Social Media and Social Change | Essay

Running head: SOCIAL CHANGE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
SOCIAL CHANGE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
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Author Note:

1SOCIAL CHANGE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
According to the theory of social influence, human beings have an urge to assess
themselves by comparing with the other people around them and hence manipulating the
consumers with the help of social comparison becomes easy. In the article, “From Mass to
Social Media? Advancing Accounts of Social Change” by Sonia Livingstone, it is mentioned
that the society and the social media are always focused on the questions associated with
social change.
By avoiding the temptation to combine the vision of the past media as something that
is passively consumed, highly concentrated and is unidirectional in its influence, the author
has pointed the social change that is represented by today’s highly globalized, more
participatory and more dispersed social media (Livingstone, 2015). Social media has played a
critical role in bringing a lot of social changes through its innovation and cultural diffusion.
The research history of the author depicts one such social change; previously mass audiences
were prejudicially seen as homogenous and someone who passively accepts media contents
since they were in the absence of the firsthand empirical investigation. However, with the
gaining popularity of social media, these people must not be presumed and judged on how
they interpret or even resist the content of the texts. Thus design and the usage of social
media has brought a huge social change in terms of how people communicate with each
other; the advent of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more such platforms has made people
communicate through a medium instead of communicating directly. Introvert people find
comfort in communicating through social media nowadays.
Question: In spite of such progress in the Social media and bringing such huge social change
in the lives of the people, why is it that people still prize the good old face-to-face method of
communication in this age of social change through social media?

2SOCIAL CHANGE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
References:
Livingstone, S. (2015). From mass to social media? Advancing accounts of social
change. Social Media+ Society, 1(1), 2056305115578875.