Araya Conference Paper Social media has changed the way we communicate and share information, many people have become so reliant on social media that it is hard to imagine life without it. We use social media to keep in touch with friends and family, share photos and videos, to find out what is happening in the world, and connect with businesses and organisations that are relevant to us. Communities provide us with a sense of belonging, they give us a space to share our experiences with like-minded people, and they can help us feel less isolated, they provide a space where people can be themselves, and where we can connect with like-minded people who share our interests and passions. We often describe our communities as “our extended family” or “our tribe”, communities have existed for thousands of years and are an essential part of human interaction. However, social media has provided a new platform for connecting people and communities together and the idea of community has laid down the foundation of how social media is used today. Social media has been the catalyst for building communities on a much larger scale than was ever possible in the past, social media has been very effective in helping us to make connections and to share experiences, but it has also allowed us to question our own identities and to question others who are close to us (Qin & Lowe, 2019). Whether it is a group we join online, the discussions people have on Facebook, or the fact that we can communicate with friends and family on the other side of the world as if they were next door (Hampton, 2015). Social media has changed the way interactions are made with each other. While there are claims that social media is destroying communities and individuals, it can also be true that social media has given us the ability to build communities on a much larger scale than was previously possible. In the past, communities were often defined by geography, religion, and common interests. But today, a community can be as small as two people who share a common interest, or as large as an online community of millions of people who are connected through social media (Papadopoulos et al., 2011). The arrival of social media has also enabled people to create communities in the virtual world that are just as significant as the communities we build in the physical world.
Social media has played a major role in the way users connect with others and how we define our relationships with others, through social media. It has also changed the way we communicate with each other, enabling us to express our emotions, beliefs, and values to other people, and allowing us to interact with them in a way that was previously impossible, sending photos or responding using emojis (Hampton, 2015). It has also presented identity issues for some people, as it can be difficult for some to define themselves through social media platforms. Some users complained that the anonymity afforded by social media can cause some users to feel as though they are not themselves, thus causing them to feel alienated from their own identity. However, these users also point out that the virtual world has allowed us to establish identities that we would not have if we were to be connected through the internet (Qin & Lowe, 2019). For these users, social media has been a way of establishing identities that would otherwise be difficult to do in the physical world, when users have identities based on the physical world, it is difficult to identify ourselves with others in this world. However, by establishing identities through social media, they are able to have a much stronger identity and be a part of a much larger community than we would if we were based on the physical world (Qin & Lowe, 2019).
Today, we live in a society where the majority of our interactions take place online, this has made it easier to organise and connect with one another and allows us to establish online communities and share information more effectively. People can join groups on Facebook and send messages and pictures to their followers on Instagram. Social media is allowing a new form of communities to be made and shared to a much wider audience now than ever before, social media is not replacing communities it is allowing these communities to keep up-to-date and connect with others from all around the world. One of the ways in which social media has helped to build communities is through the way in which it has allowed people to connect with one another online (Papadopoulos et al., 2011). Social media platforms, such as Facebook, allow users to connect with a network of people whom they may never have actually met in person. By joining a group on Facebook, users can connect with a group of people who share a common interest, which can strengthen the sense of community that they feel.
In the past, the way in which people communicated with each other was through face-to-face interactions. This was a way of establishing a community in the physical world, and one that was unique to each person. Social media has changed this, as it allows us to establish communities online and communicate with people around the world (Papadopoulos et al., 2011). Social media can provide a community space online where people can share their opinions on a variety of topics, while it was once difficult for people to share their opinions on controversial topics, social media has changed this, allowing people to share their opinions on topics that they would never have been able to share in the physical world. The way in which social media allows people to share their opinions on controversial topics is by making it easier for them to talk about and be heard by others who might have the same views.
Our sense of community has evolved over the years. In previous generations, communities were built by individuals and by the members of specific groups based on their location. While the role of the community has been to maintain and support the group’s values and beliefs, and to provide mutual support, communities were often based on the idea of the group is a collective of people who had a common interest and shared values as well as provide a sense of belonging and identity. Social media has contributed to the move away from this notion of communities as a group of people with common interests and values and moved to a group of people with a common sense of identity and beliefs to an idea of a group of people who share common interests and values (Papadopoulos et al., 2011). Communities are becoming more complex and interwoven than ever before, partly due to social media and the technological advances the internet has made, and more people can gain access to online spaces. However, social media has also made it easier for people to find others with the same perspectives and beliefs as they do, creating a sense of community. These advancements have allowed people to develop and form these communities in new and different ways. Our increasing sense of belonging and identity is a result of this new level of connectedness, the role of communities today is to help people build and maintain their own sense of belonging and identity. While social media is helping communities be formed, it can also allow people to create communities that are not only based on their interests and values but also based on their differences of race, class, gender, and sexuality. An example of a community is people who are in the diaspora and how social media has significantly helped people living in the diaspora. A diaspora community is a community that has become established in another country and is looking to maintain a sense of belonging and identity with those that are in the same country, these communities are built by people who work and live abroad, and who are connected to each other, and who have the same cultural background as the people in their country of origin. The role of a diaspora community is to keep the diaspora together by providing a sense of belonging and identity, this sense of belonging and identity can be strengthened and maintained by the involvement of the members of the diaspora in these communities (Hossain & Veenstra, 2016). While before the internet people who lives in the diaspora struggled to keep that connection and find others like them Nowadays, with the internet and the ease of accessing information and making connections with others and creating new communities in online spaces and connect with people who live in the diaspora in ways that have never been seen before.
Social media has become a vital tool for communities, providing a platform for people to share, discuss and debate. Communities have always relied on some form of social media to bring people together, but the rise of social media as a platform has allowed for a greater variety of communities to be formed and accessed. In the past, the only way to access a community was to physically be in the same place as other members. Today, communities can be accessed through a variety of social media platforms, allowing for greater flexibility and accessibility. The ability to share experiences and connect with like-minded people all over the world has brought people together and has fostered the creation of communities that share similar interests and goals. Online communities are often not seen as the same as offline communities, and this can be seen by the lack of physical closeness. Online communities are more collaborative, and more open to the ideas and opinions of others and allow people to share more information and ideas with others. Online communities are also more open and flexible. There are many different online communities including forums, message boards, discussion groups, blogs, and social media, all of which allow people to become more connected, to expand their networks and communities as a result of their online community and their online identity (Hampton, 2015).
The internet has allowed for a greater sense of community to form and has introduced new ways of being connected and making a community. While social media is helping communities to be formed, it is also allowing people to create communities that are based on their differences, and their shared interests, values, and goals. This is helping people to maintain their sense of identity while living in a digital world. The internet has revolutionised the way we live our lives and is doing the same thing for the way we build our communities and make our social media profiles. Without communities, social media would be little more than a tool for the dissemination of information, and without social media, communities would be little more than email lists and websites. The role of communities and social media is to help people build and maintain their online identity and sense of belonging, and to help people from around the world to stay connected, regardless of where they may live or what language they speak. This is possible because of the internet, and the role of communities and social media play together in today’s online world.
Reference:
Hampton, K. N. (2016). Persistent and Pervasive Community: New Communication Technologies and the Future of Community. American Behavioral Scientist, 60(1), 101–124. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764215601714
Qin, Y., & Lowe, J. (2021). Is your online identity different from your offline identity? – A study on the college students’ online identities in China. Culture & Psychology, 27(1), 67–95. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354067X19851023
Papadopoulos, S., Kompatsiaris, Y., Vakali, A., & Spyridonos, P. (2012). Community detection in social media. Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 24(3), 515-554. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10618-011-0224-z
Hossain, M.D. & Veenstra, A.S., 2016. Social Capital and Relationship Maintenance: Uses of social media among the South Asian diaspora in the U.S. Asian Journal of Communication, 27(1), pp.1–17.
Hi Matthew! Great article and I couldn’t agree more with the message. I think these past few years have really highlighted just how impactful social media can be in creating online communities. I’ve recently completed a stint in self-isolation and there wasn’t a moment in which that I felt truly isolated. The online communities that I was a part of were ‘significant’ in retaining that connection and sense of community I had with people and the world. Now that we are entering a normalised period of post-COVID-19 living, do you think we will see continued growth in online community building or are people more likely to go back to physical networking?
Thank you for reading my essay, yes I completely agree with you about not feeling isolated anymore however thanks to social media, I also believe that people are used to being on social media more and more and people are finding it hard to have deep and proper conversations in person these days. I do believe more education and self reflection is needed about having a balance with social media as it can make people more extroverted it’s also making people introverts in the real world. Before covid I believe we are already transfering to a digital world, many people reply on apps and algorithms for dating and other things it’s sad to see people are replying on big tech companies to find them dates. Nevertheless these tech companies are also helping communities grow all over the world being apart of a diaspora community it would be much harder connecting with others without social media. Once the world has transition to an endemic phase and all countries are open physical networking will be popular again and people won’t be scared of covid.
Hey Matthew!
This is a really great paper you have written. I find it very interesting that there is a strong correlation between the definition of community and how social connections works cooperatively with it. It’s also great to see how the social media platform ‘Facebook’ is used as a tool to share, discuss, debate, and collaborate with other community members, especially in relation to diaspora community groups. My paper delves into this concept further if you were interested in reading it and sharing your thoughts. Are there any examples of specific community groups in Australia which have formed/expanded because of social media?
Yes, after my research I believe that the idea of communities is still relevant today, but social media is just allowing communities to grow in a digital space as well as allowing new communities to form that might not have been able before social media. Because of social media users are able to make closed groups, fakebook pages etc to form closed communities but they also allow outsiders to look into these groups and see if they want to join. If you want any more information let me know and we can discuss it.
Hi Matthew,
I really enjoyed reading this paper as it was a similar topic and stance to my conference paper; although we took different angles in our focus points.
I particuarly liked that you presented an opposing point, but then quickly rebutted it with the statement, “virtual world has allowed us to establish identities that we would not have if we were to be connected through the internet “. This is something that I have never given too much thought to, but upon reading I was able to reflect on how much of my identity (and those around me)is heavily influenced by social media. Thus causing me to realise that I may never have been able to discover some of my biggest passions and interest without the help of social media and different communities online.
Although I agree with your stance that platforms such as Facebook allow us to communicate with a broader range of people, I’d be interested to hear whether you think it may prevent us from connecting and creating close communities with those in close proximity to us?
Regards,
Ike
Hello Ike,
agree – SNS’s enable a connection with/within a community of like minded individuals that otherwise wouldn’t be possible. As Matthew mentions, Facebook has been a great tool for the diaspora and the elderly in my opinion. It enables connection with long distance friends and relations as well as those close by. On the down side, it can be quite addictive (especially with the addition of reels) and one ends up spending large amounts of time scrolling inanely rather than connecting – whether that be in person or online. Although I have read articles that mention that online interaction has not replaced in person interaction, I can see how it may have taken away a ‘market share’ of in person connection. There are people trying to become social influencers that are spending their time on the phone or trying to get that great pic instead of spending time with their family and really being present.
Hi Kyriaki, thank you for agreeing with me, yes while social media is allow us to do things we never have thought of people are not able to balance offline and online I take the train for work and I look at people and the younger people are on their phones using social media or watching a movie and I find it so interesting friends, partners won’t talk to each other and the older generation are reading books or just enjoying being in the present. I don’t believe that online interaction are completely replacing offline interactions, but people are more likely to engage with conversation online rather than offline especially with younger generations. My younger brother were iPad kids every meal they had to have an ipad in order to eat and now all they want to do is be online and game with their friends, they always play Fifa witch is a soccer game I asked him once why don’t you play with them at the park and he said no playing the game it better. It shows that some people are more comfortable with online interaction and I do see their social skills sometimes lack in public spaces as they are not confident to speak. To summarise social media has allowed us to communicate with each other even though we are studying the same unit at the same university we might never see each other but social media (this website) has allow us to connect and be apart of a bigger community.
So true Matthew. When my husband and I go out for dinner, we always see families that give the young children at the table a device to play with instead of taking part in the dinner conversation. This is very sad as conversation and interaction at the dinner table is how young children grow up with social skills that they can take into adulthood. My being stuck behind a device they are missing out on crucial community engagement. We personally never let our children bring a device to the table – we have 4 and they are now teenagers. The only time they can have a device at the table is if they are eating alone. Having said that, I dont think people are comfortable just sitting anymore. They must have a device to occupy themselves with. At the doctors waiting room, in a train, anywhere! People seem to be unable to just sit and be. How sad is that?
Yeah, I do understand that parents sometimes give up and allow kids to have the iPad as they will have a tantrum. Also, it’s sad that society has made it normal not to talk to others in public spaces, especially among younger generations because of crime, people wanting to avoid confronting situations, people’s intentions with others and most importantly sexual assault.
Hi Kyriaki,
thanks for responding, it was great to hear your opinion on this too! I too agree that there are both strong positives and negatives when it comes to social media!
Thanks Ikeoluwapo 🙂
Hi Ike, you have raised some interesting points. I will read your essay as we took different paths.
Our online and offline identities are always going to be different, in our offline identities we act different to our parents, friends and work colleagues. I don’t believe this is an issue but when we are online our online identities is a blended form of all our offline identities. most people have 1 Instagram account and all their social groups are in one location, this is called context collapse were social groups are mixed together and this concept is very common throughout social media platforms. and these days people are very scared to be themselves on social media as people are feared of being canceled because of the trend of cancel culture. But social media has endless possibilities to endrich people lives but awareness also needed as people are find it hard to have the right balance. I don’t believe that social media will prevent people from creating communities close to us as people are more likely to find these communities online than offline but it might just stay online and nothing more will happen from that community. For example, I am apart of a Curtin marketing group on Linkedin and Facebook as thats is something I’m studying, I always get invited to events and social events but I never commit to it. people are happy to join groups and communities online but when it transitions into the real world a lot of people don’t commit.
I hope this makes sense, I will definitely have a read of your work and see what point you are making.
Hi Matthew,
I 100% agree with this stance that our online and offline identities are different – and that this is okay! I think this is something that a lot of people fail to remember when critiquing social media platforms.
Good to see your paper here Matthew! You have given a really strong argument in favour of social media benefitting community. What do you see as possible counter-arguments to this?
Andrea
I believe that some counter arguments is the lack of physical cues which can result in miscommunication in online spaces, when people post online people will read it how it says in black and white and they will interpret it how they want or like but the person writing it might mean something else and this is becoming an issue in online spaces witch is leading cancel culture and online bullying. Another aspect is groups that promote hate violence and racism, these groups use social media to spread and influence others to join or commit hate based crimes. While I completely disagree with these groups and have not part of coming from a logical side these groups and organisations have just as much right to use social media like me and others just because their beliefs and values are different to mine. These groups exist is the real world but a more hidden but social media has the possibility to expose them and can help recruit and spread their message. Groups likes these lead to some of the negative aspects of social media.
Great points Matthew. Thanks for your reply!
Hi Matthew,
I really enjoyed reading your paper, and couldn’t agree more with your points. I too believe that online communities are greatly important, and that social media helps to reduce feelings of isolation and increase user’s sense of belonging. I also really loved your points about how online identities provide opportunities to showcase individuality, and how social media can be a positive outlet for people online. Online communities allow us to maintain relationships without needing to be in close proximity to one another – and can even expose us to those with similar values and ideologies that we would have never been aware of without the affordances of social networks. One example I can think of is my membership in the Perth foodies group. I love being a member of this group as they post all the best and hidden-gem restaurants, and I highly trust and value their recommendations. I actually expand on some of your points a little more in my paper if you’d be interested in reading it – https://networkconference.netstudies.org/2022/csm/148/the-pivotal-puzz…mass-e-marketing/. I discuss how authentic online communities are facilitated through the capabilities of web 2.0, but also through influencers, on social media. I also explain why recommendations from influencers and online users are generally more trusted than traditional advertising or in-person sales. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this – do you think that online relationships are more or less sincere than IRL ones?
Thank you! 😊
Brooke
Thank you for reading my paper Brooke I will definitely have a read of your paper, in regards to your question I don’t think that online relationships are less sincere than in real life however there is an important aspect missing when not meeting IRL. Online people are hiding behind a screen they can flip and change their personality to suit the conversation. In real life people, it is much harder to swap your personality with others and on a more superficial level, you can gauge their energy compared to being online where it would be much harder to gauge.
Hi Matthew, on reflection of our on and off periods of isolation over the past few years in Western Australia I think you bring up some really good points around online communities being just as important as communities in our real lives. Through my own experiences of using exercise platforms online during isolation, I would say that the people i’ve done workouts with over the internet have formed an integral part of my social community over the past few years. I’d point out though that for myself, when given the chance i’ve always reverted back to real life communities being my most important point of social contact when compared with online communities. Not sure if this is similar across the board, but id probably bet on the fact that it is.
Great paper.
Thank you for reading my paper Harrison, I agree with you, I prefer engaging in real-life communities with friends and family but online communities can also be just a good. I play cod online and have a small community of friends that I play with I know I will never meet them in real life as they are all over AUS but we do have a sense of community.