Social Media Analysis: Fame, Online Reputation, and Democratization

This essay examines the issues surrounding social media, focusing on how individuals gain fame, the importance of online reputations, and the impact of online democratization. It uses Danielle Bregoli as a case study to illustrate how someone can gain fame for negative reasons and explores different perspectives on online reputations, including those presented through infographics and Thierer's viewpoint. The essay also reflects on the increasing importance people place on online fame and how it affects their real-life interactions. The document concludes by referencing relevant studies on social media behavior and online popularity. Desklib provides this and many other resources for students to enhance their understanding.

Running head: ISSUES IN SOCIAL MEDIA
Issues in Social Media
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1ISSUES IN SOCIAL MEDIA
Table of Contents
Part 1................................................................................................................................................2
Question 1:...................................................................................................................................2
An individual who gained fame through social media............................................................2
Ways in which the virtual world and the concept of online "democratization" contributed to
this person's fame.....................................................................................................................2
Question 2:...................................................................................................................................3
Do online reputations matter?..................................................................................................3
Infographic and Thierer perspectives......................................................................................3
Merits and drawbacks of the above perspectives Infographic and Thierer.............................4
Part 2................................................................................................................................................4
Reflective critiques of peers........................................................................................................4
References........................................................................................................................................5

2ISSUES IN SOCIAL MEDIA
Part 1
Question 1:
An individual who gained fame through social media
Gaining fame through social media is much easier today than it was some years before
since internet is available to every other person at a very cheap amount that they have to be to the
service providers. This gives huge opportunity to the people to show different side of them and
become a sensation through the internet overnight and it might not always be for a good reason.
Just like Danielle Bregoli, a teenager who gained fame through the social media for showing her
spoilt brat side unapologetically on the online Dr. Phil show (Shen et al. 2015). Her unruly
manner and bad mouth made her a sensation overnight. Her monologue "cash me outside how
bout dah" became a staple for the Meme makers all over the internet. Her gaining fame through
the social media who was all for the wrong reasons which should not have been portrayed to the
world of internet.
Ways in which the virtual world and the concept of online "democratization" contributed
to this person's fame
Democratization is a term which means making a particular thing available to everyone
are accessible to everyone. Internet has also been part of democratization which makes it
accessible and available to every other person in the entire world. The service providers also
make it cheap for people to access it more and more (Larsson, 2018). The concept of online
democratization has contributed in the overnight fame of Danielle Bregoli for all the possible
wrong reasons. Instead of making her understand about the wrong way of life she is leading,
people started making memes out of her monologue. Online democratization is only reason that

3ISSUES IN SOCIAL MEDIA
has contributed to her fame because she was unique and nobody has witnessed something so
unruly in a teenager before. Since, internet was available to everyone, it was not difficult to make
jokes out of her behavior and voice their opinions about her.
Question 2:
Do online reputations matter?
Online reputations does not matter in the real world. However, for the people investing
that time more in the virtual world do take online reputations very seriously (Wegge et al. 2016).
This forms two different perspectives of seeing the entire situation since from a user's
perspective online reputation does matter but from the perspective of an expert dealing with
psychological orientations, online reputations as volatile as possible. Anything that gains fame
overnight online, does not have much longevity as just when the people would stop talking about
it and move on to another interesting thing on the Internet the latter would lose their worth within
seconds.
Infographic and Thierer perspectives
Infographic is graphical representation of information constricted and compacted in a
shortest way possible. Nowadays in the world of internet people don't have time to invest for
reading long graphical representation of information and that is why infographic handouts are
made to make people invest littlest amount of time for reading about a particular matter
(Trzciński & Rokita, 2017). On the other hand Thierer perspective states that in which ever
capacity a person chooses to refer their belief for an individual online, should be at Liberty of
their own taste and interest.

4ISSUES IN SOCIAL MEDIA
Merits and drawbacks of the above perspectives Infographic and Thierer
Infographic does make people view information in a very compacted manner but it also
makes people b used to wasting shorter time in reading which is an added demerit (Yang & Li,
2016).
The Thierer perspective on the other hand also help merits and demerits since it promotes
the right of an individual to have Liberty in their own taste and interest over choosing to watch
anything online but that also gives rise to watching things over the internet that do not have
much importance in the real world or do not add to the social advancement in the society
(Larsson, 2016).
Part 2
Reflective critiques of peers
Nowadays it has become very important for people to gain an online Fame. I have
personally seen people making sing song and lip sync videos by spending many hours just look
good on the Internet and be appreciated by people they do not know about. I believe this is
become an increasing problem since people at appreciating the praises provided to them by
others did you not even know about rather than people who appreciate them in their lives for
being who they are. The online person of a person is becoming much more different then what
the person is in their real life and it is becoming more important for them to enhance and make
the online personality more likeable to unknown people.

5ISSUES IN SOCIAL MEDIA
References
Larsson, A. O. (2016). Online, all the time? A quantitative assessment of the permanent
campaign on Facebook. New Media & Society, 18(2), 274-292.
Larsson, A. O. (2018). Thumbs up, thumbs down? Likes and dislikes as popularity drivers of
political YouTube videos. First Monday, 23(8).
Shen, W., Hu, Y. J., & Ulmer, J. R. (2015). Competing for Attention: An Empirical Study of
Online Reviewers' Strategic Behavior. Mis Quarterly, 39(3), 683-696.
Trzciński, T., & Rokita, P. (2017). Predicting popularity of online videos using support vector
regression. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 19(11), 2561-2570.
Wegge, D., Vandebosch, H., Eggermont, S., & Pabian, S. (2016). Popularity through online
harm: The longitudinal associations between cyberbullying and sociometric status in
early adolescence. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 36(1), 86-107.
Yang, X., & Li, G. (2016). Factors influencing the popularity of customer-generated content in a
company-hosted online co-creation community: A social capital perspective. Computers
in Human Behavior, 64, 760-768.