Web evolution
When companies analyse, develop, and use social media, they have to take some factors into account that are instrumental in these processes.
Digital Audiences
First of all, the ‘digital divide’ is very much real. It is the lack of access to information and communication for billions around the world. Even as technological access expands rapidly through wireless networks and mobile devices, there is a socioeconomic and cultural divide. This is because many sectors of society have low levels of online participation. When planning PR, Marketing and Communication activities, we have to keep this in mind.
A second key factor is that many users of social media are ‘lurkers’. They observe and monitor but do not actively contribute to discussions or content. An estimate regards that up to 90 per cent of internet users are ‘lurkers’. This means that only 10 per cent of the online audience are active participants in interactive environments. However, even in reading and viewing content and following others’ posts, ‘lurkers’ are learning and consume content. Therefore, even ‘lurking’ can be a form of participation.
Changing Landscape
One of the most serious concerns raised in relation to social media is that content bypasses the ‘gatekeepers’ who operate in traditional media – the editors, subeditors, and fact checkers who verify sources and confirm the veracity of statements and claims made. Notwithstanding concerns that traditional media gatekeepers often fail in their role, social media are open to anyone with internet access and rely a ‘self-correcting adhocracy’.
The Web evolution has been depleting the ranks of cultural gatekeepers, as professional critics, journalists, editors, musicians, moviemakers. And other purveyors of expert information are being replaced by amateur bloggers, hack reviewers, homespun moviemakers and attic recording artists.
Some social media users, particularly ‘citizen journalists’, as a ‘pyjama army’ engaged in presenting opinion as fact, rumour as reportage and innuendo as information. Even though social media content is not controlled by intermediaries (where inter means standing in between producers and receivers), apomediaries (where apo means stand by or alongside, such as peers) are often effective in maintaining quality of content and credibility.