Social Media Affecting Interpersonal And Intercultural Communication - Essay Example

? How has social media affected interpersonal and intercultural communication? Introduction The increasing popularity of the different social media like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Skype and Space Time has influenced the cultural and social trends of the human society all across the globe. The advent of these new media has made human interaction levels much more interconnected and easily accessible. The relationship between the social media and the intercultural communication has become an area of increasing of interest for the researchers. The traditional intercultural communication has come under immense threat of getting obsoleted due to the increasing level of human interaction through the use of social media. In the light of globalization, the present day society is becoming more and more dependent on the internet and the social networking system in their daily communication. The major modes of communication are driven by technology and the internet. These may include the social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, the online chatting and VOIP services like Face Time, Skype etc., the online blogs, micro blogs and different online forums. The social media has influenced the people from different cultures and countries to communicate with each other as well as provide information about themselves on the web through the social networking sites, personal websites and blogs (Hofstede, 2001). The cultural communication system has been reshaped to emerge as a more open and widely integrated system all across the globe. Discussion The invention and development of new technologies in the communication and networking aspects have presented a wide array of choices for communication connecting all the parts of the world through the World Wide Web. Internet connection has gained major importance throughput the world with the connection facilities spreading to even remote parts of the world. This has resulted in a continuous increase in the number of internet users and in the choices of online modes of communication (Hian, Chuan, Trevor and Detenber, 2004). A Global Attitudes research report shows that people from every type of countries including the developed countries as well as the developing and low income countries are oriented towards creating a social networking account immediately on getting access to the World Wide Web. The social media provides people from all over the world with the opportunity to display their information as well as demonstrate their culture, interests and activities through sites like Pinterest, We Heart It, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media sites. The different social networking sites are made user friendly so that people from varying backgrounds can easily use these media. These sites use computer mediated communication (CMC) system to make it easy for people to communicate and express themselves (Herring, 1996). The users can also create personalized websites to provide information about them and express their ideas and interests. This mode of communication has highly influenced the social lives of people all across the globe and exchange their ideas and information on different areas of discussion. The social media communications have made it simpler for people to exchange text, videos, e-mails, instant messaging as well as communicate through the use of real time audio and video chats using Skype, Face Time etc. The social networking sites are internet based service systems that allow people to create public profiles on the web within a system which they can completely control, maintain a connection with other users which may include the acquaintances, friends and family members. The social networking sites also make it possible to view the activities of the connections within the system. The first social networking site was launched in the year 1997 named Sixdegrees.com having all the above mentioned features. After the launch of this social site, the social media experienced a boom with a number of social sites being formed for different purposes. Facebook and Orkut were designed to maintain a social circle for the individuals. Sites like LinkedIn and Ryze are designed for maintaining professional connections for business level networking. Sites like LiveJournal are used as websites for both social networking and blogging services and sites like Flickr and YouTube are dedicated to the share of media along with certain social networking facilities. More social networking sites are being launched with the aim of influencing the intercultural and interpersonal communication between the people all across the globe. Social media has gained immense popularity, especially among the young generation as the most preferred mode of communication. Not only do people use the electronic mails and social media to interact with their friends and contacts on a daily basis but also help them to maintain continuous communication with their friends and relatives staying in faraway places. The social media communication is expected to develop as a multi-faceted system if they have to meet the major features of traditional cultural identity which are national identities, co-cultural identities, geobasic identities, ethnic identities, occupational identities and sociological identities (Morreale, Spitzberg and Marge, 2007). The social media has already established various new communities which do not experience any limit of space and time. This has resulted in the cultural identities becoming more relativized and dynamic in nature establishing a new level of challenge for the traditional stable cultural identity system (Hall, 1976). Before the evolution of the social media systems, the culture and traditions of the human society were more synchronized and stable. But with the advent of new forms of social media, a cultural gap is created between the generations and sometimes among the culturally different people belonging to the same generation (Gunawardena, 2009). The new social media with its fast and unlimited features have started creating newer concepts and values related to human culture throughout the world. The social media is influencing the formation of a new cultural level within the society accelerating the level of intercultural and interpersonal communication. This is also forcing the people from different cultural backgrounds to reach a level of mutual understanding and be flexible to adjust to the changing realms of the intercultural and interpersonal communication systems. The restructuring and modification of the cultural levels demand the individuals from different backgrounds to streamline their behavior within the society and develop an understanding of different ways to interact with the people from different cultural backgrounds (Hampton, Goulet and Rainie, 2011). Self-presentation of the individuals through the social media is a useful way of promoting the cultures of different people. Sometimes the culture that is not visible in the traditional way of communication is visible in the profiles of the individual in the social networking sites or through his blogs etc. Effect of social media on interpersonal communication Introduction of social media into the lives of the people have changed the way in which people communicate and keep in touch with one another. People of different walks of life are communicating in today’s world through a single platform of social media. People at the present day instead of the face to face interaction prefer the interaction with other through another medium. This has saved the time of the individuals and also increased the frequency of communication between two people. However the communication at the personal level is found to be less (Forte, 2007). There is also a change in the style of communication include the language that is frequently being used in the communication process. Psychologists are of the opinion that the bonding between people have weakened due to the interaction through social media. Several features are noticeable in case of the interaction process through the use of the social media like Facebook, Twitter or the other channels. The people who are involved in such communication process generally trust the individual on the other side. Thus people at the present day are more open about their personal lives. Most of the relationships are shallow or short lived mainly because of the fact that they do not come in contact with each other or in some cases may not be acquainted with the person involved. Due to the different communities in these social media sites the people generally tend to communicate only with the people with common viewpoints and goals (Giffords, 2009). This makes the people in general very narrow minded and they are deprived of knowing the viewpoints that are perceived by the other people. This leads to a lack of diversity in the thought process of the individuals. Most of the events that take place in the lives of the people have far reaching effects on the personal level as well as at the social level due to the influence of technology. For example a person might be a victim of bullying for the peers. In absence of technology this problem remained limited to the workplace only. However due to the influence of media the problem would spread to the entire circle of community including friends or even the family members. This would lead to a lot of psychological stress for the individuals (Wolak, Mitchell and Finkelhor, 2003). Adding to this the privacy of the individual would also be hampered in the process. Another problem relating to the social media is the overload of information in the entire arena of communication. Most of the people are informed about minor changes or events with instant messages. This would have the risk of missing out on any valuable information that might come to the person among all the other less significant news. Due to the high levels of addiction, even if people are in a group in a face to face interactive session they keep on communicating through their technical medium to a larger group of people . This results in the weakening of the bonding with the people who are around. Conclusion The social media community is dominated by the critical features of demonstrating a high level of interconnection and heterogeneity. It can be strongly identified that the social media sites have evolved as a major platform to develop the cultural identity of different individuals. But it cannot be determined whether the social media networking can completely replace the traditional interpersonal and intercultural communication systems. This is because there are a number of differences between the essence of traditional interpersonal interactions and that of social media interactions. The human society is highly driven by the intercultural and interpersonal communication systems. Social media has evolved as a strong advancement that has created new ways for people to understand each other’s cultures. References Forte, J. (2007). Human Behavior and the Social Environment: Models, Metaphors, and Maps for Applying Theoretical Perspectives to Practice. 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Culture's Consequences : Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations Across Nations. 2nd ed. London: Sage Publications. Morreale, S., Spitzberg, H.B. & Marge, J.K. (2007). Human Behavior and communication: Motivation, Knowledge and Skills, 2nd Ed. Belmont: Wadsworth. Wolak, J., Mitchell, K. and Finkelhor, D. (2003). “Escaping of connecting? Characteristics of youth who form close online relationships.” Journal of Adolescence, 26: 105-119. Read More