Read the book and indeed a colleague borrowed it for reading. To be honest, the book is a thorough narration of all the aspects of all types of new media. It is an exclusive account of the finer details of the functioning, the process both physical and semantic and the efficacy of the new social media. It is very useful textbook for students of media and others as well. keep going Suman. Best wishes....Prof C Pichandi.
Book Review By Dr Uma Shankar Pandey
Assistant Professor and Head, Dept. of Journalism and Mass Communication, Surendranath College for Women, Kolkata
India is the second biggest online market in the world next only to China, with 26 percent of the population accessing the internet according to the latest available statistics. Over the next five years it is estimated that over 60 core users will have access to the internet.
A majority of Indian internet users access it on the mobile. Over 30 crore people in India accessed the internet through their mobile phones in 2016. It is estimated that over 50 crore people or approximately 37 per cent of the population will have access to mobile internet by 2012. The passion for social media in India is among the highest in the world. At present there are over 21 crore social media users in India which is expected to rise to around 36 crore in the next five years. With over 19 crore Facebook users India has the largest Facebook user base in the world.
With the massive developments on the digital front, the amount of research in the myriad aspects of New Media has grown. However the entire academic output is situated largely in the western context. Social Media: Connecting the World 24x7 is an extremely important venture in this context. Written by one of the senior-most media academicians in the country, the textbook fills a vital gap in the field.
At 348 pages the book is the result of diligent research. The first part of the book elaborately details the growth of internet across the globe. The Global Information Infrastructure, consisting of the ‘information superhighways’ was expected to provide sustainable economic development by enhancing participatory decision making. At the core of these predictions was the assumption that innovations in the way we communicate can bring about far reaching changes in the political, social and economic sphere. This is achieved through consensus-oriented, inclusive and transparent decision making. Citizens have more opportunities to access information as well as create them.
For developing countries, the historical hurdles created by colonialism and other factors, could be ‘leapfrogged’ through the use of internet technology. The first two chapters provide a comprehensive review of these developments. The notion of Web 2.0 is that combinations of user-friendly software, broadband access and collective use have led to qualitatively different notions about the new web’. This is characterized by collective creativity, participation and openness. This is also backed by technological advances which make content creation across different formats easier and accessible with a paradigm shift in the volume and acceleration of information flow. This is represented by wiki based ways of creating and accessing knowledge, social networking sites, blogging, tagging and ‘mash ups’. These subsystems of the new Internet can maintain and reproduce themselves only due to the fact that human actors make use of the technological structure as a ‘medium of their symbolic exchange.’ The second part of the book details the growth of social media as a corollary of the interactive web structure. The book details in almost an encyclopedic manner the developments and details surrounding the meta- discourse on social media. It would be a fascinating resource for the average student.
Social Networking provides two essential functions. The first is the ability to create and maintain a profile that serves as an online identity within the ecosystem. The second is the ability to create connections between other people within the network. Social networking technologies, such as Facebook offer a blend of interactive and static features in the users’ profile. Others contribute vital information to the site. Postings by other people on one’s own profile create a perception of the person who posted initially. The observers’ reactions to these postings may affect impressions of the target profile maker as well, even though the profile maker did not initiate the postings. This makes participative social networking technologies different from Web 1.0 applications that allow the initiator complete control over the content. The third and fourth chapters provide a comprehensive overview of the social networking sites.
The potential of the social media to create unrest has been the subject of intense debate in recent years. Scholars have debated the development of such psychological states that undermine social influences on individuals. The result is ‘uninhibited’ and extreme behavior, as well as more ‘polarized, extreme and risky’ decisions. A related phenomenon of the early computer-mediated communication (CMC) is the notion of flaming. It is closely linked to the typical transient character of CMC, in which text messages appear and disappear from the screen without leaving behind any ‘tangible artifacts.’ Scholars estimate that participants who communicate via computers imagine that they must use stronger language to get their messages across. An earlier study in the field reported, ‘electronic messages are often startlingly blunt and electronic discussions can escalate rapidly into name calling and epithets’.
The third part of the book attempts to map the various strands of opinions on the need for social media ethics. Chapter 7 details an extremely engaging mapping of language and social media. The social media language, especially its sleek abbreviations, is a rage among the younger users. The chapter details a comprehensive list of these oft-used words.
Much of politics these days is played out in the social media. Modern day politicians use the interactive features of Facebook and Twitter to reach out to their constituents. Chapter 8 of the book provides an interesting case study of use of social media by politicians in Telengana.
The book achieves the delicate balance between statistics and media theory. The theoretical elements of the differences between the traditional and new media in the Indian context have been dealt with comprehensively in chapters 9 and 10.
With the developments in the information and communication technology making rapid strides, it becomes an onerous task to predict the contours of the communication landscape in the coming years. The book attempts to trace the possible developments in this arena in the immediate future. Social Media: Connecting the World 24X7 is an extremely detailed and scholarly book and probably the first of its kind in India. It would be a comprehensive resource for scholars and researchers. On the flip side, the book could have been reasonably shorter.
