There is no escape from the span and grip of social media in our modern world. Facebook, mySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Skype, and Wikipedia are all pioneers in establishing social media as a dominant cultural force in society. With the growing use of social media has come a revolution in the way society interacts, communicates, and collaborates with each other. The collective public have come to embrace the shared experiences, mutual exchanges, and powerful discourse inherent of social media. With the advancement of technology and communication, social media has become a powerful cultural entity that is reshaping society through the means of revolutionizing how individuals share information, updates, ideas, and content with each other on a global scale.
Changing of the Times
The internet was the start of a global revolution where one could access information at the click of the mouse. Prior to this technological advancement, the public would get their information from conventional sources such as the newspaper, television, and word-of-mouth, which moved at a comparatively slow pace. The once traditional role of the media is changing with the ubiquitous nature of data transmission technology. Thus, social media has allowed for an unprecedented amount of reach and span within society.
Privacy Please
Social network/media organizations have deeply penetrated users lives and as a pervasive technology have tend to become invisible once they are widely adopted, and thus taken for granted. Pervasive technology often leads to unintended consequences, such as threats to privacy and changes in the relationship between public and private sphere. The breach in social networks is systematically built upon the voluntary disclosure of private information to a virtually unlimited audience, and online networks have been characterized as significant risk to communities where personal information becomes social capital that is traded and exchanged on a daily basis both within social groups and also on a commercial level in ad sales operations. Social media sites provide an ideal, data-rich environment for marketing and advertising targeting, particularly when user profiles are combined with functions that track user behavior. Users are forgoing their privacy in both the online and offline worlds. Online privacy is an important issue that many people have at least some awareness of. However, many may not take an active part in maintaining their online privacy due to ignorance of how to adjust setting for privacy, or they may believe that problems that come from privacy violations can only happen to others. Society must take into account the unique changes presented with ubiquitous and pervasive technologies that have formed the new realms of social interaction, which have created an inherent rupture in our privacy in all aspects of our lives both online and offline.
Psychological Dimensions
Overall, social media forces us to modify habits and to think consciously about the practical and constitutional obligations, which cause a transformation from being outside observers/followers to instead being the influential agenda setters of current affairs. Instead of relying on a few nodes of information, there are rather countless nodes in our social networks, which help us to humanize information, personalize content, and create a critical public sphere. The appeal to reason and individuality inherent in social media makes arbitrary and distant issues of convention into customized personal aspects of life, in which one can claim ownership. In conventional forms of media the individual is looked upon as a member of the passive audience with no power to shape issues. Though now with social media, individuals are more coherent and focused on the issues before them because they are given the privilege of shaping and framing. On an internal level, these individual‘s presume that their input, judgment, and feelings are directly relevant and appreciated in the new imagined sphere of influence. Social media enables individual‘s to be the eye of the beholder and to analyze and interpret issues without foreign involvement or persuasion as in conventional forms of traditional media. Instead of being in the 3rd person narrative, individuals who utilize social media are transported into the 2nd degree and in doing so this media provides users with the illusion of individual choice and freedom. Instead of the news becoming a means and tool for the state in carrying their advertising and propaganda, a new public and egalitarian sphere has been manifested from social media. The self-constructed social media sphere has become a messenger that shapes and frames news in society. It was developed as an alternative to the backlash of official channels that may have been communicating incorrect information via the state, government, and other hierarchal powers.
In Closing
The evolution of our modern culture continues every day, and the advancements made in social media are a testament to the great improvements society has been able to accomplish. The speed, accuracy, and transparency of shared experiences and mutual exchanges are essential factors in the way that social media is affecting all facets of society, which has been embraced by the collective public. Thus, the roles of traditional and new media are changing, and social networking tools allow collaboration as never seen before. However, there is a market opportunity and need for a social media presence that gives the user control of their data, information, content, and most of all self discretion to determine who has access to their content under a specific set of opt-in terms/conditions. Therefore, MyCube is that solution which will give the public an unprecedented sense of engagement in a new environment for social discourse with an unabridged sense of privacy.
