In the flow: Evolving from utility based social medium to community peer

Abstract

The word media evokes images of lively rooms packed with reporters frenetically covering events. Combined, the words social media today make one think of many people interacting online in a way that circumvents conventional media, but essentially accomplishes the same thing: making people rapidly aware of events, whether they are as global as an emerging international conflict or as local as the facial expression of one’s cat on a given morning. Scholars on computer-mediated communication and human computer interaction regularly use the term social media in referring to a group of Internet-based technologies that allows users to easily create, edit, evaluate, and/or link to content or to other creators of content c.f., Kaplan Haenlein, 2010. In practice, one tends to think of Facebook and Twitter, where the nexus of interaction is a micro-expression of an event or idea. We may think less often of sites such as Wikipedia or LinkedIn, where the nexus of interaction is the more persistent longitudinal development of an article or professional profile, respectively.