4.9: Language and the Digital World

Language and the Digital World

Social media are computer-mediated technologies which allows multiple senders and receivers to create and share information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual com- munities and communication networks. Social media use relies on web-based technologies such as desktop computers, smartphones and tablet computers to create highly interactive formats which allow individuals, communities and organizations the possibility to share, co-create, discuss diverse topics and comment on content previously posted online. Social media allows for mass cultural exchanges and intercultural communication among people from different regions of the world.

The term social media is often used to indicate that many senders and receivers can communicate almost simultaneously across space and time. At the same time, the term social media is used to mean social networks (relationships and contacts among many individuals). If one is using the term to mean social networks (who interacts with whom in the linguistic community), then the researcher can “observe” and document the interactional patterns or the researcher can “interview” the participants to determine the type of social networks. Social networks, from a sociolinguistic perspective, can be differentiated on the basis of whether they are “dense” or “loose”. In dense networks all members know each other. In loose networks not all members know each other. Networks can also be distinguished with the quality of ties (connections) that exist among the members. In uniplex ties, individuals are connected by one type of relationship (participate in the same swim club, take same courses at a college, work in the same business). In multiplex ties, members know each other in several different roles (student/friend/classmate; parent/co-worker/neighbor).

The term social media is usually associated with different networking sites such as the following:

• Facebook, an online social network which allows users to create personal profiles, share photos and videos and communicate with other users.

• Twitter, an internet service that allows users to post “tweets” (brief messages totaling 140 characters) for their followers to see in real-time.

• LinkedIn, a network designed for the business community allowing users to create professional profiles, post resumes, and communicate with other professionals and job-seekers.

• Pinterest, an online network that allows users to send photos of items found in the web by“pinning” them and sharing comments with others in the virtual community.

• Snapchat, an application on mobile devices that allows users to send and share photos of themselves performing daily activities. 12

Social media takes many other forms including blogs, forums, product/services reviews and social gaming and video sharing. The social networking world has changed the way individuals and organizations use language to communicate with each other. Research findings indicate the significant impact that social media is having on society in the United States and elsewhere.

• Nearly 80 percent of American adults are online and nearly 60 percent of them use social media.

• Among the adolescent population, 84 percent have a Facebook account.

• Over 60 percent of 13 to 17-year-olds have at least one profile on social media, with some spending more than two hours a day on social network sites.

• Internet users spend more time on social media sites than any other type of web-based sites. The use from July 2011 (66 billion minutes) to July 2012 (121 billion minutes) represents a 99 percent increase.

• Young adults, some 33 percent, get their news from social media.

• More than half (52 percent) of internet users use two or more social media sites to communicate with their friends and family.

• In the United States, 81 percent of users look online to get news about the weather, 53 percent for national news, 52 percent for sports news, and 41 percent for entertainment or celebrity news. 13

There are both positive and negative effects associated with social media. The positive effects include the ability to document memories, learn about and explore different topics, advertise oneself and form many friendships. On the negative side, social media often invades on personal privacy, fosters information overload, promotes isolation, affects users’ self-esteem and creates the possibility for online harassment and cyberbullying.

Mapping actual language use in the context of the digital world is problematic. It is a complex communication universe. Unlike the geography of place names and the discourse of advertisement, social networking occurs in a virtual environment, involving many senders/receivers and different computer-mediated technologies. Data “mining” is a technique employed to analyze large-scale social media data fields to establish general patterns regarding the content/topics that emerge from people’s actual online activities. Usage patterns in social media interest many advertisers, major businesses, government organizations and political parties. Research methods from the social sciences have been used to establish user’s activities with different types of social media technologies. These include pencil-and-paper questionnaires, individual/group oral interviews and focus group sessions. These methods involve language-driven interactions with a limited number of users who may or may not reveal their actual social media patterns of behavior.