Introduction
In the present day, social media develops at a rapid pace. In the last 20 years, many people all over the world have been engaged in communication via social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others. Seventy percent of American adults used at least one social network in 2017 (Dhingra SSRN.com). More and more people join Facebook, including countries such as India and Indonesia (Dhingra SSRN.com). To attract more users, websites conduct experiments and post more and more images and videos, which get attention easily (Zhang 346). Thus, it is problematic to find a person without any connection to social media use nowadays. Having developed so much, the social media have become an instrument for politics, economy, science, and culture. Therefore, social media’s role in the aforementioned areas of human life makes it a global political actor.
Economy
In economy, the influence of the social media development represents itself through communication with customers. Alam (1528) claims that social media assists in assessment of public interest and improves retrieval of information related to user experience. It greatly helps online advertising as well, creating a strong connection to marketing. Candace Deans (188) further analyzes this connection and points out that “a governance model for social media has emerged across industries and business models… and resides in the marketing department”. Because social media has become a universal tool, IT budget have been allocated to other departments, mostly marketing, in many companies (Candace Deans 186). Social media marketing is done via “upbeat, high-arousal and surprising, useful, or interesting news” (Beattie 43) so that they spread between accounts quickly. Thus, this has created a strong connection between social media and IT, and companies that can harness the value from this connection will make the most profit (Candace Deans 188). Therefore, in the economical sphere social media has two uses, for marketing and for communicating with customers.
Science
Social media has seen its use in science as well, particularly in health studies. There are now many specialized media and sites for publications and interacting between scientists, such as Academia.edu, Journal of Medical Internet Research, PLoS One, and Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking (Chen biomedcentral.com). Video-sharing platforms such as YouTube are used in scientific communities, as well, with researchers publishing their lectures there. Student groups in universities often create social network communities to both coordinate their studies and be able to socialize in their free time. Accomplished scientists use such communities as well, as they need to post their latest ideas and research, while attempting to attract possible colleagues, students and sponsors. The possibilities offered by social networks are notably more convenient and operative than most of the previous ways of communication, allowing for many formerly impossible international and interdisciplinary studies. Thus, social media assists scientific communication having replaced previous methods of communication such as mail.
Politics
As means of communication between different people who would otherwise be unable to interact, in the recent years social media has naturally become a political tool. With users of social media being subjected to “ideological diversity” (Beattie 197), media systems must be calibrated to counteract “psychological biases” (Beattie 312) or, to put it simply, to limit aggression. However, this calibration is often done by elites, such as the U.S. and British military (Beattie 258), who “have the ability to plug in their preferences through the media to get what they want out of the system” (Beattie 313). To this end, the elites carefully guide one or both parties to express the elites’ own interests. Therefore, the social media serve as a link between people of different political orientations, who proceed to exchange their points of view, which are often monitored by the social network’s owners and by political elites.
In the recent years, however, the elites have stopped limiting themselves to monitoring discussions. Many representatives of government agencies, up to and including the President of the United States, have accounts in social networks, the most popular being Twitter, where they express their positions on different matters. These posts are mostly carefully prepared and official in their nature, but sometimes the representatives of elites allow themselves to express their personal opinion, with such posts being the most interesting to public. Thus, the expansion of social networks has gone upwards, now including the highest state officials as their users.
Conclusion
Thus, as examined, the evolution of social media has made it a global political actor because of its significant role in various areas of human life. What makes it political is not only its role as a link to political exchange, but the importance of its other implementations as well. Science, including health science, and economy are both vital to humanity’s functions. For example, while it may not seem political at this time, a ban of social media in these services would cause a distinctly political dissatisfaction in populace. Marketing experts and IT specialists would be particularly targeted by such a decision, while most other people would be severely limited in their ability to plan their free time and work. Therefore, the development of social media has become a key factor in the modern world.
Works Cited
Alam, Md. Hijbul, et al. “Hashtag-Based Topic Evolution in Social Media.” World Wide Web, vol. 20, no. 6, 2017, pp. 1527–49. Crossref.
Beattie, Peter. Social Evolution, Political Psychology, and the Media in Democracy: The Invisible Hand in the U.S. Marketplace of Ideas. 1st ed. 2019, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Candace Deans, Penny, and Betsy Jane Miller Tretola. “The Evolution of Social Media and Its Impact on Organizations and Leaders.” Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, vol. 28, no. 3, 2018, pp. 173–92. Crossref.
Chen, Xieling, et al. “Discovering Thematic Change and Evolution of Utilizing Social Media for Healthcare Research.” BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, vol. 19, no. S2, 2019. Crossref.
Dhingra, Manish, and Rakesh K. Mudgal. “Historical Evolution of Social Media: An Overview.” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2019. Crossref.
Zhang, Sonya, and Ashish Hingle. “The Evolution of News and Media Website Design: Trend Analysis of Rich Media, Social Sharing, and Ad Placements.” Journal of Management Analytics, vol. 4, no. 4, 2017, pp. 345–58. Crossref.