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Deion Brown
Professor Padgett
English 1102
4/7/14

Social Media Research
The way we see average everyday life has dramatically changed over time and is
completely different from how things that might have seemed to be normal in the past. I
remember finding a lot of information online when I was a teen and becoming more curious
about everything around me. Back then I could not even really imagine how my normal actions
or ways were completely different from the ways of someone in my fathers generation. When
ever someone, that grew up around the same time as me, had responsibilities like doing some
kind of educational research on any topic or personal research like discovering new information
on interesting opportunities they would usually do what we call checking it out online first.
Someone in the past generation would have had to go to the library and find six different books
on the same topic it took me 10 minutes to find good source of information on it. There was
almost an obligation for them to get more involved like actually going to a smithsonian museum
to discover something new since there was no duplicate of the display on an online video. It is a
fact that it has made a very noticeable difference in how our generation has to adapt to the
changes it has made in what we consider our normal lives.
Vivek Wadhwa author of the renowned How Social media changed the world says that
to the children of this connected era, the world is one giant social network. Also that they are
not bound as were previous generations of humans by what they were taught but they are
limited by their curiosity and ambition. During my childhood, a lot of my knowledge was
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strictly local. Earlier generations were most likely in a situation like Wadhwa with news being
mostly local or most just what you were taught. For example a very popular way to stay in touch
with someone your age from a different place like another country was to make them something
called a pen pal to write letters in the mail back and forth like 30 years ago. I do not not really
think it is just me that feels like hand written letters in the mail are like stone age
communications compared to the way that my generation would do things like tweet each other
because even social emailing is now starting become old itself. Imagining my generation of teens
and young adults without cell phones and the internet is a hard task because I myself do not
really understand how it is because im always staying connected with my phone. Now social
media doesnt just let you find out what everyone elses opinion on life is but it is also used as an
everyday tool to socialize and be entertained doing it. There is a perfect example of how social
media has changed everyday life in the whole world compared to how it used to be in past
generations. (Wadhwa)
Author of Study Shows Concern over Use of Social Media Data in Research Alexandra
Fry suggest that social media has become so prevalent in everyday life that its a new for
research that can be used for more than just academics. She says social media is a veritable
goldmine of opportunity since every day, reams and reams of naturally occurring data are
produced by users of Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. So at any time of the day, thousands of
individuals are tweeting about what they are doing, where they are going and how they are
feeling. Since this has happened so rapidly the recent events have a new field of research that is
steady emerging. Researchers are now try using this information to investigate all kinds of
issues.The problem is that there are still issues surrounding the use of personal social media for a
tool in research though. Frys article tells us how reports have found that social media users have
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mixed feelings about their tweets and posts being used in sociological studies. If I had to put
myself in someone elses shoes, figuratively speaking, and be a part of a certain kind of situation
where my thoughts or ideas, that I decided to post publicly, were used for something like social
research I might feel uncomfortable. My true feelings towards the idea would be depending on
what kind of post was chosen to be used in their research and why. So I understand Frys
statements on there still being issues because I can directly relate to having mixed feelings about
the subject too. Since there is no sure way to know the exact kind of influence this research may
have on society's opinion about any specific topic, it can be almost twice as easy to be
considered a point of crossing the line. In our case anyones social activity being recorded and
used in some type of research could potentially lead to the formation of new stereotypes on my
generation based on digital, social sources like tweets. That is a possibility that could not have
even existed in the past generations that our parents were raised in. (Fry)
Stephanie Cliffords New York Times article tittled Social Media Are Giving a Voice to
Taste Buds is an example of the main topic of how social media has changed the world in so
many ways. Even the world of marketing is affected by the broad range of changes in strategies
used in today's advertising with social media. Now social media can give a voice to taste buds
and Frito-Lay chips showed her exactly how it did. The process of coming out with a new flavor
of chips was a difficult task for companies like Frito-Lay to handle back before social media and
their ideas about to getting accurate feedback was more of a struggle. Clifford explains that
Frito-Lay is developing a new potato chip flavor, in the old days, would have involved a series
of focus groups, research and trend analysis. Social media has an endless number of
opportunities for all kinds of different companies to take advantage of it well enough to
hopefully gain even more success. While consumers may think of social media sites like
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Facebook, Twitter as places to post musings and interact with friends, companies like Wal-Mart
and Samuel Adams are turning them into extensions of market research departments. And
companies are just beginning to figure out how to use the enormous amount of information
available. Chief marketing officer of the Gilt Groupe, Elizabeth Francis, said It tells us exactly
what customers are interested in. Society is observing how social media is continuously starting
to become a huge key factor in a number of fields like marketing for example.(Clifford)
Zeynep Tufekcis article Social Media's Small, Positive Role in Human Relationships
show how social media can be seen as a positive factor in relationships. Tufekci said If
anything, social media is a counterweight to the ongoing devaluation of human lives. Social
media's rapid rise is a loud, desperate, emerging attempt by people everywhere to connect with
each other in the face of all the obstacles that modernity imposes on our lives. With the right
use of our technology and online tools social media can be proven to be credible help in social
relationships as well. Tufekci states that in other words, texting, Facebook-status updates, and
Twitter conversations are not displacing face-to-face socializing -- on average, they are making
them stronger. Social media is enhancing human connectivity as people can converse in ways
that were once not possible. Now there are individuals that can just naturally prefer online
interaction and there seems to be nothing wrong with that. One other category that is often
overlooked are people who are either not that comfortable at some aspects of face-to-face
conversation but find online interaction to be liberating. It's not that these people are not seeking
human contact. This proves that some people may just be considered cybersocial instead of
anti-social. All the access we have to technology is making it easy to stay connected online so
someone that is cybersocial can be considered to be a product of the distinct unique change it has
had socialization. (Tufekci)
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Haley Jones article Social Medias Affect on Human Interaction supports the idea that
the change social media had in how we interact can be considered to be for the better and the
worse with evidence to prove it. Social networking sites have been categorized as both
beneficial and consequential to offline contact. That is why research on the topic can be very
conflicting in a lot of situations. Jones states how For example, a study performed by Jean
Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, showed that a sample of high
school students from Connecticut with problematic levels of Internet use were more likely to get
into serious fights or carry a weapon. So research here would be implying that a character
exposed to too much violence online might adopt the violent tendencies compared to someone
with a more reguler level of internet use. Jones explained how For example, a study executed by
the National Institute of Health found that youths with strong, positive face-to-face relationships
may be those most frequently using social media as an additional venue to interact with their
peers. So having an aditional venue to interact on could actually help strengthen face-to-face
relationships too. The results will continue to remain conflicting with each other and each case is
on based the particular situation. (Jones)
There are critics who argue about how social media has negatively affected normal
aspects of life like the way people normal act around each other for example. On the other hand
theres a lot of people that judge the changes in our everyday life useful technology as an
advancement to how we live in our society. When it comes to social media there is an
unanswered question about which factors determine whether it has had a more negative or
positive affect on us. There are reporters that see our advancement as an evolution on our past
obsolete ways of being social. Others consider that it has become the source of why face-to-face
interaction and relationship are changing so drastically that someone might only be comfortable
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interacting with someone else online now. Either way both positive and negative changes in our
technologys social media have dramatically influenced normal life and has been a serious factor
in how people live their lives.


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Works Cited

Wadhwa, Vivek. "How Social Media Changed the World." How Social Media Changed the
World. IndyStar, 7 Feb. 2014. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.

Fry, Alexandra. "Study Shows Concern over Use of Social Media Data in Research." Study
Shows Concern over Use of Social Media Data in Research. Phys.org, 21 Feb. 2014.
Web. 12 Mar. 2014.

Clifford, Stephanie. "Social Media Are Giving a Voice to Taste Buds." The New York
Times. The New York Times, 30 July 2012. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.

Tufekci, Zeynep. "Social Media's Small, Positive Role in Human Relationships." The
Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 25 Apr. 2012. Web. 12 Mar. 2014.

Jones, Haley. "Social Media's Affect on Human Interaction." HASTAC. HASTAC, 7 June 13.
Web.
08 Apr. 2014.