Social media and elections - Term Paper Example

In 1865 with express messages growing between businesses, financial and legal offices, and banks of major cities, it became necessary for faster methods to communicate by telegram and letter. The pneumatic post came about to help with the shortcomings of the telegraphic network in Paris. Small metal cartridges carried telegrams and letters by pneumatic pressure. Information could be transferred both faster and independently without outside interference (Adams, 2011). The telephone has been the single most influential form of social media to come about before the 20th century.

There has been a continual debate over who actually invented the telephone, among those are Charles Bourseul, Antonio Meucci, Johann Philipp Reis, Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray, and the debate goes on. In 1890 Bell and Edison were accredited to making it a commercial device. In 1891 Nikola Tesla developed the radio and obtained a US patent for the invention. This was another form of social media produced with radio frequencies. Email was introduced in 1966. The first email was actually sent in 1971 between two computers that were sitting side by side.

The early systems of email required that each recipient be online at the same time in order to send and receive messages. What we have today is much more advanced in that it accepts, stores, forwards and delivers without having to be online at the same time (Adams, 2011). “Social media is the use of digital (and often mobile) technologies and Internet-based applications for exchanging or creating conversation.” (Adams, 2011). This has become the modern day definition of social media. However, history shows that social media can be include other forms of communication.

Social interaction has become totally necessary in today’s culture and trade. The world has become a place where relationships are fragile and dealings can be difficult.