Abstract

With the introduction of social media, communication between individuals has changed dramatically, allowed them to connect or reconnect with each other. Each social media platform provides a different method of communication.

Keywords: social media, communication methods, social media platforms, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, conference paper

1. Introduction

With the introduction of the Internet and mobile telephones, interpersonal communication has become increasingly mediated by the use of technology (Baym, Zang, Kuntel, Ledbetter and Lin, 2007). Social networking platforms connect people that may or may not share any association with each other (Papacharissi, 2009). Boyd and Ellison (2007) define social networking platforms as ‘web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection and view and transverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system’. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, Flickr and YouTube, are examples of social networking platforms that have millions of users, who use such networks ‘to keep track of each other, find experts and engage in commercial transactions when needed (Huberman, Romero and Wu, 2008). Through this conference paper, it will look at how communication has changed with the introduction of social media platforms.

2. Discussion

Research suggests that patterns of relational communication are changing as a result of Internet interaction incorporated into the everyday life of individuals. Social networks provide emotional and financial support to their consumers. Consumers can find information about jobs and connect with other people and the world (Donath and Boyd, 2004).  People are meeting online and are keeping in touch through electronic media.  Social media platforms are also changing how people and companies interact with each other (Dijkmans, Kerkhof, and Beukeboom, 2015).

In the last twenty years, the impacts of how the Internet and telephone are used is investigated by researchers (Baym, Zang, Kuntel, Ledbetter and Lin, 2007) on relational characteristics and compared this to face-to-face communication. Studies from these researchers have shown that while communication does not directly address relational quality, it can demonstrate that emails are allowing for more communication in both new and existing relationships. There is evidence to suggest that Internet users can be associated with increased communication with some friendships and families. However, the evidence does suggest that less intimate relationships are not necessarily suited to using online interactions as a means to sustain a relationship (Baym, Zang, Kuntel, Ledbetter and Lin, 2007). 

Consumers can act and react to what companies are doing, easily through the use of social media platforms. This allows for the potential for comments by consumers to be seen by a worldwide audience (Dijkmans, Kerkhof, and Beukeboom, 2015). Consumers have also shifted where they find their information to electronic word-of-mouth sources, where social media platforms are heavily used. In particular, Facebook and Twitter provide a substantive part in electronic word-of-mouth. This has allowed for companies to change their communication approach towards consumers through engaging in an online discussion on social media platforms (Dijkmans, Kerkhof, and Beukeboom, 2015). However, companies have a fine line between good and bad online communication with consumers of their products.

Social networking platforms allow people to create profiles that are self-descriptive. People are then able to link to other people they know through the social media platform. This allows them to ‘create a network of personal connections’ (Donath and Boyd, 2004). Making new connections is the main point of social networking platforms. The underlying model for social networking platforms is the assumption that people having mutual acquaintance and provides a context for connecting (Donath and Boyd, 2004). This concept was born out of everyday, face-to-face experiences, where people meet through a mutual acquaintance. Social media platforms are unique in allowing people to articulate and show their social networks to the public. This allows for connections to potentially be made between individuals that would not have ordinarily been made (Boyd and Ellison, 2007).

With each different social media platform, it provides a different community for people to involve themselves in. Each platform holds the potential for people online to share their experiences, both professionally and personally, on the same platform (Deepti, 2019). With the rise of social media platforms, family and friend relationships and communication methods have changed (Deepti, 2019).

The social media practices, and by extension Web 2.0, ‘lie somewhere between utilitarian and altruist behaviours (Aguiton and Cardon, 2007). The idea of a utilitarian practice is mainly concerned with a person maximizing their interest. The altruist practice looks at an individual being ‘motivated by collective action, volunteering, community belonging, public interest and knowledge sharing (Aguiton and Cardon, 2007). With the success of social media platforms and Web 2.0, users create a hybrid of utilitarian and altruist behaviours. The individualization of a person’s goal encounters their opportunity to share their expressions to the public. 

The architecture of social media spaces enables distinct modes of interaction between people. There is an individualistic motivation behind consumers of social media (Aguiton and Cardon, 2007). With the introduction of Facebook, we saw an ‘online social network application allow its users to create their profiles, display a picture, accumulate and connect to friends who have been met on the online and offline realms and view each other’s profiles’ (Papacharissi, 2009). Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, commented that the social media platform ‘producing a social utility that connects’ (Papacharissi, 2009) people with each other. Facebook provides its users with the opportunities to share photos and the ability for users to contribute to the refreshing the content. Initially, Facebook was designed for students at Harvard University (Boyd and Ellison, 2007). Zuckerberg expanded the social media platform to support other university students on the proviso they had university email addresses. By September 2005, Facebook became available to high school students in the United States of America (Boyd and Ellison, 2007). Eventually, Facebook became available to everyone, and now it also allows for users to advertise.

In Facebook’s introduction, it required users to actively surf the social media platform to find out what their friends had posted. Zuckerberg updated Facebook with a built-in service known as the news feed that allowed users to access the updates users better broadcasted. Users would no longer need to examine each page individually in order to find out information and communicate with people in their friend’s lists. With the introduction of the news feed on Facebook, allowed people to communicate with each other face-to-face about the information posted on the social media platform (Thompson, 2008). It has been suggested by Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe (2007) that Facebook is used to maintain offline relationships instead of meeting new people. While the relationships may be weak, there is common among individuals who friend one another (Boyd and Ellison, 2007).

Twitter is used by millions of people globally to ‘stay connected with their friends, family and co-workers’ (Huberman, Romero and Wu, 2009) via computers and mobile. The interface Twitter uses allows people to post short 140-character messages that can be read by anyone who uses the social media platform. Users declare which profiles they are interested in following, however, are not necessarily followed back by such users. Users are also able to post direct and indirect updates. Direct posts are when a user attempts to update a specific person through the use of the ‘@’ symbol followed by the person’s username (Huberman, Romero and Wu, 2009). Indirect updates are for anyone interested in reading the post. Everyone can see both direct and indirect updates.

With LinkedIn, we saw the introduction of a pro-life that was based on a person’s professional affiliation and allowed the ability for those to connect to professional contact both within and outside their professional networks (Papacharissi, 2009). Users of LinkedIn affiliate with their work networks and maintain a list of work connections and colleagues. This network is aimed to ‘maintain communication, trade information and refer to each other’ (Papacharissi, 2009). The connection between individuals needs to be pre-existing or have a mutual contact. LinkedIn is a platform, which can be used by everyone. However, professionals and students tend to want to use the program. As the profile is limited to a business setting, the interface of LinkedIn encourages people to have a relatively impersonal interaction with each other. This approach has shown to be less successful than other social media platforms (Donath and Boyd, 2004).

On LinkedIn, testimonials are provided and situated in ‘specific sections of the profile’ (Donath and Boyd, 2004) instead of a general comments section. As LinkedIn is a professional site, the sections of the profile correlate to different jobs. As a result, the testimonials provided, speak about the work a person did at each place.

Bloggers use the Internet to publish their productions (Aguiton and Cardon, 2007). Studies of blog users see blogs as a tool for publication and communication. Specific content is produced by bloggers ‘in order to reach others and start a conversation with them’ (Aguiton and Cardon, 2007). The life of blogs strongly correlates to the number and density of comments that are attracted by bloggers. Interaction with the audience of a blog is vital in creating interactions with the readers.

How people write blog effects the networks of their commentators. With intimate blogs, people have the ‘abnormity of exchanges’ (Aguiton and Cardon, 2007) due to people not knowing each other in real life, is central to the quality of such conversations on blog sites. In contrast to intimate blogs, proximity blogs have daily and multiple exchanges. This is due to bloggers developing links with his or her commentators in real life. In ‘thematic blogs of some communities of practices’ (Aguiton and Cardon, 2007), people use their blogs to enlarge their social networks with people with the same skills and tastes. These networks are mixed between people that are known to the blogger and people they will encounter.

Consumers of Flickr and YouTube use the platforms to store pictures and videos (Aguiton and Cardon, 2007). Members of YouTube can have publicly private and privately public profiles. A publicly private profile shows ‘private behaviours, exhibited with the member’s true identity’ (Papacharissi, 2009). A privately public profile allows the consumer to ‘share accessible public video without disclosing member’s true identity’ (Papacharissi, 2009). The behaviours employed by both profiles are used to ‘signal different depths of relationships’ (Lange, 2007). It allows for communication based on empathy, respect or inclusion between YouTube users.

3. Conclusion

In conclusion, communication between people has changed with the introduction of social media platforms. Through this conference paper, it has shown how communication has changed through the use of different social media platforms. These platforms include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging, Flickr and YouTube. Each platform allows people to communicate with each other differently, depending on the number of characters that can be used, the professionalism needed and whether video or photography content will be used. Through such platforms, people can connect with each other on a public forum. 

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