The Impacts of Social Media - Essay Example

The Impact of Globally Accepted Social Media on both Personal and Cultural Values: is it a threat to the preservation of minor languages and cultures? Name Institution Course Tutor Date Mankind has made rampant development in the 20th century. Science and technology are two key contributors of this astonishing transformation of the world.it has also redefined the assumptions of human life and the most important innovation in this regard are globalization and social media. Social media has become vital component of our daily lives in this globalized society. It is an important source of getting up to date information. Similarly, it is also used for the purpose of interacting, communicating, exchanging messages, and sharing knowledge among the people of different culture and backgrounds. Social media has dominating impacts on the culture as it represents total pattern of human behavior through which a person can embodied these learned patterns of behavior, values and belief in their daily routines[How00]. In spite of various advantages social media has also many social and cultural implications that can affect our society and its people in different ways. As, it creates differences of culture, language, thoughts, perspective and opinions. Social media is also responsible in creating intra and inter cultural conflicts. Moreover it can alter cultural identities and can also construct basis for developing second identities. Therefore, this essay has been designed to clear the understanding of social media and its impact on both cultural and personal values. This paper will also elaborate the impacts of social media on minor language. In this way, this paper will give detailed understanding of globalization and its influences on various culture, beliefs, values and ideas, and language of the people of the different societies and background. Globalization is a real and tangible phenomena as it has introduced significant shift in the geography of social relations and with the help of this phenomena now social processes can operate predominating on global scale. Likewise it is a complex developing process that promotes interaction between societies, cultures, institutions, and individuals worldwide[Glo99]. The significant impacts of globalization are visible everywhere and on every field of the world. Culture, economy and politics are some elements that are effected by the global flow of information because it is helping in creating homogenous culture throughout the globe. Similarly, it is a social phenomenon that promotes transnational circulation of ideas, language and popular culture as it is eliminating the differences of boundaries and constructing global interconnections. The trends of globalization have changed human life and its various aspects. Like, social and cultural perceptions have also changed around the globe .similarly it has also redefined various concepts like global market, cultural identity, intercultural interaction, intra-cultural conflicts and many others[Pie09]. In addition, the concept of globalization is accelerating throughout the world with the help of social media. World has become interactive field where people from different countries can communicate with one another anytime from anywhere. In this way time and distances have shrunk and compressed [Che10].The number of internet user is increasing and social media is becoming most popular communication medium day by day. Communication through social media helps in making interactive and interesting dialogues that are useful in understanding point of view of different people from different communities. Furthermore, social media is a kind of platform through which people can share their ideas and opinion to the public and can also become the part of conversations and dialogues. Like, Georgetown University has defined social media as a mean of communication where all people are act as a publisher and all are critics[Geo101].Furthermore, social media can be used for different purpose and reasons. The most important purpose is to create sense of belongingness and social relations with the people of common interest. Virtual communities are formed online for the purpose of sharing knowledge and idea of different things that is helpful in understanding different perspectives of different communities of the world. Moreover, globally accepted social media is also used for the purpose of socialization because it allows people to participate in conversation without being face to face with one another. Undoubtedly globalization and social media have brought various advantages and opportunities for people of the world but at the same time they come with substantial social cost. As social media eliminate the boundaries and connects people of different backgrounds but at the same time cultural differences also influence the communication process. These cultural differences effect communication, behavior and values especially cultural and personal values. The differences in the way when people identifies each other on the basis of different culture, national identity and gender but they managed their communicative behavior with in social networking sites[Ros10].Not only cultural differences emerge but this globally accepted social media is also responsible in creating the phenomena that can rebuild the new life experience for human being. New transformations has appeared in spending and purchasing activities of the people. These changes are also becoming the part of our cultural patterns, lifestyle, values and beliefs because these changes have significant effects on the human society[Cas00]. In addition social media has created many challenges for human society. It creates difficulties for people in understanding and assimilating different cultures at one time. The newly formed culture is totally different from traditional culture. This innovative culture has its own ways of living in the society that is the reason a gap has appeared in new and traditional culture. When social media was not introduced in the world both traditional and innovative culture were going side by side because innovations were not as speedy as they are now in this globalized world. But after the advent of social media it started effected on the traditional culture of the society the effects of social media are visibly clear and have sound impact on traditional values of the culture. Traditional personal and cultural values have failed in assimilating into the new culture of this globalized world. Such a gap between traditional and new values is known as cultural gap[Bag11].Cultural gap and cultural lag is appearing in the society that has made simple things into complex. People have failed to make productive and interactive communication even in the same cultures. This also leads communication gap between the groups of the same culture and ethnic and minorities groups are ignored totally. Social media also promotes fragmented nature of the society that is the reason now people switch to traditional ways of communication to new forms of communications. Now people use new cultural maps, languages, grammar and logics that lead the loss of traditional ways of communication. This new form of communication demands restructuring and rearrangement of traditional values for the sake of learning new modern cultural patterns of the virtual community. Social media is responsible in fostering new cultural values and these new cultural values are wholly responsible in creating uncertainties and ambiguities related to values now reached its highest point. It is a biggest threat to cultural identity. With the growing popularity and users of social media, users of these sites have bought with them the development in identity construction in the form of creating new avatar that is called as “Second self”. In this way self-identities and traditional culture of the society have lost because people are being faced immense pressure by their virtual community members to adopt changes and innovations. Similarly, Social media allows its users to constructing images of their idealized selves and then transmit this second self to the rest of the world in this way user of the social networking sites forget their real cultural values and identity and follow what is popular among its peers of the virtual community[Wan00]. Furthermore social media has also challenged the traditional cultural and social identities of the societies. Generally, the roots of cultural identities of the society is getting weaker day by day from the impacts of social media and the pressure of virtual community members. The new and modern cultural identity with modern values lack in the attributes of traditional culture because they are of temporarily nature and not stable like traditional values. Moreover, social networking sites of social media like Myspace, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the iPhone give opportunity to the people of different and same culture to interact in the same way and in this way anew cyber family is created by peers of different communities. This cyber family has its own values and cultural traits. They follow the popular culture and culture of their peer’s choice. The people of cyber family reveal too much personal information of their personal lives. They openly criticize their family members, employees, friends and relatives on the social networking sites this causes problems in establishing and maintaining good human relationships intra-culturally and inter-culturally[Qia07].This computer mediated communication is also responsible in promoting and developing virtual cosmopolitan and virtual third cultures. This virtual third culture also creates a space for new hybrid culture that brings new personal and cultural values in the societies[McE11]. Moreover, social media is a powerful tool which is used to construct image of our own culture.it also helps in ascertaining dissimilarities because it gives orientation of other cultures and their values that can influence personal values of the individuals. For instance a person who is from any developing country and he don’t know about the human rights and true democratic values but with the help of social media he can understand what human rights and true democratic values are. In this way he get new opinion from the social media that he can positively or negatively inculcate in his personal values. Likewise social media is not less than a threat for cultural imperialism it has significant impact on the values of the society. Social media also working as source of commercialization as multinational companies use it as a marketing source. Commercialization through social media focus consumption and the individual right to choose the product. This emphasis of social media strengthens the materialistic values, weakening sympathetic feeling towards other. Moreover it also diminishes the spirit of community and sense of belongingness from the society. Also strengthening the gap of poor and rich class and weaken the communal ties because it promotes extreme individualism[Edw97]. Furthermore, through social media values and belief of dominate culture are superimposed this leads to the erosion of local culture and indigenous values of the society. The culture of this globalized world is hybrid culture because it is complex, varied and difficult to understand incorporated into the day to day life. Virtual family cyber family helps in selecting values, products and new cultural artifacts for the day to day life. The opinion of selecting and making preferences is totally based on the popular choice rather the choice of the family or culture. Personal values are based on the opinions of the close members of the social networking site and cultural values are dependent on the collective popular choice of social media friends. In addition, not only values, beliefs and culture are affecting from the social media and globalization but language, which is considered as important cultural factor is also being effected by the process of globalization and social media. The main consequence of social media on communication and language of the society is sentences and phrases have become very shorter. The grammar and syntax of the sentences have altered. Now in the conversation user are using noun as a verb and verb as a noun. For instance now people usually say “I will Facebook her” rather “I will sent her a message” that have completely altered the syntax of English language. Similarly people use to say “I googled some information” rather “I use google to search an information” in this perception and way of thinking has changed with the advent of social media. Likewise user also use short forms and spellings of different words that creates problem in understanding the real word and its meaning for instance short slangs that are even not present in the dictionary are also used by virtual community users. And usage of these short and new slangs is considered as a fashion or trend among the modern members of the virtual communities. Moreover in our fast paced society, the instant and hasty decisions of sharing personal information, thoughts and feeling on blogs and social networking sites have also affected our behavior in actual speech. On social networking like twitter, a person can tweet of 140 words limit. So in this way social media sets limit for user to be concise and reflective within limited number of letters. Thus, it can generate misunderstandings and misrepresentation of feeling and thoughts on social networking site which also leads communication gap among members of the society[Nik11]. Moreover, the social media has also transformed English language words in short forms and abbreviation. E-mail is used as electronic mail, E-reader is used instead of electronic reader many other such kind of short abbreviation are used by virtual communities on social media that severely hit the pillars of the language of the society because the true sense and meaning of the word has changed into ambiguous and confusing. Likewise many new acronyms have been introduced in the social media for the purpose of communication like “Omg” and “Lol” are mostly used that have seen in many messages and texts on the social networking sites. These abbreviation are made by users of social media for saving their time in typing and making ling conversations. Similarly, new emoticons and writing style are also used being introduced that also represents the real threat to non-material culture of the society.in real sense these acronyms, abbreviation and emoticons are not saving time of the user but it is deteriorating the language of the society. That is the reason social media is a threat to preservation language of the culture. Moreover English is widely acceptable language and medium of communication on social networking sites. Many indigenous languages are facing biggest threat because English is a popular choice as language of communication among virtual communities people of different countries are busy in learning international language and ignoring their native languages that shows that local languages are facing threat of erosion. Moreover when a person fails in understanding or learning a language of dominate culture, it can also create communication gap and misunderstanding between the different communities and members of the virtual family[Nik11]. To conclude this, it can be deduced that globalization has many advantages as well as disadvantages. Sometimes people overestimated globalization and totally ignore the negative impacts of the globalization. Social media is a powerful medium of globalization which is used to exchange information and opinions across the globe. Social media is a valuable source of presenting information and thoughts on the international platform where everyone is critic or a publisher .In spite of several valuable advantages of social media it has many disadvantages. It can affect the local culture, values, beliefs and language of the society.it can alter the cultural identity of the person. Moreover it can also change the cultural and personal values. As social media and their opinions are very influential and they can easily transformed the identities and thoughts. Similarly not only values and thoughts are altering but social media is also a clear challenge to our local and indigenous language as well. It is also deteriorating syntax and grammar of international language but also creating a fashion and trend of avoiding minor and following popular language. References How00: , (Mehlinger, 2000), Glo99: , (Tomlinson, 1999), Pie09: , (Pieterse, 2009), Che10: , (Zhang, 2010), Geo101: , (Georgetown, 2010), Ros10: , (Rosen, 2010), Cas00: , (Castells, 2000), Bag11: , (Bagdasaryn, 2011), Wan00: , (Wang, 2000), Qia07: , (Scott, 2007), McE11: , (Sobre-Denton, 2011), Edw97: , (Edward Herrmann, 1997), Nik11: , (Coupland, 2011), Read More