ABSTRACT
With the advent of Web 2.0, social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter, as well as social media sites such as YouTube and Wikipedia, have become ubiquitous in the lives of many people in developed nations, offering new opportunities for social connection, entertainment, and business opportunities (Levinson, 2013); in other words, a new technology often, if not invariably, introduces new affordances. Typically, these Internet sites and the communications they enable are referred to as “social media.” However, media have arguably always been social, with audiences discussing the older media such as books, television, and films. Thus, to distinguish these new media forms (e.g., Twitter) from older media forms (e.g., television), many in both the academy and industry have referred to newer forms as “social” media. Although some have argued that this distinction is technically imprecise (e.g., Levinson, 2013), the term “new” media is similarly imprecise, because new is always a relative term. Thus, we utilize here the term social media, because social media are distinct from older media in that every consumer is a potential producer, social media are free, social media are adapted by users, and social media are outside the permanent control of either the users or the initial producers.
