{"id":6531,"date":"2017-02-23T10:41:33","date_gmt":"2017-02-23T15:41:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.caskeys.com\/dc\/?p=6531"},"modified":"2017-03-04T13:24:12","modified_gmt":"2017-03-04T18:24:12","slug":"social-media-vs-social-capitol-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caskeys.com\/dc\/social-media-vs-social-capitol-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Mouse Underfoot &#8211; Social Media Vs. Social Capitol II"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h1>Introduction<\/h1>\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.caskeys.com\/dc\/social-media-vs-social-capital\/\">this preceding article<\/a> I&#8217;d spoke of some reasons why Social Media acts as a detriment to social capital. However, there are several advantages social media offers over traditional media to the engaged citizen.<\/p>\n<p>Two major hypotheses have been postulated in regards to social media vs. social capital:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>As social media proliferation increases, the balance of social capital decreases.<\/li>\n<li>As social media proliferation increases, the balance of social capital increases.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>As an alternative to these diametrically opposed viewpoints, I would like to propose a third hypothesis:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As social media proliferation increases, the balance of social capital remains constant.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In support, I have already offered points toward social media decreasing social capital. Let us now discuss some of the means by which social media can counteract its own negative effect.<\/p>\n<h1>Discussion<\/h1>\n<h2>Financial Access<\/h2>\n<p>An obvious advantage social media offers is potential cost effectiveness. Most social media applications are free to use, offering a powerful tool with cost measured only in time vested.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, social media also offers a point of income. Via specific fundraising apps like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Kickstarter<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/gofundme.com\" target=\"_blank\">gofundme.com<\/a> or direct fundraising campaigns, citizens and organizations have access to potential fund sources that simply did not exist less than a decade prior.<\/p>\n<h2>Global Society<\/h2>\n<p>Social media has yet to break down cultural, linguistic, and accessibility barriers, but it&#8217;s fair to say physical borders are approaching irrelevance. With a few clicks, one can can communicate with peers and strangers alike from around the world. The simple logistics of organizing a real world meeting is now no more difficult than clicking on a calendar drop-down. And though my previous article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.caskeys.com\/dc\/social-media-vs-social-capital\/#Digital_Divide\">made a point of only 40% of the world being online at all<\/a>, that&#8217;s still billions individuals that were just not accessible at all to the average citizen of ten years ago.<\/p>\n<h2><span id=\"Edutainment\">Edutainment<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Wasn&#8217;t this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.caskeys.com\/dc\/social-media-vs-social-capital\/#edutainment\">cited as a detriment<\/a>? Indeed it can be and thanks to Sturgeons Law usually is. That said, one cannot blame the hammer for poor construction. Making informational topics fun and is not a new idea &#8211; but social media gives us the power to do so quickly and easily.<\/p>\n<p>Describing how a benefit project to relief victims can be fun and beneficial to society is one thing. Posting a video showing people working together, becoming potential lifelong friends, and the resulting work they&#8217;ve done is quite another thing. Only social media gives this kind of power to the average citizen.<\/p>\n<h1>Conclusion<\/h1>\n<p>It&#8217;s not fair to say that I have proven my hypothesis, because I haven&#8217;t. There are dozens of points still to discuss, and a lack of hard data for analysis. Even so, on a personal level I believe there is currently a balance. We are no better or worse off in totality &#8211; the methodology is just different.<\/p>\n<p>If we want to tip the balance positively, it may help to think of social media for what it is. A tool. Social media for its own sake is worse than useless &#8211; used wrong it can quickly escalate to being one of society&#8217;s major challenges. But when taken for what it is, a vector, a tool, then it is can be the ultimate trump card toward bringing the world together as never before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s not all fire and brimstone &#8211; social media does have some good to offer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[221],"tags":[302,303,304],"class_list":["post-6531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic_alacrity","tag-academic-alacrity","tag-class-ict390","tag-class-ict390-article-discourse"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.caskeys.com\/dc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/logo-class.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5lNM5-1Hl","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caskeys.com\/dc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caskeys.com\/dc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caskeys.com\/dc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caskeys.com\/dc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caskeys.com\/dc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6531"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.caskeys.com\/dc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6559,"href":"https:\/\/www.caskeys.com\/dc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6531\/revisions\/6559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caskeys.com\/dc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caskeys.com\/dc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caskeys.com\/dc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caskeys.com\/dc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}