8.

INTERNET & SOCIAL MEDIA

Internet is a global collection of interconnected networks of computers. It is made up of
millions of computers linked together around the world in such a way that information can
be sent from any computer to any other 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. These computers can
be in homes, schools, universities, government departments, or businesses small and large.

The Internet is often described as “a network of networks” because all the smaller networks
of organisations are linked together into one giant network called the Internet. The Internet
has revolutionised our society, our economy and our technological systems. Over the past
century, important technological developments have created a global environment that is
drawing the people of the world closer and closer together. The Internet is at once a
worldwide broadcasting capability, a mechanism for information dissemination, and a
medium for collaboration and interaction between individuals and their computers without
regard for geographic location.

The Internet is unique among the mass media in allowing interpersonal communication
through e-mail and instant messaging; group communication through listservs, newsgroups,
and discussion boards; and mass communication through the World Wide Web.

The origin of Internet is traced to ARPANET, which was sponsored by the United States
Department of Defence Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA). The Department of
defence, initially in 1969, started with four computers and gradually grew in size with 213
computer connections by 1981. By 1996, it came to have an estimated 70 million users
connected to it.

The World Wide Web was developed in 1989 by British physicist Tim Berners-Lee while he
was working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland. His goal was
to produce a decentralized system for creating and sharing documents anywhere in the world.
The Web has three major components: the uniform resource locator (URL), the hypertext
transfer protocol (http), and the hypertext markup language (HTML). Berners-Lee published
the code for the World Wide Web on the Internet in 1991 for anyone in the world to use at
no cost.

INTERNET AND NEW MEDIA

New media most commonly refers to content available on-demand through the Internet,
accessible on any digital device, usually containing interactive user feedback and creative
participation. Common examples of new media include websites such as online newspapers,
blogs, or wikis, video games, and social media. It can be anything from newspaper articles and
blogs to music and podcasts – that are delivered digitally. From a website or email to mobile
phones and streaming apps, any internet-related form of communication can be considered
new media.

A defining characteristic of new media is dialogue. New Media transmit content through
connection and conversation. It enables people around the world to share, comment on, and
discuss a wide variety of topics. Unlike any of past technologies, New Media is grounded on
an interactive community.

Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, is an example, combining Internet accessible digital text,

images and video with web-links, creative participation of contributors, interactive feedback
of users and formation of a participant community of editors and donors for the benefit of
non-community readers. Facebook is an example of the social media model, in which most
users are also participants.

IMPACT OF INTERNET

It offers a variety of services which are used to create, browse, access, search, view and
communicate information on a diverse set of topics ranging from the results of scientific
experiments to discussions of recreational activities. The sources of information available on
the Internet are electronic journals, pre-prints, technical reports, e-mail based information
services, scientific data sets, etc. all these sources constitute a vast information of resources.
The users of Internet can utilize it.

The Internet serves many functions - as virtual community, electronic marketplace, and
information source, employment portal for jobseekers, research centre, discussion forum,
and entertainment centre, among others. Internet brings together buyers and sellers and
facilitates the flow of information, making it a key driver of trade.

Gradually, Internet has become a necessity of life that it is difficult to imagine life without it.
Internet is affecting every sphere of our life, be it government, business, education,
agriculture, legal practice, entertainment, job opportunity, defence etc. Internet has become
an indispensable and multipurpose tool. Internet has shaken up the world. They have made
us dependent upon them. We expect them to be present at every place: be it the reservation
on online, searching jobs on online. One needs the basic computer skills to use Internet.
Hence, we can say that Internet literacy is the need of today and voice of tomorrow to survive
in the fast-changing world.

INTERNET AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media platforms allow users to have conversations, share information and create web
content. There are many forms of social media, including blogs, micro-blogs, wikis, social
networking sites, photo-sharing sites, instant messaging, video-sharing sites, podcasts,
widgets, virtual worlds, and more.
Billions of people around the world use social media to share information and make
connections. On a personal level, social media allows you to communicate with friends and
family, learn new things, develop your interests, and be entertained. On a professional level,
you can use social media to broaden your knowledge in a particular field and build your
professional network by connecting with other professionals in your industry. At the company
level, social media allows you to have a conversation with your audience, gain customer
feedback, and elevate your brand.

There are end number of social media platforms and some common characteristics too all
these are:

 Social media are interactive Web 2.0 based internet applications.

 User-generated content such as text posts or comments, digital photos or videos, and
data generated through all online interactions, is the lifeblood of social media.
 Users create service-specific profiles for the website or app that are designed and
maintained by the social media organization.
 Social media facilitate the development of online social networks by connecting a
user's profile with those of other individuals or groups.

WEB 2.0

Second generation of the World Wide Web, especially the movement away from static web
pages to dynamic and shareable content and social networking. These are web applications
that facilitate interactive information sharing, user-centred design, and collaboration on the
World Wide Web.

Research shows that the audience spends 22% of their time on social networks, thus proving
how popular social media platforms have become. This increase is because of the widespread
daily use of smartphones. Social media are used to document memories, learn about and
explore things, advertise oneself and form friendships as well as the growth of ideas from the
creation of blogs, podcasts, videos, and gaming sites. Networked individuals create, edit, and
manage content in collaboration with other networked individuals. This way they contribute
to expanding knowledge.

Social media may take the form of a variety of tech-enabled activities. These activities include
photo sharing, blogging, social gaming, social networks, video sharing, business networks,
virtual worlds, reviews and much more. Even governments and politicians utilize social media
to engage with constituents and voters.

Social media originated as a way to interact with friends and family but was later adopted by
businesses which wanted to take advantage of a popular new communication method to
reach out to customers. Globally, there are more than 3 billion social media users.
IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA

1. The Impact of Social Media on Politics

It helps in rallying for good causes, awareness, social change, political awareness. In
comparison to other media, social media’s influence in political campaigns has
increased tremendously. Social networks play an increasingly important role in
electoral politics.
The New York Times reports that “The election of Donald J. Trump is perhaps the
starkest illustration yet that across the planet, social networks are helping to
fundamentally rewire human society.” Because social media allows people to
communicate with one another more freely, they are helping to create surprisingly
influential social organizations among once-marginalized groups.

2. The Impact of Social Media on Society

Almost a quarter of the world’s population is now on Facebook. Because social
networks feed off interactions among people, they become more powerful as they
grow.

Thanks to the internet, each person with marginal views can see that he’s not alone.
The possibility to have a discourse is there in social media and when these people find
one another via social media, they can do things — create memes, publications and
entire online worlds that bolster their worldview, and then break into the mainstream.

Without social media, social, ethical, environmental and political ills would have
minimal visibility. Increased visibility of issues has shifted the balance of power from
the hands of a few to the masses. Social media is also in the other hand slowly killing
real activism and replacing it with ‘slacktivism’.
While social media activism brings an increased awareness about societal issues,
questions remain as to whether this awareness is translating into real change.
Some argue that social sharing has encouraged people to use computers and mobile
phones to express their concerns on social issues without actually having to engage
actively with campaigns in real life. Their support is limited to pressing the ‘Like’
button or sharing content.

3. The Impact of Social Media on Commerce

The rise of social media means it’s unusual to find an organization that does not reach
its customers and prospects through one social media platform or another. Companies
see the importance of using social media to connect with customers and build
revenue. Businesses have realized they can use social media to generate insights,
stimulate demand, and create targeted product offerings.
It also showed a new cheap and efficient way of marketing of marketing.
SOCIAL MEDIA A BLESSING

 Rallying for good causes, awareness, social change, political awareness.

 Advantage on marketing for businesses.
 Meeting like-minded people, comradery.
 Low cost communication, low cost entertainment.

CONCENRS OVER SOCIAL MEDIA IMPACT

 Content through algorithm

 Lack of Social media literacy
 Political manipulation- The 2016 American presidential election has well-documented
accounts of the impact of the ability to spread false information through the platform.
Such a phenomenon leverages the power of social media, allowing anyone to reach
an audience of millions with content that lacks oversight or fact-checking. When a
story that tied Hillary Clinton to a pedophilia and human trafficking ring was widely
shared on Facebook. It turned out that this originated with a single unsubstantiated
post on a conspiracy forum and was then reposted on thousands of other websites.
 Fake news - Social media has made it very easy to spread information quickly. Because
Facebook and Twitter timelines move so quickly, viewers don’t often verify what
they’ve seen. A great deal of content is also spread through images and memes, which
may or may not be based on valid information. Of course, many memes are created
to be funny, cute or outrageous. Others, however, are intended to influence our
thinking. Even links to real articles can be misleading. It’s safe to say that most people
who see a headline and link never read the whole article.
Huffington Post recently published an interesting experiment that highlights this
problem. In the article Bernie Sanders Could Replace President Trump with Little-
Known Loophole, Matt Masur illustrated the problem of people sharing content that
they didn’t bother to verify or, in many cases, even read. In the second paragraph,
Masur reveals that the claim of the headline is false. Thousands of people, however,
shared the article on social media without reading that far.
 Lack of Privacy - Stalking, identity theft, personal attacks, and misuse of information
are some of the threats faced by the users of social media. Most of the time, the users
themselves are to blame as they end up sharing content that should not be in the
public eye. The confusion arises from a lack of understanding of how the private and
public elements of an online profile actually work. Unfortunately, by the time private
content is deleted, it’s usually too late and can cause problems in people’s personal
and professional lives.
 Cyberbullying
Data mining is a process used by companies to turn raw data into useful information. By using
software to look for patterns in large batches of data, businesses can learn more about their
customers to develop more effective marketing strategies, increase sales and decrease costs,
but this is also used for political advantage

https://www.simplilearn.com/real-impact-social-media-article

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-could-replace-president-trump-with-
little_b_5829f25fe4b02b1f5257a6b7

https://medium.com/@joedarcy9/journalism-2-0-assessing-how-the-internet-has-changed-journalism-
e1b6a1cb1516

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/feb/20/what-effect-internet-on-journalism