Blog 1- Times are Changing

As I continue to read through the articles assigned for class, my thoughts continuously become distracted on how researchers can maintain an unbiased outlook when interviewing individuals (boyd). How can they maintain impassiveness when faced with gut wrenching data? As I look back on how social media has evolved over the years I notice a couple things: 1.) You can connect with anyone, anywhere, and 2.) What you thought would be forgotten never is.

While the term social media is still finding its rightful meaning in society, I have decided to refer to it as all media outlets used consistently for social, business/research, and political purposes. I know this seems like a vague definition, but truthfully, social media encompasses such a wide range of things- apps, communication tools, entertainment, peer acceptance, etc. Plus, the ruling is still out for a widely accepted definition by researchers so I might as well coin this definition while I can.

I first remember social media taking hold of my life when I was in middle school with AOL Instant Messenger, aka AIM (RIP 2017!). I remember rushing home to talk to specific (boyd & Ellison) friends about the day’s gossip, matching outfits we would wear the next day and how hard practice was that evening. The idea of communicating with people outside of my immediate bubble was unfathomed, partly because I was a child but also because no one had known where social media would lead. As time passed social media became the base for spreading ideas and thoughts to other people, specifically to those who were not an immediate connection. When I graduated high school, Facebook was just taking off and the thought of being able to communicate with my friends on a new social media platform was exciting, even more so that you could tag friends on comments which gave the ability to speak to multiple people. From this point on I believe we started to Context Collapse (Davis & Jurgeson), whereas both collusions and collisions context took off. The growth of collusions in social media has been beneficial when it comes to businesses. Businesses, individual entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 companies, are able to reach an unlimited and unfathomable number of potential clients. On the other hand, negative context collisions have become more commonplace. I theorize that this is due to people, specifically adolescents, not being able to compartmentalize different emotions, feelings and viewpoints. Society has become a one size fits all environment, where if one doesn’t like what someone else says it is normal to unfriend, unfollow, not like, etc. In addition, people are able to hide behind their screens when saying or acting inappropriately, which only gives more certainty to those individuals.

After looking back on how my social media style has evolved over time it became apparent that I did not have the same accessibility to the outside world as children do today. My idea of breaking the rules was to go on my computer after bedtime to chat on AIM, whereas today it can reach as far as inappropriate pictures to obtain fame (boyd). The idea of anyone having inappropriate pictures online, where nothing is ever fully deleted, is terrifying. No matter the reasons behind these posts, it doesn’t take away that they will follow these individuals forever.

What we do know is that time will continue to pass and new social media forums will come into the spotlight, or maybe Facebook will be the leader forever (Stoychef et al). These constant and consistent changes in our society it will continue to make it hard to learn from and analyze data, we will never be up to date with what’s “in.” I think that analyzing the trends social media has taken over the past 20 years could be a start to possibly predicting what will happen in the future. On the other hand, there is no way I could have envisioned being able to learn about social media strategic communication when I was in middle school, what makes us think we will be able to foresee what the next 15 years will hold?