In this blog post, we will examine whether online communication is genuine interaction or simply information sharing through the evolution of social media.
“Tags,” “check-ins,” and “hashtags” are terms frequently used on social media today. When posting, “tagging” refers to attaching people who are in the same place, “checking in” refers to indicating the location where the post was uploaded, and “hashtagging” refers to creating categories to classify posts. The fact that these terms are familiar to us shows how closely social media has become a part of our lives. As social media has become a part of everyday life, we often see people forming different personas within their social networks and easily sharing and communicating with others. However, the ease of sharing and displaying one’s life on the internet has also led to problems such as invasion of privacy. As users become more aware of these issues, the purpose of social media is changing, and social media itself is evolving.
In South Korea, the first social media platform was a website called “Daum.” It was a school-based community where alumni could share photos and stories online. Later, a website called “Cyworld” was created to make friends outside of school. It introduced a system that allowed users to find friends of friends, expanding the social network. Next, Facebook emerged, further expanding the concept of friendship. On Facebook, users can connect not only with their friends’ friends, but also with strangers, and can become friends with anyone who shares their interests, allowing them to make friends with a wider range of people than ever before. However, dissatisfied with these platforms, users sought a more convenient way to share information, which led to the emergence of Instagram. Until then, relationships were centered on the individual, who revealed their identity, but today’s social media is more about sharing information than the concept of the self. People no longer see themselves as independent beings, but have broken down boundaries to become like giant photo albums on the internet.
By uploading content they want to share at a specific time and place, users have developed a system of sharing posts without revealing themselves, which is clearly different from the previous form of social media, where users were eager to show themselves. With these changes in social media, concerns are growing.
The biggest concern is whether communication in cyberspace can truly be considered communication. However, there is no need to worry. Looking at the history of social media, we can see that users create their own IDs and use social media to exchange posts with others, and that social media has evolved in different ways according to user demand. In the early days of social media, when the concept of friendship was broad, users were busy expanding their circle of friends and eager to make themselves known. As a result, they were busy “showing off” their beautiful and wonderful selves on the internet, spending more time in cyberspace than in reality to create their identity. However, the recent change in social media has shifted the focus from self-promotion to sharing albums in a space that has expanded to encompass the entire world. This change was driven by users who were dissatisfied with the previous format. In other words, users are spending less time online and are only viewing information and posts that are difficult to access in reality or are limited in nature.
As social media has changed in cyberspace, the concept of communication within it has also changed. In the past, communication on social media was defined as asking and answering questions about the well-being of friends on the internet, similar to traditional communication. However, social media today was created in response to skepticism about the exchange of information on the internet, which was the role of social media in the past, and has changed to omit most of the content that was exchanged in traditional communication. So how does social media communicate today? People around the world connected by networks can now indirectly share content that they cannot see or feel for themselves through social media in the form of shared albums. The act of exchanging content in this way can be considered communication, and furthermore, exchanging opinions about the content is also a new form of communication. In other words, communication has been redefined as searching for information that cannot be obtained in the real world, quickly finding what interests you, and exchanging opinions. Generally, the authenticity of communication is judged by comparing it to traditional communication in real-world human relationships, but communication is changing according to the unique environment of the Internet and the tastes of users, and it is different from communication in the real world because it has formed a new definition and meaning in itself.
Communication in cyberspace is clearly different from communication in the real world, where people talk and interact with each other. However, this is a form of communication that evolves along with the evolution of social media, and as such, it has its own meaning and is forming a new realm. Compared to communication in the real world, it is not half-baked communication, but rather a new realm with a different nature from traditional communication in the real world.
