Social Media
For this week’s blog post I am going to focus on the aspects of Social Media and how it influences our everyday life. In the reading, it talked about multiple theories such as Media Richness Theory (communication medium’s ability to reproduce the information sent over it) and Social Information Processing Theory (how and why individuals can engage in personal communication in so-called lean online environments). Learning more about these theories and from our lecture, it was easy to see how strong of an influence social media is, and when we post something we subconsciously have a target audience in mind of who we are posting this content for.
I use social media just about every day and will sometimes get anxious if I don’t have time to check my notifications or feed. There were times when my average phone screen time was up to 8 ½ hours a day just by being bored and aimlessly scrolling through all of my accounts. Having that quick access on my phone makes me less inclined to have face-to-face interactions and prefer a more CMC approach. This idea relates to the artifact I selected which is the Nextflix documentary Don’t F*** With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer.
This documentary followed the story of Baudi Moovan (Deanna Thompson) and John Green who came across a video on YouTube of this man Luka Magnotta killing cats in his apartment and uploading it to social media. Seeing that video grabbed the attention of Baudi which led her to create this online group of strangers across the globe all coming together and analyzing the videos that Luka posted to track and find him. It was crazy to see how this one lady from Vegas was able to work with John Green a man from a different state to come together with this online group and be able to analyze, pinpoint, and work with police officials to find this killer and have him arrested just by the uses of social media (also finding out that he was a murderer). Just like what our reading talked about from Social Information Processing Theory and Hyperpersonal Perspective mentioned how people in a CMC setting can go through the various stages of meeting online, then talking frequently, leading to video chatting, and then meeting face-to-face for the first time all because of social media.
An online journal I found called Media Richness Theory by Richard Bergin dove deeper into this concept and talked about how this theory is based on “communication transactions that can overcome different frames of reference or clarify ambiguous issues to change understanding promptly are considered rich” (Bergin), it also talked about how a face-to-face communication will have a higher “richness” compared to interacting with someone in an online setting. The way this relates to my artifact is that during the time that Deanna and John were communicating online was beneficial, but had delayed responses from time to time and when they were able to meet in person each of their abilities to divided and conquer to find Luka became more “rich”.
Social media always blows my mind with how advanced it has become over time and even how more advanced we are becoming as a society due to social media. When watching Don’t F*** With Cats it was crazy to me how a group of strangers who never meet or knew each other were all coming together and interacting to find this killer who lived in Candada and didn’t even show his face in the videos he uploaded. In addition to seeing how Luka was playing catch and mouse by purposefully uploading these videos because of the attention. After viewing that I can honestly say social media and the research from Media Richness Theory and CMC communication that this will be in our lives for a very long time and will only become more powerful soon.
Bergin, R. (n.d.). Media Richness Theory. Retrieved April 13, 2021, from https://www.chds.us/coursefiles/IS4010/lectures/tech_media_richness_long/story_content/external_files/Media%20Richness%20Theory%20Script.pdf
Sumner, Erin & Ramirez, Artemio. (2017). Social Information Processing Theory and Hyperpersonal Perspective. 10.1002/9781118783764.wbieme0090.
