16Social media
In this use case, we proceed to consider the multimodality of social media, a phenomenon which has become an integral part of our lives. Cotter (2015: 796) observes that “YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are now prime players on the cultural stage— as well as sources of news for many. The medium, to adapt McLuhan’s aphorism, is ‘social’.”
Social media platforms have indeed become ‘prime players on the cultural stage’, but nevertheless warrant closer examination, as social media is not merely consumed but created and generated by the producer at the same time. Coupled with technology—such as smartphones, tablets and laptops, which enable the production of multimodal content with little effort—social media platforms that allow sharing ...
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