image Transferability, a crucial key to attracting consumer markets ;(3) Enabling Personal Extensibility , overcoming the “friction of distance through communication” ( Okazake et al ,2013).  Companies like Tripadvisor, Virtual Tenant have revolutionalized the travel perspectives of holiday seekers, Advergames have brought a marketing concept that entices the gamer to desire a real life experience with products, increasing brand loyalty and sales. Twitter and Facebook the largest marketing company’s having 8,5 million and 95 million followers as per twitter records.   There is a new found ability to engage customers, partners, and vendors in ways that are beyond the imagination that were never present before.

In the academic space, several articles have been written about social media both on a positivist and interprativist ontology.  Conceptual Frameworks from the theories of Social Capital and Technology Acceptance Models to name a few have been utilized in the researches done to understand the phenomena that Social Media presents. The ability of Social Media to reach a wide community of practices brings into question the potential that it presents in” tools, platforms, processes, and scholarly voices working in the field of Digital Humanities” (Morris and Stommel, 2014). Of interest is a research done by Coleman (2013) regarding Social Media as Primary source of this age. In it Academic s are found to be quite active in the Social Media Space and according to his sample of participants there are five main reasons why they use Social Media: (1) Keeping up to date with topics; (2) Following other Researchers works ;( 3) Discovering new ideas or publications;(4) Promoting current work or research; and (5) Making new research contacts.  A growing number of articles and journals are utilizing the Social Media space as a repository.  Collaboration between connoisseurs is facilitated, on all levels, theoretical, practical, and technical ensuring sustainable teamwork.   

Where ever its being used, Social Media is providing a platform of communicating that ensures powerful networks between individuals, communities and organizations. These networks used wisely have the power to accomplish not only a lot of good but great emancipation of the users and their associates. 

Sophie Bhebe Msc Comp Scie. (NUST); D Tech (Candidate) (CPUT)

email - sophiebhebe@gmail.com; twiter - @sophiebhebe