Social Media Revolution: A Report on Emergence and Societal Impact

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the emergence of social media, tracing its historical roots from the invention of the telegraph to the rise of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. It examines the key milestones and technological advancements that have shaped the evolution of social media, highlighting its profound impact on various aspects of society. The report delves into the positive effects, such as improved social awareness, ease of information sharing, enhanced connectivity, and business growth. It also addresses the negative consequences, including the spread of misinformation, unethical promotions, and potential impacts on mental health. Furthermore, the report explores how social media has revolutionized business practices, fostering innovation and improving interaction values. In conclusion, the report emphasizes the transformative role of social media in modern society, acknowledging both its benefits and challenges.

Inquiry Based Learning
Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY........................................................................................................................................3
Emergence of social media...........................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION....................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES....................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Social media is an application that ensures connectivity of the users over
internet. Social media applications are defined as the systematic approach to
connect with other users over the same network. This report will emphasis on the
emergence of the social media network in the world. Furthermore, report will also
project the impacts of the social media emergence over different aspects of the
society. Critical evaluation of the emergence of social media will be summarised in
this report. Different factors will also project that has influenced due to emergence of
the different social media networks.
MAIN BODY
Emergence of social media
Social media is an application tool that ensures connectivity between the
users. Emergence of the social media networks has been idealised as the revolution
of the society. Social media has restricted the distances between the peoples due to
its fast connectivity between the users of the application (Boczkowski, Mitchelstein
and Matassi, 2017). As per many researched conducted emergence of social media
is among the key revolutions associated with the current century. It has reduced the
boundaries to interact with other people located any part of the world within few
seconds. Social media emergence has changed the world immensely. Society
become3s more connective towards the daily operations they are engaged with.
Social media is also consisted with the deep history. In the 1792 telegraph
was invented. It can be stated that telegraph was the beginning of the social
connectivity between individuals. Telegraph allowed peoples to send messages to
other peoples. Although it was not much precise but it was the beginning of the
social media networks. After the telegraph was invented computers began to
introduce in the early 20th century. After the computer was introduced in the year
1940 super computers were introduced to the society. After the super computer was
introduced the earliest form of internet call as CompuServe was developed. In the
year 1979 technology has upgraded and usenet allows users to communicate with
each other through virtual newsletters. Internet relay chats or IRCs were first used in
the year 1988 (Deseriis, 2017). In the year 1997 first recognised social media site

called Six Degrees was introduced. This enabled users to upload a profile picture
and make friends with other users over the same channel. In the year 1999 first
blogging site was invented. This site was proven as the revolution of the social
media in the world. After the blogging was introduced social media became popular
in the world. Social media sites like My Space and LinkedIn became more popular
between the users. After that YouTube also came out in the year 2005. This has
changed the entire social media structure all across the globe. Facebook and Twitter
both introduced in the year 2006. Both the applications are still among the most
popular applications over internet. Today the social Media has emerged as the
revolution in the society. Many other applications like Tumbler, Instagram and other
applications has also became a part of the social media that has also improved the
user experience over the social media channels.
Importance of social media
Social media has played a major role in improving the social values of the
peoples. Social media has changed the standard of living of peoples all across the
globe. Society becomes more connected towards each other. Social media has also
channelized the usage of internet all across the globe. It is concluded in research
that due to social media networks and its emergence number of the internet users
has received a major hike of almost 70% all across the globe. Following importance
social media has played that can be summarised in the following manners.
Improved social awareness: Social media has played a huge role in improving
people’s awareness over different aspects and issues. Social media is an easy
platform to share any information (Dey, 2020). All companies and government run
the social campaigns as a part of the corporate social responsibility to attract more
peoples in order to join the campaign. This is an effective medium to share
information about any social issues. In order to improve the social awareness over
different topics social media has proven as the revolution in the society.
Ease in information sharing: Social media has provided ease in sharing different
information with other individuals active over the same channels. Information sharing
is among the key usage of social media channels. Information sharing over the
social media networks becomes so easy that user can share information to bunch of
peoples at the same time with the support of social media network.

Improved connectivity: Social media applications played huge role in improving
connectivity between friends and family. Social media network not just made it easier
but also it becomes cheaper to connect over the social media application with friends
and family. This is also a crucial change social media has introduced in the society.
Peoples can connect over social media very easily (Henderson, Mutongi and
Whittam, 2018). It provide access to video call, voice call, messages, text messages,
voice messages and other form of messages that also made conversations more
interesting. It has been researched that after the emergence of social media
networks people become more social and connective with each others. As due to
social media connectivity becomes easier and cheap this has improved the standard
of living of people in society.
Access to information: Social media has also emerged over the period of time due
to development of information technology. Today the usage of social media is not
only restricted to connecting with peoples over social media but rather it becomes
the biggest mode of collecting information. Users can easily access to immense
amount of information over the social media network (Kgatle, 2018). Information
available over social sites is related to all topics and social issues. Users can access
to any kind of new article at social networks. Due to this aspects it can be stated that
emergence of social media made information more accessible for the users. Apart
from the positive impacts of the social media it can be further stated that social
media has also created negative impacts on the users. As there is not any defined
way over social media network to access the authenticity of the information. Due to
this aspect numerous of wrong and unethical information gets easily shared over the
social media networks. Due to wrong information many social issues also creates.
Improved branding: Social media has becomes the biggest source of brand
advertisements. In the past one decade constant development in social media users
has witnessed. This emergence in the active users at different social media networks
has provided scope to all companies to promote products and services over such
applications. Social media has become the most convenient approach to promote
company’s products and services as it provide effective base of active users along
with the cheaper cost of advertisement over such networks (Kumar and et.al., 2018).
Company can generate effective revenues only by promoting the products online. It
is reported that by promoting products and services over internet all big companies

has improved the brand popularity at international business environment.
Channelling promotional campaigns over social media networks is very easy and
convenient. Company’s can easily control the promotional campaigns over such
social media sites and applications. Many researched has also projected the
negative impacts of social media networks. The emergence of social media has also
resulted into unethical promotions over such applications. As social media do not
ensure any authenticity of products and services in such a process many times users
of the applications gets attracted towards wrong and non useful products by
witnessing branding campaigns at social media. This causes to fraud with the users
of the social media application.
Emergence of business environment: Social media has positively hit the entire
business environment. It is witnessed that after the emergence of the social media
networks all across the globe business environment has also facilitated themselves.
Numbers of customers has also increased related to the branded products. Social
media has created the volatile atmosphere for the entire corporate sector as even
the new entrants in the corporate sector get the opportunities to generate effective
revenues out of the business operations (Marais, 2018). Social media has provided
scope to new business ventures to promote the products over social media
applications and generate effective revenues from the business operations. New
business ventures also carry the opportunities to develop the effective brand image
even in short term period even in the presence of the big companies. Many small
companies also established the retail ventures by selling products over such social
media applications. This also causes to effective business practices as such
ventures do not need to invest effective financial resources in establishing the entire
business venture. This is an effective medium to operate business even at the
limited resources.
Improved innovation: Social media application has also improved innovation
practices between the users. Many start up businesses are running over the different
social media networks. Innovation play huge role in the development of the society
(Palen and Hughes, 2018). Social media has also drives awareness in the people
towards innovative business ideas and practices. Innovation has been the key
influences social media has created in the society from the presence.

Improves Interaction values: Currently social media plays great role in improving
interaction values also, especially for different companies or businesses. For
example; currently most businesses are properly managing their social media pages
on different social media platforms, like; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. In this
situation, they can easily improve their interaction values within their different
customers through these social media platforms. Currently most people are using
these platforms, in which they always like, comments and shares posts of various
businesses. When any person comments on any company’s post, then that company
is responsible to quick replay of that comment, because this step company can
improve its interaction values with people in the market.
On the other side, many times some strangers also become best friends
through social media. Currently people react like on social media when they really
like any person’s post. Many times people comment also on different post. So, this
attributes of social media give opportunity to people for improving their interaction
values. Nowadays many people have started to share their talent also through these
social media platforms (Walther, 2018). For example; people who has skills of
capturing extra-ordinary natural photograph, in which shares their capered
photographs on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc. Then many other users of social
media like these photographs. Basically, social media platforms played an effective
role for improving living standard of people.
It can be stated that social media has been the revolution from the
development and growth of the society. Emergence of social media networks has
derived many social changes in the society. It also provided ease in operating
business operations. Almost all activities are operated through different social media
applications in today’s business and social world. It can be summarised that due to
social media many drastic changes has witnessed in society that has upgraded the
standard of living of peoples in society.
CONCLUSION
This report has projected the different aspects of the emergence of social
media in the society. The report has projected the brief history about the emergence
of social media. It is projected that emergence of social media has been initiated in

the year 1792 with the launch of telegraph. After that many more inclusions has
made in process to emergence of social media in the society. This report has
projected all emergences and development from telegraph to YouTube and
applications like facebooks. Social media has improved the standard of living of
people in society. This report has also projected all the impacts associated with the
emergence of social media on the society and its development. Impacts like ease of
information sharing, social awareness, connectivity, business growth and
development and other impacts has projected in this report. Social media has
upgraded the people’s perspectives towards different aspects of society.
REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Boczkowski, P., Mitchelstein, E. and Matassi, M., 2017, January. Incidental news:
How young people consume news on social media. In Proceedings of the
50th Hawaii international conference on system sciences.
Deseriis, M., 2017. Technopopulism: The emergence of a discursive
formation. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access
Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society. 15(2). pp.441-458.
Dey, S., 2020. Let there be clamor: Exploring the emergence of a new public sphere
in India and use of social media as an instrument of activism. Journal of
Communication Inquiry. 44(1). pp.48-68.

Henderson, F., Mutongi, A. and Whittam, G., 2018. The emergence of social
innovation in social enterprise: an analytical framework.
Kgatle, M. S., 2018. Social media and religion: Missiological perspective on the link
between Facebook and the emergence of prophetic churches in southern
Africa. Verbum et Ecclesia. 39(1). pp.1-6.
Kumar, R. and et.al., 2018, August. Benchmarking aggression identification in social
media. In Proceedings of the First Workshop on Trolling, Aggression and
Cyberbullying (TRAC-2018) (pp. 1-11).
Marais, K., 2018. A (bio) semiotic theory of translation: The emergence of social-
cultural reality. Routledge.
Palen, L. and Hughes, A. L., 2018. Social media in disaster communication.
In Handbook of disaster research (pp. 497-518). Springer, Cham.
Walther, J. B., 2018. The emergence, convergence, and resurgence of intergroup
communication theory in computer-mediated communication. Atlantic
Journal of Communication. 26(2). pp.86-97.