Social media, a term used for social networking platforms, such as Facebook (launched in 2004) and formerly known Twitter (2006).
Before such platforms came to be, the public internet was mostly like a hobby basement. Like, general and topic-specific forums, and online gaming associations, ranging from playing chess online to multiplayer of back then “modern” video games – i.e. the gaming platform Steam was launched in 2003, and the first 3D video games were from only a few years before. In 2000, first broadband was introduced, back then at 512 kbps. In 2001, 3G network made it possible for mobile phones to connect to the internet, and in 2007 the first iPhone was sold.
In numbers, by 1996, there were worldwide about 45 million people using the internet, by 1999, 150 million, by 2000 there were 407 million, and it grew ever since. So, unlike the companies affected by the dot-com crash in early 2000, these online services appeared during the years, many (just) got their first internet connection.
Personally, I was hanging out with people via Internet Relay Chat. Something how Discord (2015) looks like – a number of chat channels. And offline, I was using phone for contact with friends and family. So, Facebook was not of much interest to me. But basically, sure nice service, for people to easily connect with each other. And also nice, for people to be able to promote their content. Like, someone taking cute cat photo, for people to easily share it with each other.
As the years went by, and more people joined such social networking sites, it became places with relatively large audience, as in one room. And, this made it more valuable to those, who want to send a message to or among the audience.
On one hand, this concerns targeted advertising. In example, running a shop in Berlin, I would want to let people know, that the shop exists to begin with, and it sure sounds a nice feature, being able to ask e.g. Facebook for some ad displays specifically to users from Berlin.
On the other hand, there are people, who use the mechanics of the online service, to push their agenda into everyone’s view.
Specifically, the cat photo from earlier, it went sort of “naturally viral”, with everyone of the photographer’s friends liking and sharing it further, and post ending up on some chart of “hits of the day”, traveling perhaps all the way into TV even, such as a TV morning show, talking about this photo and showing it, and perhaps even inviting the photographer onto the show.
In contrast to that, stands an organized manner, in which a post gets pushed. Such as drilling YouTube channel viewers, to like and subscribe, to bring them numbers up, all with that free viral marketing – but taking it even further, to inflate these numbers. Such as by grouping together – let’s take a discussion about comparison of video game consoles as example.
A number of YouTubers say: “Xbox, the best.” and a number of YouTubers say: “Playstation for life!”. And among the audience, the viewers may perhaps tend to side with what they know from home. Like, comments under videos such as: “Hell yeah, Playstation! I have one here, and it makes things appear on screen. There surely can’t be anything better.”
So far, it just sounds like normal fun. But for whichever “reason”, things may get quite heated, reaching even levels such as the viewers of one YouTube channel having intimidated another YouTuber from a different channel, and even went as group to where he was living at. And this sort of raw viewer-crowd power, some used to wage some YouTuber-gang warfare with, that gets used by some others primarily for maximising the free marketing effects, by pushing the content of their supposed side, by making everyone feel involved about it.
And what this means is, that even a loose network of broadcasters, can push out a stream of like 24/7 “fresh” content, to constantly make it into e.g. the Twitter headlines, when there is an audience obdiently and consistently upvoting the content of these broadcasters.
And that in turn means, that to be part of the game, to be among the Twitter headlines and such, it would also need a somewhat organized manner about it. As in rallying the masses, to get even more upvotes on own content, than that other guy has.
To me, that seems rather childish. To the owners of these social networks, every spectacle may be great, that makes the users go click-click-click, to increase ad-views. But for political discourse, to not be much more than an online shouting match, where people compete for upvotes (and for ad revenue), day-in day-out, that seems quite silly. To be precise, if I were involved in a political party, there is an argument for the organization of an election campaign, to include presence on social media, to be seen where many of the voters happen to hang out a lot or even most of their time. But I wouldn’t really perceive it different, than it just being one of the media channels, for political ads.
In example, political ads in TV. In a numbers of countries, there are regulations about this, when they can be aired and such. And why not make use of it, especially when the “political competition” has their spots on air already. But that doesn’t mean, that this political party would strive to be the main subject of every type of show such a TV channel has. That is shows such as:
“Who will get the most upvotes today? Watch the arena match competitors in live-stream today! A rap-battle of epic proportions, about telling it everyone in their face. Today’s topic, as stipulated by the first louder shout, should women’s voter rights be turned back? The lines get drawn among the competitors, about who stands on which side about this question, that now everyone is talking about, and you heard it here first. So, today, who will get the most upvotes? Stay tuned, we’ll be right back after these commercials.”, and so forth.