Response to lecture 3

Blog for day 3:
In today's lecture, the question was posed that if there is 'social media' is there also anti-social media? As a psych student, I find it difficult to switch off my inner social analyst and hence found this question particularly of interest. I do not believe that there is anti social media. As with Adams kōan about the term 'social media', as media is social by definition and hence this buzz word is comparable to explain this phenonmia as social-social technology. Because media is social by nature it cannot be anti-social. But aside from the lexical problems with the concept of anti-social media, it doesn't exist in a real sense as well (rather then just a literary one). Social media, people interacting through the use of Internet technologies is big business. Social networking sites, such as facebook (which will be the focus here) are profiteering business ventures, aimed not at connecting people, but rather exposing as many people as possible to there sponsored advertisement, and lining their pockets- creating online social networks is merely the medium to expose their 'consumers' to their 'product'. But this is done in a very specific and interesting way (from a social research perspective). Facebook and other social networking sites tap into peoples innate psychology need to belong. The whole structure of facebook is to accept other uses as 'friends' in your virtual world, these users are not termed 'other Internet users that I possibly know in the real world and wish to take some web-based interaction with' they are termed friends for a specific reasons. The premises of facebook is to interact with 'friends', comment on their status updates, poke them, write on their walls, tag them in photos, and more importantly receive this social interaction in return. Facebook terms such as friend, and accept (as when another user confirms you as there friend) are all designed to feed the users psychological dependence to belong, to feel a sense of acceptance by peers and engage in positive social interaction. The more pleasurable the experience is, e.g. The more friends a person has to interact with, the more the person seeks to use the service, and hence the more opportunities facebook is presented with to expose you to their products or put simply show you their sponsored ads. Therefore a social network that allowed for anti social behaviour would be counterproductive getting consumers in by fostering their need to belong. Furthermore, parody sites, such as those mentioned in the lecture, connecting like minded anti-establishment dishearten facebook users... Isn't any commonality driven social interaction on the Internet social networking? Food for thought at least.