I have found the following definition and paper to be useful when trying to define 'social media'. “Social Media is a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content” (Kaplan & Haenlein 2010: 61) They also do a handy "Classification of Social Media by social presence/media richness and self-presentation/self-disclosure" - e.g. blogs are high in self-presentation/self-disclosure, but low in social presence/media richness. Kaplan, A. M. & M. Haenlein 2010. Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons 53, 59–68 (available on-line: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681309001232, accessed 1 October 2012). regards, Julian On 6 June 2013 08:32, <air-l-request@listserv.aoir.org> wrote:
Message: 3 Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 01:21:05 +0100 From: Christian Fuchs <christian.fuchs@uti.at> To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] Re Understanding Social Media Message-ID: <51AFD5F1.6020807@uti.at> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
My own view is that everyone uses the term "social media" quite confidently as if there is only one meaning of the term "social" and as a consequence only one definition of "social media".
Internet Studies lacks grounding in philosophy and social theory and therefore lacks an understanding of the circumstance that sociality has multiple meanings in social theory.
If we want to understand social media, we need to engage with social theory. Internet Studies is way too much a positivist science without acknowledgement of sociology's and the social sciences' roots in philosophy.
In order to understand social media we need social theory. Almost all definitions of "social media" are simplistic and lack social theory...
Best, CF
++++++++++ Dr Julian Hopkins Lecturer School of Arts & Social Sciences Monash University, Sunway campus www.sass.monash.edu.my Blog: www.julianhopkins.net Twitter: @julianhopkins