In the last decade, there has been a massive shift in how people consume and interact with information. The Internet’s communication channels, in conjunction with the advent of social media and social networking technologies, have forever changed how people interact with each other and brands. Communication has therefore shifted from a monologue, where people broadcasted their non-profit’s mission, to a dialogue where there are more and more personal branding and positioning controlled by one’s supporters and detractors.
The social media can thus be explained as the various electronic tools, technologies and applications that facilitate interactive communication and content exchange, enabling the user to move back and forth easily between the roles of audience and content producers. According to Wikipedia, which itself is a social media tool because any internet user can add content to a Wikipedia entry: “Social media is a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologue (one to many) into dialogue (many to many) and it’s the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. Also, social media refers to websites and applications “that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2013).
It is also known as “Web 2.0” or “Gov 2.0,” and primarily encourages a rich and engaging user experience. In social media, users add value to the content and data online; their interactions with the information (e.g., both collectively and individually) can significantly alter the experiences of subsequent users. Websites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and others make it easy to reach large numbers of people. The Internet may be used to reach millions of people just by posting a blog, sharing a video, or by tweeting an observation or question on Twitter. YouTube is now the second largest search engine (after Google) in the world. Social media allows anyone who uses information to also create it. Hence, this makes social media an ideal platform for sharing information, starting conversations, and exchanging knowledge within and outside all human endervours. Billions of pieces of content (e.g., web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums) are shared each month on Facebook and other social media sites. These venues serve as a space where content is both discovered and shared. As of July 2010:
• Facebook has 500 million users and 50% of these people log on daily. (http://www.facebook.com)
• Twitter users send out 65 million tweets per day. (http://www.twitter.com)
• YouTube exceeds 2 billion views a day with the average user spending 15 minutes on the site. (http://www.website-monitoring.com)
• More than 126 million blogs are on the Internet. (http://www.blogpulse.com)
To be successful in the use of the social media, one needs a basic understanding of social platforms and technologies, their benefits, and how to construct a plan that ensures you’re putting the right tools to work for yourself or your organization. What makes social network sites unique is not that they allow individuals to meet strangers, but rather that they enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks. This can result in connections between individuals that would not otherwise be made, but that is often not the goal, and these meetings are frequently between “latent ties” who share some offline connection.
All generations are adopting new social behaviours, taking advantage of social technologies online to interact in unprecedented ways. Debunking the myth that social media is used exclusively by younger generations, The Next Generation of American Giving study highlighted that not only is there a true cross section of age groups regularly using social tools, but also that these tools are seen as an appropriate channel for solicitation. That means each generation of internet users is active in social spaces, and consider social media on par with email when it comes to engaging with them and soliciting their help.
The Benefits of Social Networks
It is increasingly claimed that electronic connections and changing social behaviour have made the network a ubiquitous organising principle, the dominant means not just of getting things done, but also of thinking about how things can and should be achieved in a networked age.
Consequently, it is perhaps to be expected that the existing research base on social networks and network theory is enormously wide and varied. While there is some consideration of social networks in the context of education, entertainment, business, journalism, poverty and security, there are however disadvantages in the use of the social media; there are far more and more literatures concerned with the broader benefits and utility of social networks. The most relevant of these benefits and uses are considered below:
Improving access to employment opportunities.
Improving service delivery.
Mentoring and raising aspirations.
Mutual support.
Collective action and campaigning.
Staying in touch with friends and family.
Journalists increasingly use social media for work.
Staying up to date on news.
Tracking down lost contacts.
Showing who you are and what you do as a person, or business.
Because everybody is using it and people do not want to be left behind.
Entertainment.
Advertising ones’ business.
Reading about famous bloggers who give their opinion on all kinds of topics.
Posting one’s own news.
Looking at other people’s photos or posting your own.
A way of spending leisure time.
However, even though the benefits of the social media are enormous the risks of the social media is creating an alarming concern to users and the entire world at large. In the recent increase of terrorism all over the world, the social media is a quick and easy tool to recruit intending members of terrorists groups. For instance, Germany, England and France have intensified investigation on how and when their citizens are recruited into the ongoing war in Syria.
To these European countries, it is nerve wrecking to see young Europeans going into a war in the Middle East that is based entirely on Islamic rebellion. Confused on how to solve the Syrian war, the government of these three countries are also in dilemma on how to unravel how young Europeans acquire and ship out hard military weapons to countries such as Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Turkey, Syria and other war troubled countries.
In Nigeria, there are strong indications that the “Boko Haram” a terrorist group which is against western education, ironically recruits members online. It is also disturbing to note that the social media has been used to commit heinous murders, defraud multi-companies and rich individuals, and even perpetuate espionage (the recent Edward Snowden’s case, explicitly exposes the use of internet sources to retrieve rival governments secretes). Pornography, child bullying and abuse, examination malpractices, religious bigotry, junk journalism etcetera, are some of the disadvantages of visiting social websites.
