Social Psychology of New Social Media - Essay Example

Social networking simply implies interacting and communicating through online social media as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Digg, YouTube, blogs, among others. Over the recent past, since the mid-2000s, the social networking environment has exploded and grown at a rapid rate with millions of users of such media generating and sharing a wide array of information, videos and other contents on a much global scale. With this high rate of generation and use of such contents, the online environment has become extremely competitive and saturated, with more and more people seeking to define their identities online and freely express their opinions online.

Recent data shows that daily Facebook users have hit 800 million with a user on average having 130 friends, while Twitters has hit over 100 million users. Facebook’s numbers reflect a 200 million growth over a two year period since 2009 (Digital Buzz, 2012), and this growth has not been limited to Facebook only. Twitter has also intensely grown and hits the 100 million this year. Such trends of increased masses going online, point to a shifting social power and focus from face to face relation to a more online-driven relation.

This shifting social power is clearly demonstrated by the recent 2011 Arab revolutions where social networking capabilities and activities were attributed as the key driver and instigator in the revolutions, especially in Egypt, which saw the political landscape in these countries change, and long-reigning leaders toppled.. rly articles, textbooks, working papers and other sources relevant to the social psychology of social media networking and how this impacts various behavior patterns, interactions both positively and negatively.

The review also identifies key issues investigated in this subject and seeks to add new knowledge to the existing body of knowledge on social sociology of new networking media. In essence, the review will start by looking at the literature surrounding social networking and its recent trends; it will then look at the psychology of social networking, social networking behaviors and interactions and the influence of social networking and online privacy issues. Social Networking and Recent trends Social networking simply implies interacting and communicating through online social media as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Digg, YouTube, blogs, among others.

Over the recent past, since mid 2000s, the social networking environment has exploded and grown at a rapid rate with millions of users of such media generating and sharing a wide array of information, videos and other contents on a much global scale (Mittal & Pani, 2010). With this high rate of generation and use of such contents the online environment has become extremely competitive and saturated, with more and more people seeking to define their identities online and freely express their opinions online.

Recent data shows that daily Facebook users have hit 800 million with a user on average having 130 friends, while Twitters has hit over 100 million users. Facebook’s numbers reflect a 200 million growth over a two year period since 2009 (Digital Buzz, 2012), and this growth has not been limited to Facebook only. Twitter has also intensely grown and hit the 100 million this year. This has resulted to corporations