Types Of Social Media Networks

Saba Mehmood and Tarang Taswir (2013) states social networking sites have increased the ability of integrating learning with an online environment. Apart from using Social Networking Sites for chatting, blogging it is now being used in different ways like forming communities.

Communities are all about groups of individuals who share something in common. This makes going on the internet seem like an odd way to find more communities, form new ones, or strengthen pre-existing ones. The internet however is full of communities. Communities can be based upon religion, location, ethnicity, an interest, or a personal matter. The internet itself is “a global distributed data communications network” (Kirmayer, Raikhel, & Rahimi, 2013, p. 166). This is what makes the internet so full of communities because communication is the key to putting multiple individuals with commonalities into communication, which is the basis of any community. Online communities differ from communities that exists off the web in a couple of

Furthermore, some suggest that due to the interactivity possible with new technology researchers should eliminate the distinction between communities of place and virtual communities (Delanty, 2003). Yet, differences do exist between geographic and virtual communities for example using Putnam’s (2000) idea of reciprocity those who lurk, i.e read comments within a virtual community but never post are not part of the group. However, some researchers of virtual community consider those lurkers members of the group based on their knowledge and interest in the community (Blanchard & Markus, 2004). It is possible that technology has created unique social structures within online community that often differ based on engagement involvement (Saramäki et. al, 2014). This leads into the third type of community, which combines elements of place-based and virtual

With instantaneous, ease of access to large online communities, members of society have the opportunity to communicate with, and assemble large groups. The creation of these groups would, in most cases, be impossible to congregate without social media. Additionally, online communities have proven advantageous in motivating bystanders. All popular social media hubs, such as Facebook and Twitter, have made it as simply as the click of a button to spread information. As far as political and social impact goes - the larger the group, the more efficient and likely the goal will be achieved, shown with the Ferguson protest. The extensive use, and ease of use of social media has significantly increased political participation in society.

Social media has slowly elevated itself and became the main source of news and information for the masses in American society. Too often people will read tabloid articles and accept them as facts. This causes a chain reaction in which readers often reiterate what they read and post it on social media. Social media is a platform in which many users all around the world use to communicate and share personal experiences. Too often the lines become blurred between personal and political issues. Once these two issues become joined, it leads to a very impactful discussion which can divide people or unite them.

Polarity among a group can occur from interactions, as the behavior of any arbitrary group can split based on opposing views. Progressively, members of the original group join one of the factions and fewer members remain neutral. Polarized behavior allows for either the splitting of groups on an outreaching issue or the driving of individuals to opinions far apart from each other. By its inherent nature, polarization in the scope of psychology occurs as a result of people being exposed to external variables. One such easily identifiable primary external variable is information. Social media is, by definition, something that allows people to exchange information in the virtual community. In this sense, social media has the potential to catalyze

Social media started out in a college dorm room and, for the most part, it never left. Universities and high schools across America have been overtaken with social media and unsurprisingly, it is where you find most of you divisiveness. It is not uncommon to see a post along the lines of this during an election, “if you are voting for (insert political candidate) unfollow me”it is this kind of rhetoric thrown around that pushes different perspectives out of our field

The meaning of the word ‘community’ is not as simple as it may seem. Merriam-Webster defines the word in a variety of fashions: they include “A unified body of individuals”, “People with common interests”, “A group linked by a common policy”, and “A group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society”. These definitions allow a broad interpretation of the word and expands what a community can embody. Social media--though it is sometimes seen as a detriment to societal progress--can open up new communities that one may not be exposed to otherwise, as well as being an effective informal platform for innovation and revolution. I, personally, believe that social media has given us a new sense of community

The second research question that presented in the article is about the behavior between the two groups. In the research, Hannak et. al (2014) explored the two individual’s groups by intervening with fact-checking information by provoking one of the research group. Then they waited to see if any of the two groups will challenge with one another or not. They left the experiment run about half an hour. The result with this second research showed that even with strangers intervened at the challenge with the two groups, they were being ignored. And the establishment between the two groups toward the provoking challenge is recognized within their friend's group circle. Hannak et. al (2014) ended the article by stating that the new form of social communication was increased both by spreading the misleading information and the challenge to provoke by any the individuals. And the result of the twitter intervention showed the social context of the two groups are diverse and it also explained a huge role of the individual’s behaviors.

* What makes social network sites unique is not that they allow individuals to meet strangers, but rather that they enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks. This can result in connections between individuals that would not otherwise be made, but that is often not the goal, and these meetings are frequently between "latent ties" (Haythornthwaite, 2005) who share some offline connection. On many of the large SNSs, participants are not necessarily "networking" or looking to meet new people; instead, they are primarily communicating with people who are already a part of their extended social network. To emphasize this articulated social network as a critical organizing feature of these sites, we label them "social network sites."

A ‘virtual community’ is a type of imagined community and is a difficult concept to define; the ambiguous nature of this concept is highlighted by the many definitions created by researchers. A Virtual Community is when “Individuals communicate and form a relationship with each other in a computer mediated space with the use of technology".

Social network sites (SNSs) such as such as Friendster, CyWorld, and MySpace allow individuals to present themselves, articulate their social networks, and establish or maintain connections with others (Ellison, 2007). These sites could be used for work related situation, romance, connecting with individuals with shared interest, or creating a connection amongst college students. Facebook enables its users to present themselves in an online profile, accumulate ‘‘friends’’ who can post comments on each other’s pages, and view each other’s profiles (Ellison, 2007). Individuals can write on the wall of friends, send private message, comment on posts, as well as chat via instant messaging. Much of the early research on online communities assumed that individuals using these systems would be connecting with others outside their pre-existing social group or location, liberating them to form communities around shared interests, as opposed to shared geography (Ellison, 2007).

To those who have never experienced an online community they may seem pointless, a waste of time or simply childish. However, for those that have expanded beyond the traditional means of communication such as, talking on the telephone or conversing face-to-face, online communities offer a new and exciting means of communication. They offer a chance to meet others, gain advice, voice an opinion, defend an argument, or to simply relax and have a little fun. Acknowledging both points of view, I decided to explore the world of online communities for myself.

However, this paper discusses the use of a Facebook page for another purpose. Facebook can be used for academic educational purposes. Many schools, if not all, have Facebook pages as a secondary platform for sharing, discussion, advertisement, etc., to supplement their major websites. Some of these pages are managed by students. For example, students from the Department of English, Translation and Interpretation, College of Arts, University of Mosul, Iraq, from which I graduated, keep a Facebook group page for sharing ideas, translations, and other language-related aspects. A student, for instance, may post an idiom and ask other members of the group to guess its meaning. Another student may ask other students to give feedback on his or her translation, or offer corrections on the grammar used in a certain text. Therefore, upon observing the increasing number of students joining this page and interacting on it, I thought it would be intriguing to look at what students believe they are gaining from it. This paper examines students’ perceptions of the benefits resulting from interacting in the Facebook group.

Advancements in electronic communication have produced a multitude of new platforms in which people can connect to one another. These developments have torn down the geographic barriers previously separating people and their ideas, making it easier and faster to connect with others and thus creating a new sense of community. Online communities where people can share their interests with like-minded people have been appearing rapidly and have revealed a new community that would have otherwise been closed. These new types of communities have expanded upon previously limited forms of communication, demonstrating the benefits of improved technology on society.