IT Infrastructure Management Report: Analyzing Social Media Impact

This report provides a comprehensive overview of social media, exploring its key features, advantages, and disadvantages. It discusses the positive effects, such as enhanced communication, increased promotion, and improved learning processes, as well as the negative impacts, including the potential for violence, reputational damage, and mental stress. The report also examines the influence of social media on politics, society, commerce, work, training, and relationships, highlighting both the opportunities and challenges it presents. Ultimately, the report aims to provide a balanced perspective on the multifaceted role of social media in contemporary life, emphasizing the importance of developing strategies to maximize its benefits while mitigating its risks. Desklib offers this report along with a suite of AI-powered study tools to support students in their academic endeavors.

Running head: IT INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT
IT infrastructure management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Abstract:
This report consists of a brief discussion about the social media. Brief discussion has been given
about the effects and the disadvantages and the advantages of using the social media has been
provided in this report. The advancement in the technology has made more use of social media in
different stages of life. Social media has both positive and negative outputs. It helps in every
stage of life by decreasing the communication gap, increased promotion, helps in different
learning processes, helps the job seekers increases knowledge of an individual. Whereas it can
also cause an environment of violence in the society, damage the reputation of a person, cause
mental stress and many more things. The main purpose of this report is to learn about the various
outcomes of the topic and to develop a strategy for the purpose of betterment.

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Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................3
Key features of social media:..........................................................................................................3
Effects of social media (negative and positive):..............................................................................4
Advantages and disadvantages of social media:..............................................................................6
Disadvantages of social media:.......................................................................................................7
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................8
References:....................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction:
Social media are the type of technologies that are computer mediated facilitating the
creation and for the purpose of sharing of the various expressions by the use of “virtual
networks” and “virtual communities”. Social medias are nothing but a collection of the channels
of the communication used for the purpose of interactions, to share various components and for
many other purposes. Social media is based upon the internet allowing individuals to interact
with one another and for exchanging various details (Stieglitz et al.,2014). Different types of
social media include “micro blogging sites”, “wiki”, “Facebook”,” twitter” and many more. This
report discusses about the brief explanation of the features along with the advantages and the
disadvantages of Social media.
Key features of social media:
Social media can be accessed by the technologies that are having access to internet.by the
use of the social media services individuals, organisations and communities can share their
thoughts and continue discussion on the topics uploaded on the websites via smartphones,
computers, laptops, tablets and many more electronic devices having internet access (Fuchs et
al., 2013). The keys feature of the social media are listed below:
 Social media can only be accessed by the use of internet.
 The various things uploaded on the social media by the users are the main contents on the
social media. This includes the videos, images, texts, comments and the data that are
generated by the online based interactions.
 Different profiles are created by the users for the purpose of using the social media sites.
 Social media helps in creating connections between different individuals.

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Effects of social media (negative and positive):
Social media has effected the world in many ways. Social media has evolved with the
development of the technologies. Developing technologies and the developed technologies
greatly helps in shaping the social media (De Vries Gensler & Leeflang, 2012). The various
effects of social media on the different aspects of life are listed below:
 Impact on the politics: The effect of social media in the field of politics has increased a
lot. Social media plays a vital role in the various political campaigns. By the use of social
media people are able to promote their views more freely. Social media helps in creating
a whole new influential organisation (Gil de Zúñiga, Jung & Valenzuela, 2012). Which
can be very much helpful to any “marginalised groups”.
 Impact on the society: Almost every individual in the whole world uses social media. It is
possible by the use of the internet. Everyone are able to express their thoughts and beliefs
in the social media not only that they can also find many peoples having the same
thoughts and beliefs which will make them know that they are the not the only person
having those ideas and beliefs. People can share “memes”, “publications’, and many
more things via social media. Use of social media lowers the daily activities in the society
and make the peoples more addicted to the world of virtualisation (Laroche et al., 2012).
We can see the Children’s in our society are addicted to social media like “Facebook”,
“WhatsApp” and many other social networking sites. Instead of going out and playing
they are sitting inside the houses and busy with this type of sites. Many believe that the
social media has greatly encouraged peoples to use the computers and mobiles at a larger
rate for expressing individual concerns without involving themselves in the real activities

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(Tess, 2013). For the purpose of supporting some issue people only use the “like” or
share button instead of physically involving in the supporting process of the issue.
 Impact on the commerce: Social media can be used as a medium by different
organisations for the purpose of connecting with different customers and to provide the
customers with the different information’s about the norms and products of the company.
Social media helps in increased popularity amongst the customers thereby helping the
organisations to increase its revenue. Studies have suggested that by the use of the social
network in the workplaces can help in increased knowledge of the workers and also for
sharing the knowledge’s. Social media helps in removing the barriers between the
workers thereby helping in better business performance and workers with more
knowledge about the different activities of the business (Kwahk & Ge, 2012). However, a
negative image and less number of sharing in the social media can cause the ruining of
the business. A negative image of the company in the social media can cause reduction in
the number of customers thereby making the business face huge amount of losses. Bitter
experience by the companies has made many of them remove the social sharing button
from their official websites.
 Effect on the work: Social media helps a lot in the process of recruiting and hiring of new
employees (Sponcil & Gitimu, 2013). It has been seen that most of the managers
responsible for hiring makes their decision that are dependent on the information’s of an
individual that are provided on the social media. Social media sites like the “LinkedIn” is
used for this purpose of choosing workers and for providing someone a platform for
someone to choose their career (Vaast & Kaganer, 2013).

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 Effect on the purpose of development and training: Individuals looking for jobs are more
advantageous in getting jobs by the use of latest information’s provided on the social
media. Many social media help in the learning process of the students. Social media has
also favoured in the long distance learning process (Selwyn, 2012). The negative effect of
distance learning is there are many cases of cheating in the social media platform.
 Effect on the moral challenges: Social media has been blamed as the main reason of
promoting social ills. This includes “cyberbullying” and “privacy issues”. Teenagers are
mainly responsible for the cyberbullying. The introduction of new social media sites is
making the teenagers to face more pressure in adopting the new trends in the social
media. A research has also shown that most of the teens are bullied on social media
whereas the others are responsible for the bullying (Kowalski et al., 2014). For the
purpose of spreading rumours and to share videos for the purpose of destroying
reputations and for blackmailing social media is used. Lack of security in many social
networking sites can lead to threats in the privacy of an individual.
 Effects on relationships: As social media is encouraging in establishing new friendships
and for creating an artificial bond between peoples. Social media has greatly decreased
the communication gap between two peoples but has also effected in the physical
interaction between them (Junco, 2012). Social media not only helps in promotion of
relationship between individuals but also promotes brand loyalty along with increasing
the customer business relationship.

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Advantages and disadvantages of social media:
Social media is having a lot of advantages. Social media is the latest trends nowadays
(Laroche, Habibi & Richard, 2013). The most important advantages of social media are listed
below:
1. The most important advantage of social media is it helps in connecting of the peoples
who are far away from each other. Social media allows peoples to connect to any people
living in anywhere of the world. For the purpose of creating connection there is no need
of considering any physical, social or geographical barriers.
2. Besides helping in connecting people it also helps in the fields of education also. Lots of
students and teachers get huge benefits from the social media. Social media allows the
option of following thereby helping any one to follow someone for the purpose of
learning something from the person they are following.
3. Along with the above mentioned help social media also helps in many other ways like
earning, advice and many mores.
4. Social media also helps in providing information’s and also provides the latest
information’s about the things that are taking place around us. Traditional mediums do
not provide us with the true news but social media does provide us this information’s and
the real news.
5. Social media helps in promoting of various products and helps in gaining the attention of
many customers. It provides a large platform for the purpose of connecting with the
peoples for the purpose of promotion.
6. Social media helps a lot in creating awareness among the people regarding various
sensitive issues (Korda & Itani, 2013).

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7. Social media can be used by various NGO’s for the purpose of raising funds and taking
assistance for the poor’s and the needy peoples.
8. Helps the government to keep of the daily incidents.
Disadvantages of social media:
Besides having so much advantages the social media platform is also having a lot of
disadvantages (Baruah, 2012). The disadvantages of social media are listed below:
1. The most important disadvantage of social media is cyberbullying. The most effect one of
cyberbullying are the teenagers. Either most of them are affected due to cyberbullying of
the ones who are doing this.
2. Another threat of social media is hacking. This means putting of details and personal
information of social media can lead to hacking of the personal data and may also effect
the life of a person.
3. The popular use of social media has led to an addiction towards this. This type of
addiction is very bad and can lead to disruption in the life of the peoples. Unlike
cyberbullying addiction is causing harmful effect mostly on the teenagers.
4. Ruining of someone’s reputation is easily possible on the social media as there is lack of
certain security steps. It is possible to create someone’s false image on social media very
easily (Kwon et al., 2013).
5. Social media is making peoples become lazy thereby effecting the health of the
individuals. Besides effecting the health, it also creates disorder in the daily routine of an
individual.

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6. Following someone who is addicted to drugs or alcohol or someone who is wealthy
makes the followers believing in the views shared by the followed person. Which initially
results in people doing the same negative things (Yang et al., 2012).
7. Social media can greatly affect the relationship between two peoples and are also
responsible for many cases of cheating in relationships.
8. Seeing the stunts performed on the social media causes many deaths.
Conclusion:
Looking into the affects and the advantages and disadvantages of the social media helps
to conclude that along with various positive outcomes there are also many negative outcomes.
We can also conclude to the fact that with the advancement in technology social media is
changing the lifestyle of the peoples. People are getting more and more addicted toward the
social media as the internet rates are decreasing and it is much more easy to get access to
internet. No one can escape the effect of social media now a day. The separation of social media
from the online world is totally impossible. The best method of avowing the risk on social media
to is think before implementing.

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References:
Baruah, T. D. (2012). Effectiveness of Social Media as a tool of communication and its potential
for technology enabled connections: A micro-level study. International Journal of
Scientific and Research Publications, 2(5), 1-10.
De Vries, L., Gensler, S., & Leeflang, P. S. (2012). Popularity of brand posts on brand fan pages:
An investigation of the effects of social media marketing. Journal of interactive
marketing, 26(2), 83-91.
Fuchs, C., Boersma, K., Albrechtslund, A., & Sandoval, M. (Eds.). (2013). Internet and
surveillance: The challenges of Web 2.0 and social media (Vol. 16). Routledge.
Gil de Zúñiga, H., Jung, N., & Valenzuela, S. (2012). Social media use for news and individuals'
social capital, civic engagement and political participation. Journal of Computer
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Mediated Communication, 17(3), 319-336.
Junco, R. (2012). The relationship between frequency of Facebook use, participation in
Facebook activities, and student engagement. Computers & Education, 58(1), 162-171.
Korda, H., & Itani, Z. (2013). Harnessing social media for health promotion and behavior
change. Health promotion practice, 14(1), 15-23.
Kowalski, R. M., Giumetti, G. W., Schroeder, A. N., & Lattanner, M. R. (2014). Bullying in the
digital age: A critical review and meta-analysis of cyberbullying research among youth.

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Kwahk, K. Y., & Ge, X. (2012, January). The effects of social media on E-commerce: A
perspective of social impact theory. In System Science (HICSS), 2012 45th Hawaii
International Conference on (pp. 1814-1823). IEEE.
Kwon, S., Cha, M., Jung, K., Chen, W., & Wang, Y. (2013, December). Prominent features of
rumor propagation in online social media. In Data Mining (ICDM), 2013 IEEE 13th
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Laroche, M., Habibi, M. R., & Richard, M. O. (2013). To be or not to be in social media: How
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Laroche, M., Habibi, M. R., Richard, M. O., & Sankaranarayanan, R. (2012). The effects of
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Sponcil, M., & Gitimu, P. (2013). Use of social media by college students: Relationship to
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Stieglitz, S., Dang-Xuan, L., Bruns, A., & Neuberger, C. (2014). Social media
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Tess, P. A. (2013). The role of social media in higher education classes (real and virtual)–A
literature review. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(5), A60-A68.