Social media has played an important role in people’s lives. There are five categories of social media: social networks, social bookmarking sites, social news sites, blogs, and microblogs. This paper aims to discuss these categories, to single out popular and cutting-edge tools, to compare them, and to outline how these tools might be used for the issue of community health.
A social network is a platform, online-service, and website which is aimed to organize social relations on the Internet (Van Dijck, 2013). It is important to realize that the information which is posted on social networks is available for various people, including friends, relatives, employers, police officers, and criminals. The most popular one is Facebook. It is used by many people from all over the globe for both personal and professional purposes. As for community health, it is possible to use the service of advertising which is seen by all users. Publishing posts about a healthy lifestyle might be helpful. However, it is not for free. Besides, people tend to skip advertising regardless of what it is about and how useful it could be to them. As for new tools, they happen to appear rather often. One of them is Fancy, which has been launched by creators of Facebook. It might attract many users in the USA in the future. However, Fancy is unlikely to surpass Facebook, because it has existed for a long time and has been extremely popular in the world.
Bookmarking sites are services that are used to share, create, search for, and manage bookmarks of web-resources. Here are their advantages: 1) it is easy to share links with other people; 2) it is possible to systematize bookmarks into categories and groups; 3) it is possible to access bookmarks from any computer or any browser (Van Dijck, 2013). One of the most popular tools is Google Bookmarks. A relatively new tool is Robotrate. As for the community health issue, it is possible to organize the storage of links to various sites about a healthy lifestyle and share these links with the community. Both tools look competitive since they fulfill the required function.
Social news sites are used to post breaking news. If a piece of news gets many likes, it is displayed to a larger audience. News tends to appear on such sites quicker than anywhere else. However, some of them happen to be hoaxes (Van Dijck, 2013). The tools are the same as for social networks.
A blog is a web-site with regularly added posts that consist of text, pictures, and multimedia. It is acknowledged to be an online diary. Blogs are public, which implies the presence of off-side readers who might get involved in a discussion of the topic in the comments (Van Dijck, 2013). The most popular tool is WordPress. As for cutting-edge tools, none has been found. WordPress can be used to create a blog that is devoted to a healthy lifestyle. Its major strength is that it is easy to use. Besides, it is free and available to be reached by everyone. As for its weakness, it does not have an appropriate level of security. What is more, there are many twin-sites.
Micro-blogging is a type of blogging. It allows users to write short notes and publish them. These posts can be viewed and commented. The most famous tool is Twitter. It can be applied for the purposes of community health (Van Dijck, 2013). First, it might be wise to create a microblog about a healthy style. Second, it could be helpful to leave intelligent comments under people’s concerns about health. New tools might be created on GNU social platform to be used in an enterprise or educational institution. It is beneficial since it allows employees or students to get to know information promptly (Korda & Itani 2013).
This paper has considered five categories of social media. It has singled out popular and cutting-edge tools and compared them. Besides, it has outlined how these tools might be used for the issue of community health.
References
Korda, H., & Itani, Z. (2013). Harnessing social media for health promotion and behaviour change. Health Promotion Practice, 14(1), pp. 15-23.
Van Dijck, J. (2013). The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.