Web 2.0 and User Generated Content within the Concept of Social Media

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2.1 Understanding Social Media

2.1.1 Web 2.0 and User Generated Content within the Concept of Social Media

Kaplan and Haenlein (2010: 61) define Social Media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content.” In this explanation, the authors clearly draw a line between the term and two related concepts that are frequently used together and often even equated with Social Media: the Web 2.0 and the User Generated Content (UGC). Kaplan and Haenlein claim that while the former stands as a platform for the development of Social Media, UGC can be seen “as the sum of all ways in which people make use of Social Media” (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010: 61).

The term ‘Web 2.0’ was coined by Tim O’Reilly in 2004 and refers to a new era of the World Wide Web, a high degree of activity, in which readers could become writers at anytime and thus modify the content of the Web. O’Reilly (2006: 4) sets out three basic characteristics of this new trend: openness, network effects and most importantly user participation. The latter means that users have the chance to “play an active role in generating content, rather than only passively consuming that which is created for them by others”

(Harrison & Barthel, 2009: 157). Therefore, an ‘active audience’ emerges which does not have to possess special technical skills to be capable of content creation or modification, which is built up by a three-step process: interaction, sharing and construction. O’Reilly calls this course of actions as the ‘architecture of participation’ (Harrison & Barthel, 2009: 159) which are now widely used by companies to build their own profit through user-generated content. Harrison & Barthel (2009: 162) state that Web 2.0 is based on the reconceptualization of users from consumers to producers or as Bruns (2007) put it:

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INTERACTION INTERACTION

CCONSTRUCTIONONSTRUCTION CCOLLABORATIONOLLABORATION

SHARING SHARING

‘produsers’. While traditionally, media users are only observers, readers or consumers, new technologies transferred the media into a new industry which enables the audience to consume and produce at the same time: interact, share, collaborate and construct.

Figure 3: The Circle of Participation in Social Media

However, according to Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, there is nothing unique in the idea of Web 2.0, which is based on technologies, which have been available for years. He claims that the idea of content making and collaboration has been inherent in the creation of web, therefore there is nothing novel in the Web 2.0 which is purely a “blog and wiki thing” (Clarke, 2006). In contrast, Harrison & Barthel (2009: 161) state that what is new about Web 2.0 is the “now-widespread recognition and acknowledgment that users actively apply the affordances of new technologies in the service of their own creative and instrumental objectives…” Active media users have been present for a long time, but the number of participants was quite low before new media technologies have become easily accessible for everyone.

As this innovation empowered the users and their creativity grew, moreover by the ever-increasing availability of Internet access and advancements in technology, new types of User Generated Content have appeared and gradually the web developed further into Social

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Media. The concept has two key components: it is social and it is media-related. Based on these two dimensions Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) determined six types of Social Media, which are divided in accordance with their closeness to the ‘media’ or to the ‘social’ part (see Table 1).

2.1.1.1 The ‘Social’ Dimension of Social Media

Kaplan and Haenlein see social processes like self-presentation and self-disclosure as the key elements of Social Media. The former states that in any social interaction, on the one hand, people present themselves in a way that others can get good impressions of them, but on the other hand they also want to display an image, which is more or less consistent with their personal identity. Self-presentation is generally performed through self-disclosure, the conscious or unconscious exposure of personal information (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010: 61-62).

Vrasidas and Veletsianos (2010: 2) emphasize the fact that “human activity is by nature social” and place ‘interaction’ to its center. The authors state that the world by

‘meaning’ is based on social ‘interactions’ within a community and this meaning further develops through ‘interpretations’. They define “interaction as the reciprocal actions of two or more actors within a given context” thus “social interaction is an ongoing process that shapes human conduct as actors fit their actions with one another and form a continuous flow of interaction” (Vrasidas and Veletsianos, 2010: 3).

Expression of individual opinions along with social interaction constructs knowledge, which further develops through social activities and learning processes of individuals. This practice is facilitated by the development of communication technologies and the emergence of online communities.

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2.1.1.2 The ‘Media’ Component of Social Media

The media dimension of Social Media is connected to the idea of Internet as a new media facet. In the beginning, the Internet was solely considered as a technology of

‘interpersonal communication’ and not yet of ‘mass communication’ (Leaning, 2009: 44).

However, later it was identified that it possesses certain characteristics that distinguish it from other communication and media technologies. According to Leaning (2009: 50-61), these are human-technology interactivity, interpersonal communication, content production, and individualized media. With regards to the first three features, the Internet does not only provide a way for communication among humans, but interactions of humans with machines and thus, it allows users to modify the content of media through engaging with new technologies. The characteristic of individualized media refers to the Internet’s ability to offer a more widely available media content geographically and temporally.

Kaplan and Haenlein (2010: 61), with regards to the media element of Social Media, introduce the theories of social presence and media richness.

The term “social presence” was coined by Short et al. (1976: 65) and defined “as a quality of the medium itself” to allow a certain degree of social presence or social interaction (acoustic, visual or physical) of the users. The higher is the social presence, the greater is the influence that the users have on each other. Vrasidas and Glass (2002, In: Vrasidas and Veletsianos, 2010: 9) stated that the indirect way of communication generated by new media facilities function better than face-to-face interactions since many fear of getting too close to the participants and of expressing themselves when those are physically present.

Media richness theory is found on the supposition that the goal of communication is to reduce the degree of uncertainty and ambiguity. Some media tend to be faster and more

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effective than others in transmitting information and thus, achieving this purpose (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010: 61).