I found a quite interesting critique on social media on YouTube.
The social media reality show
According to the speaker, social media functions more like a reality show than a real communicating tool such as email, telephone etc. He stresses the dramatic feature of the posts on facebook by points out that it carries too much drama of people’s life or the presentation of their life.
Although I disagree with the speaker on the dichotomy of communication and entertainment (I believe that entertainment is one of the functions and manifestations of communication), I am in line with the him on that to seek/watch/comment on a drama is one main purpose of people who are using social media. And therefore, one of the important features of social media contents is dramatic.
Originally, drama is the specific mode of fiction performed in the theater. Some characteristics worth mentioning here: (1) performed by a few actors and watched by many times more audiences; (2) the situation or events acted out have dramatic progression, emotional impacts, strange or unusual features; (3) it is in essence entertaining for both actors and audiences. Social media shares many common grounds with drama.
First, Forrester’s North American Social Media Technographics Online Survey (as cited by Li & Bernoff, 2008) categorizes U.S. online adult population into six overlapping but featured groups: creators (i.e., people initiate online content), critics (i.e., people react to online content), collectors (e.g., people doing social bookmarking), joiners (e.g., blog followers, facebook joiners), spectators (i.e., people surfing online without react to the content), and inactives (i.e., nonparticipants). If we divided them more generally into actor and audiences, we can see that only 18% of them are actors (the percentage of creators) compare 72% audiences. What’s more, among nearly half of the population are spectators (48%)—the inactive audiences. The audiences predominate in the social media as well as in drama.
Second, the speaker gives an example of a tweet he chose randomly from his list: “it looks that I wet myself again, someday this house will be avoid a massive amount of dishes, I look forward to that day.” The speaker points out its dramatic element, “massive dirty dishes,” “getting wet through,” which are emotionally entertaining and dramatically unusual. We can imagine that the person post that tweet more for fun or joking rather than serious complaining, it is entertaining himself. Similarly, the speaker through reading the tweet is also entertained and even wants to know more.
A detail is quite interesting, as a “creator,” the speaker post his video on YouTube, and under the video, one of the comment from a “critics” writes “Looks like you need another frame for your second photo, there...” which has nothing to do with the speaker’s talking but joking about his photo frame on the background. Isn’t it another entertaining drama?
5 comments:
It is a good point from the video that social media is a big reality show. Maybe not long from now, we will be used to all the dramas, and even feel tired of getting huge loads of useless information (like someone's relationship status is changed on facebook).
Good point. Perhaps that is why we all like social media (because it draws attention to ourselves)?
Yes, pay attention to life of our own as well as others. Drama looks unreal, but it makes our life feeling real.
Goffman has something to say on this drama issue, what do you think?
"I am suggesting that often what talkers undertake to do is not to provide information to a recipient but to present dramas to an audience. Indeed, it seems that we spend most of our time not engaged in giving information but in giving shows. . . . The parallel between stage and conversation is much, much deeper than that. The point is that ordinarily when an individual says something, he is not saying it as a bold statement of fact on his own behalf. He is recounting. He is running through a strip of already determined events for the engagement of his listeners."
Yes, good point, the presentation of self is more salient in the social media environment!
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