Here Are Top 10 Changes that Social Media has brought

10. Our vocabulary

A decade and a half back if you would have asked someone that did he like your picture or if you would have said that you have shared an article, and then it would have had a completely different meaning than what it has in the present times of the social media. If you tell your 11 year old son that his uncle has posted something for him, then don’t be shocked to find him checking his facebook account. Because words like “post”, “share”, “comment”, “poke”, “tag” and “like” are the quintessential nouns of the social media, and they have a somewhat different meanings there than what they have in a real world (if there still some such pace is left).And you might find yourself scratching your head when you come across terms like hash tag, retweet, selfie and many more if you have newly made an account on facebook or twitter. But I am very sure that your kids do know the meaning very well.

9. Social mindset.

The way our society influences our do’s and don’ts; in the same way social media has a radical impact on the minds of its users. Faith in Institutions like religion or atheism, capitalism or socialism or any other stream of “ism” is subjected to your reasoning and the level of inquisitiveness that your mind comprises of, and there are various religious and anti religious pages and communities on social media that project their views, logics and arguments to earn more believers. You see people debating and putting their point of views that are many a times convincing enough to sway your neutral mindset in any of the extremes. Your mind is 24 x 7 available to the social media and vice versa and you may or may not be what you eat, but you definitely are what you see and listen

8. Political campaigning

Before the times when social media took over the mankind, politicians used to rely exclusively on rallies, visits to the constituencies and door to door visits in a particular area in order to strengthen their political campaign and consequently their chances to come into power. Well, this method has definitely not been done away with but a considerable addition in these methods has taken place for sure. Now a specific wing of the campaigning department takes care of their leader’s promotion via the social media. Whole troop of a certain internet army numb their thumbs to solidify their political party’s reach among the masses. The methods include posting pictures, videos, debates and elaborating their manifestoes on facebook, twitter and you tube with the target voters obviously being the young voters up to the age group of 30. Social media has certainly proved its phenomenal capabilities to the people in parliament as well and political campaigning on the platform of social media has certainly paid off well.

7. ways of Arguments and debate.

What used to be a feature of some coffee shop, tea stall or saloon has now found its platform in the form of social media. I am talking about the way people used to argue and debate on any given social or political issue and yes, social media has undeniably changed it. Be it some post movie discussion or a cricket match assessment, the comment section of pages and the timeline of the account holders are full of arguments of all sorts. Earlier, people used to provide logics and wit, and the debate was based upon thesis and anti thesis, now they have been replaced by Wikipedia links, picture comments and video links. Along with the method, the quality of argumentative discourse has also been affected, sadly, in a negative way

6. Value of communication

Back in the days when letters were the common mean of communications and call rates were high, people use to communicate at very long intervals and their concerns behind “how are you” used to be genuine. But today It’s all a matter of a click and you shall be sending a ‘hi’ with an unusual number of i’s to some person. But this ease of accessibility doesn’t increase the contents to communicate about. I certainly don’t say that it’s a bad thing that we get to communicate more often; I just want to bring in notice that how communication’s exclusivity has got faded away. Social media has changed the value of communication.

5. Source of humor and taste

You might choose to differ, but the truth is that the latest comment you made on some YouTube video or a picture on Facebook page; draws its inspiration from someone else’s comment on YouTube or some meme on facebook. It is a truth that for many of the users of social networking sites the social media defines style and humor. Communicating with intentionally mis-spelt words to mock the grammar-particular people was one of the trends that were considered humorous. Memes are used by administrators of every facebook page to post something funny, and all these things become a part of your humor. Also, Reviews are frequently shared on these sites regarding art and entertainment and it quite often establishes a concept that a certain movie is “hot” and a certain album is “uncool”.

4. Methods of expression.

Media has always been a link between the lips of the speaker and the ears of the listeners. It has been the voice of the support, protest or any other sentiment of the masses. And today, tweet by any person with something remarkable to say shall have the same effect; what his speech on any public forum would have had. A satirical video on you tube would get more attention and solution of purpose than any street play. The core idea being, that the reach and potential to attract; that the social media has, is simply unmatched and has, to some extent , challenged television media in this context as well. In the very infamous and ill fated Delhi gang rape case the whole nation got united to protest against it in their own ways, while the facebook users changed their profile pictures to a black circular blot to show their protest. It surely got the print media’s attention and the authority’s attention as well

3. Product and self promotion.

As I wrote earlier, the social media is just a touch or a click away from a huge chunk of its users, which means that we are very likely to see what they would make us see, and you would agree that you might hate what they show or maybe love it but you surely can’t ignore it, and this is the core concept behind advertising. They would show their product at so many places and in so many ways that it would secure a place in your mind. With the humungous increment in the users of social media, advertising agencies took upon to the social media to advertise their products. Now, we hear about a product on some social networking or a micro blogging site before we see it on television or newspaper. In a same way artists in the field of music, stand up comedy, and writing promote themselves rampantly through the social media

2. Limitations of connectivity

We are living in an age where we are just seconds away from communicating with our friends, acquaintances and even strangers. We can tell a whole lot of people in our friend list that where we are, what are we doing and how are we feeling, all in a single status update. We can share our likes and interests. We can share our pictures and videos. We can communicate face to face separated by just a glass screen. We can share and seek almost each and every kind of information in each and every form, thanks to social media. A noteworthy breakthrough being our ability to connect with celebrities and political leaders in the most convenient manner possible for a huge number of people at ones.

1. Means of social awareness

The popular ideology that used to prevail was that information (the ‘important’ ones) and entertainment can’t co-exist. You could have kept yourself well informed only through newspapers and magazines. But this misconception was seriously challenged by the advent of social media when teenagers who struggle with their grades know as much or even more about what is going on around the globe than the respective academic toppers of their classes. If you follow the right pages and people through social media then you can keep your mind up to dated on the front of politics, economy, entertainment, and sports and about the nonsense in vogue as well. It is literally a kind of database that brings to you news from every nook and corner, along with the opinions of general public of every kind. This provides a clear picture with arguments from both the sides. Its potential to spread awareness can be fathomed by the fact that it led to a revolution that did away with form of government a country had. Egypt, Libya and Tunisia are those countries that saw the power of twitter and facebook. It is proved and visible that the social media has changed the way we get socially aware.

Source: http://goo.gl/IMGMtB