This week in the lecture, we learnt about the role social media plays in the world of affordances, and where it fits in this the concept of new media. I loved thinking about new media as this jar, and social media as the roots of a plant, growing inside this jar, only able to spread as much as the container allows. Then there are the fruits of this plant, the leaves. These are the individual social media services (SMS’s), and they can grow and live, or fall and die. Just a really nice and simple analogy.
The main aspect of this weeks content that I really enjoyed pondering and discussing came from the Hilton and Hjorth reading. ‘the term user has two connotations: controller and controlled’ (Hilton, S & Hjorth, L) to me is a very poetic and interesting way to address the evergrowing concerns about privacy and addiction when it comes to social media and the web as a whole. I think everyone has felt that they were being manipulated by social media services, whether that be through addicting and compelling interaction loops, or having self-esteem deteriorate as you scroll through feeds of meticulously crafted falsities.
However, one of the ways social media sites and the web as a whole can manipulate and damage you is our need to have access to it, and up until now, I hadn’t thought about how intensely this actually was, and how much of our lives revolve around the web and social media. Its affordances are too beneficial to our society. Some families communicate solely through the use of SMSs, and while I could definitely live without it, the affordances of Instagram allowing me to easily keep up with what friends are doing, as well as easily and aesthetically document events in my life and my photos and videos of them.
The reading definitely put it best, while Google always states that it is a user-focused company, it doesn’t really see us as users, it sees us as products, investors, dollar signs (Hilton, S & Hjorth, L).
Oh well, as long as I can still have my Instagram stories, I’ll be happy!
Hinton, S & Hjorth L 2013, Understanding Social Media. Sage Publications, London 2013. (Section: pp. 1-31.)