Social Media Communication

2 Media Technology and Human Civilization

LEARNING GOALS

This chapter will help you understand:

• What are social media and their major social features?
• What is technology determinism?
• What are the four eras of human civilization?

KEY CONCEPTS

Social media

Agricultural civilization

Information civilization

Technology determinism

Industrial civilization

Internet civilization

THEORY HIGHLIGHT

Technological Determinism

Overview

Social media matter more today than before as they are encroaching on all sorts of human activities, for better or worse. Look around and it is evident that social media have been imposing a revolutionary effect on numerous aspects of human society, bringing us a new life largely inconceivable to those who came before. Today our lives are so saturated with social media that few could afford not to use them. How much are our lives are being changed by social media? We may not come up with a good answer to the question until we pause for a moment and see how much we rely on them every day.

Each semester when I taught a social media course, the first assignment was “Without Social Media,” requiring my students not to use social media for 24 hours and to write a reflection on it. No Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, or Instagram, but they could still make phone calls, send emails or text messages, and of course, use traditional media like books, TV, and radio. Before the experiment, they were instructed to inform their parents and friends of this assignment so ...