Blog Post 2- Social Networking Sites

Social Networking Sites 

Social networking sites have become a large part of many people’s daily lives. According to the online slideshow the average person spends roughly 2.5 hours per day on social media sites. I wanted to learn more about how spending so much time on these social networking sites effected people mentally. In order to do that we must first outline what makes a social networking site. According to the online slideshow, in order to meet the criteria of a social networking site it must: construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. Based on this definition I think that it is obvious why people tend to spend so much time on these social networking sites. These sites bring people together and they can socialize and share things about their lives all without leaving the comfort of their own home.

I found one article that discusses all about how the use of social networking sites effects a person’s self-image or as they call it in the article, a persons “self-effect.” According to Valkenburg, “Self-effects are the effects of messages the cognitions, emotions, attitudes, and behaviors of the message creators/senders themselves.” One of the theories in the article that I found to be interesting was the part where it talked about self-effects and the affordance of social media. An interesting point that they bring up in that part of the article is the contrast of self-effects in reality versus the same persons self-effects online. People tend to share more personal information online than they normally would in an offline setting. The article says that there are three reasons for this. The first reason, according to the article, is that “it is more likely to lead to internalization” meaning that people feel better about their self-effects when they post positive things about themselves on their social media pages. Another, reason is that people desire attention. People share more on social media to gain acceptance, feedback, and sympathy from others. The third reason that people share more information on social networking sites is because of the affordance of social media. Having a profile on a social media site is completely free. If you have access to the internet than you can create a profile on a social networking site. After reading this article, I think that it is safe to say that social networking sites have a profound influence on our self-effects. These influences can be positive or negative, but overall, it is up to the user to decide how they will use their social networking sites to better their self-effect.

References

Valkenburg, P. M. (2017). Understanding Self-Effects in Social Media. Human Communication Research, 43(4), 477–490. https://doi-org.libweb.lib.utsa.edu/10.1111/hcre.12113

Blog post 1

I have especially taken an interest in the FM radio part in the online slideshow number five. One thing that I found interesting in the online slideshow is that the FM channels are 20 times wider than the AM channels. In the lecture we talked about how that was because at one point radio companies wanted to carry television signals on these FM channels. This never actually happened but that is the reason the channels are much wider than the AM channels.

 I think that it is important for people to understand how this simple technology works so that they have a foundation of knowledge for how the new technology works. One thing that I am learning in this class is that although our technology looks much different today than it did in the early 1900’s the foundation of it is still the same. We still use the technology that we discovered in the early 1900’s to make the cell phone that you see today. The foundation of it is the same and new technology will probably always have the same foundation. We just build onto it as it evolves.