Social Media Audience - Class 6 PDF Download

So far, we have explored the evolution of the audience and its concept along with surveying the prevailing debate of the term, the questions surrounding its validity, with particular reference to the rise of social media. So, of course, social media have developed a new breed of audience, which is different from before. However, the question is, how different is it. In the following section, we will look into the differences as we explore different types of social media audiences and various concerns related to them.

Characteristics

We have seen earlier that Marshall McLuhan categorized the evolution of communication media and media audiences in four stages-tribal age, literacy age, the print age, and electronic age. However, influenced by his work, Professor Robert K. Logan of the University of Toronto updated the categorization including the age of new media. Following his categorization, the five stages are as follows:
(i) The age of non-verbal mimetic communication
(ii) The age of orality
(iii) The age of literacy
(iv) The age of electronic mass media
(v) The age of digital interactive media

Marshall McLuhan proposed that the concept of the medium is the message which means that the meaning and effect of the message are shaped to a large extent by the medium of the message. In that respect, with the rise of digital interactive media, the effect of the message changes, affecting the nature of the audience. In comparison to the audiences of the earlier era, the audiences in the digital era are active or passive-active. The true spirit of the global village has emerged in the digital era where the horizontal communication between individuals residing in geographically far-off places is fluent and dense, while the direct face-to-face communication between individuals living in small geographical communities is becoming less.
The concept of community itself has changed, challenging the concept of time and space. Virtual communities or global communities have emerged. Geographical communities have become highly heterogeneous, while the homogenization of global culture has reached a high. The speed of communication has been revolutionized. From the core-periphery model, where unity in diversity was innate in the electronic age, the audience has become highly fragmented based on the break-up model of audience fragmentation. Communication has become highly mediated with a drastic fall in face-to-face and direct communication.
The close-knit bond among geographical communities has faded, increasing the alienation among the individuals living nearby. Moreover, the power of gatekeepers and the hegemonic control by global media corporations has fallen with the rise of social media. This has resulted in information explosion and exposure to alternative views for the audiences. As a result of all this gradual inclusion of so-called subaltern voices and perspectives have become more frequent among the social media audience.
Prof. Jan A. G. M. Van Djik of the University of Twente, the Netherlands in his book The Network Society: Social Aspects of New Media presented the characteristics of new media where he included various aspects of the new media audiences. Based on his criteria, the following are a few essential characteristics of social media audiences -
(i) Component: While earlier, the audience had a collective representation, the social media audiences are demassified - they are separate individuals who are continuously connected over a network.
(ii) Nature: Social media audiences are more heterogeneous when compared with any other audience. They can belong to any age, gender, race, class, caste, nation, or section of the society with diverse socio-psychological backgrounds.
(iii) Scope: The global village dwellers of the electronic media era have become netizens who have changed the scope from global to glocal - a combination of global and local. The audience transforms local elements onto global platforms using universal resonance.
(iv) Connectivity: The social media audiences enjoy high connectivity among individuals, rather than between communities. The communication frequency is higher at individual levels, at times crossing beyond geographical distances, rather than between communities.
(v) Density: Earlier local communities were closely knit, creating a strong communal bond. However, the density of local communication and bond has decreased as social media audiences spend their time interacting in a mediated environment with people from geographically scattered places.
(vi) Centralization: With increasing audience fragmentation, centralization of communication and power distribution decreases, creating a polycentric nature of the audience as well as communication systems.
(vii) Inclusiveness: As the social media audience is fragmented, alienated, and scattered, the inclusiveness of relations is rather loose. With rising individualistic society, the representative inclusiveness in the socio-political process has become more and more difficult.
(viii) Type of community: Though the role of communities has sharply decreased, yet, the community of audiences seems to have transferred mostly to the virtual world, enhancing the diversity of these audience communities.
(ix) Type of organization: The organizations rather than being ruled by bureaucracy are being ruled by infocracy, where audiences are horizontally differentiated rather than vertically integrated. That is to say, even though the hegemonic control of power has receded, rather than developing integration or unity based on increasing horizontal communication, they have developed more and more horizontal differentiation.
(x) Type of household: The nuclear family setup that was already growing has now traversed into individual family relations as social media is taking out most of the time away from family interaction. The alienation between individuals even within the family has increased as family members have turned into dedicated audiences for social media. Communication has become mediated even among family members, relatives, and friends.
(xi) Type of primary communication: The audience of social media use mediated communication extensively, with a gradual decrease in face-to-face communication.
(xii) Kind of media: The social media audiences use narrowcast interactive media in place of broadcast mass media. Due to this, audiences are much more active in their media choices. They are participants in experiencing media, rather than as passive consumers. They are getting habituated to personalized content with high interactivity.
(xiii) The number of media: Social media audiences are getting habituated to handling a high number of media or sources of information. As the issue of space limitation in publishing has decreased, so the revolution of information and information sources has become an obvious extension.

Types

Dennis McQuail categorized the audience of mass media by place, by people, by type of medium, by content, and by time. The social media audience with its transnational nature has now attained different dimensions for these categories, particularly for the categories by place and by type of medium. However, still in many cases, this categorization remains intact.
(i) By place: Earlier the categorization was mainly local, regional, national, international, etc. However, the social media audience becomes transnational in nature, more and more complexity of the categorization by place increased. In a few cases, the audience is categorized more in terms of the similarity of users’ behavior rather than the geographical proximity. However, still, with increasing glocal communication, the audience in a few cases is classified by place to personalize the message as accurately as possible.
(ii) By people: This category has gained immense importance in the age of social media. The audiences are categorized based on then-age, gender, race, class, political leaning, etc. With targeted users’ behavioral patterns in the age of social media, the audiences can also be classified based on the strength and quality of network they have in their social media accounts, along with their cultural tastes based on their activities online.
(iii) By type of medium: The audience was done as earlier, can still be classified based on their usage pattern of the social media platforms. There are multiple social media platforms, and audiences may choose to use particularly one or two. Further audiences may have then-accounts in multiple platforms, but still, be active users of one or two. Thus, audiences can be classified according to the platform they are using.
(iv) By the content of messages: As was done earlier, the audiences are still classified based on the content of their preference. However, particularly for social media, the audiences are not only audiences, but they are also producers of content. So we need to identify not only the type of content the audiences are liking or disliking but also the type of content they are sharing and the type of content they are creating. This categorization again can be based on genre, beats, subject matter, or even style.
(v) By time: This category earlier was more for identifying daytime audiences, prime time audiences or fleeting audiences, and dedicated audiences. Interestingly in the case of social media, this categorization becomes essential with added dimensions. Not only are the audiences categorized based on the time they prefer to use a particular social media platform but also based on the length of time they spend on a platform. Further, social media audiences can be followers, can be subscribers, or even can be active participants.
Beyond these established categorizations, social media audiences can also be classified depending on their degree of involvement. There can be passive audiences who have just created their profiles and do not use a particular platform. There can be active audiences who have created their profiles and just check the updates without engaging any further.
There can be passive users who have created their profiles, check the updates, but without engaging any further on that particular medium, they use the information received from the particular platforms for various purposes of their lives. For example, an active audience will check all the updates from friends and family seen as feeds and then will forget about it. However, a passive user will look for a way to do a video on YouTube and will treat that thing as learning from YouTube. The passive user although will not like or comment or act otherwise online for that particular video.
Further, there can be active users who will act online as well as apply the information received from social media platforms in their lives. There are participants who not only watch, comment, or like, but also who share or post, or proffer their contribution to the particular social media platform. We have to keep in mind that an individual does not necessarily always fall under a single category - the individual might change categories depending on the platform and time. So there is no airtight compartmentalization of social media audience as such.

Concerns

So far, we have seen how social media have democratized the information society and how social media have unsettled the hegemonic power hierarchy and control of corporate media. However, the glory of the medium is not entirely unstained. There are significant concerns that are troubling the true spirit of the medium. One of the significant concerns with social media is its failure to include the marginalized section of society. Though it has succeeded to include alternative voices more than any other medium, there are limitations. Social media runs on a platform that requires not only literacy but also computer literacy.
Further, it requires not only an electric connection but also speedy Internet connections. For accessing many social media, there is a requirement for a high-speed broadband network. Though social media operates in regional languages, a large amount of content and audience are unreachable if the English language is not known. English dominates the Internet, thus suppressing the content for other language speakers. Such requirements to become social media users, restrict the access of these media to a large extent. Not everyone, therefore, can be a social media audience.
Thus social media, to some extent become an elitist media platform, particularly in countries where broadband penetration is very low, electricity does not reach all households, literacy, and computer literacy rate is low. In such countries a large number of its citizens live outside the realm of social media, thus never being able to be a part of the medium that can change their lives for betterment. Also, the issue of digital inequality has inflicted the positive image of social media with major drawbacks.
As there are few countries in the world with higher broadband penetration, higher literacy rate, etc., those countries are the privileged ones in the present scenario. Those countries with lower rates have lesser access to information sources and social media. The same division exists even within a country between its urban and rural areas. While metropolitan urban areas in India are gradually shifting towards the fifth generation of Internet connectivity, the rural areas still strive with second-generation or lower or a bit higher connectivity.
Thus, with limited access to social media, the audiences of these areas have less access to socio-political debates, information, and opinion development platforms of the nation. This results in structural backwardness dividing the nation between those who have access and those who do not. Apart from these, there is also a growing corporate take-over of social media platforms. Social media have so far been a platform for the people and by the people. However, the owners of various social media sites are already making huge profits. They are exploring avenues to monetize by selling the audiences not only to advertisers but also to political parties, propaganda generators, and other interest groups.
Privacy of social media users is at stake. Detailed data of netizens are available almost to anyone in the world, as the data are transmitted beyond political boundaries and geographical distances. Further, like earlier systems, gradually social media platforms are also becoming an extension of a few global media corporate houses which are monopolizing the industry. Due to this, the audience is at risk of a digital era of hegemony which is at its best than ever before. With web 3.0 or the semantic web, the propaganda and hegemonic powers become so subtle that it even becomes difficult for audiences to identify.
This triggers another major concern. Social media offers a platform for all, which includes audiences who are not media literate. This proposes a danger for the democratic functioning of a nation. There have been multiple instances of mob lynching in India, which were caused by messages and fake information shared via social media platforms. It also provides a glimpse of the audiences of social media who are vulnerable enough to be misled to this extent. So on one hand, though the audiences have become active information seekers with opinions of their own to debate on the social media platforms, there are, on the other hand, those who can easily be brainwashed by this overpowering media.
Moreover, if one looks at the micro-level interaction, the psycho-social profile of the audiences has changed a lot with social media. Here the concerns are growing alienation, identity crisis, weakening family ties, the virtual transformation of life and living, para-social relations, media dependency, egocentric society, detachment from the immediate environment, mediated emotions, social media burnout, decreasing attention span, increasing irritability, etc., all these and more have been identified as symptoms of heavy users of social media. So even though social media platforms are helping people with information, alternative views, and knowledge, they are also simultaneously causing various negative effects on their audiences.