Introduction
The Social Web has been an ever-growing network that enables people to do a lot of things; from doing basic communicative tasks up to large-scale business collaborations, everything formerly done manually can already be done in a much simpler, less demanding and highly-collaborative way.
As early as the internet was first introduced to the world of computers in the early 1900s, people have started to imagine and innovate ways how they could use such technology to make things easier and a lot simpler than what it was used to be. And evidently, this is what’s happening now. In the modern era, where most things and processes are being operated digitally, science and technology experts believe that the social web and media possess great potentials in a wide array of disciplines (McAfee, 2006). The objective of this paper is to identify and review key issues that are related to the current and future development of the social web and its current and possible future impacts to society.
What is the social web? How does it contribute to the society and to people’s everyday lives? What are the possible effects of these innovations to people’s lives? Does it help uplift people’s lives or is it considered to be just a form of luxury that people with enough time and resources use? These are some of the questions covered in this paper.
What is the Social Web?
The social web is a virtual network with an objective of linking people together through a larger network called the World Wide Web or what is more commonly known as the Internet. Social web actually encompasses a lot of topics and technological aspects since it individually deals with websites, their designs & functions, how they are developed and their dynamic and interactive mechanisms (Burton & Straub, 2006). Social web underwent a lot of changes and developments in the past decades and it became so large and in a way, complicated.
Some 39% of the total internet users use social web to interact with other real or virtual entities both for personal, social and business purposes (Davenport & Beck, 2002). Evidently, social websites today fulfill a wide range of purpose. Some are dedicated to fulfill the social needs—that is, the need to interact with others, while some websites are multi-purposed.
The Impact of Social Web on the Society
Sociological studies keep on suggesting that the social web continues to produce minute or even significant-enough changes on the society and how its people behave over a set period of time (Choi, 2007). For example, internet users during the early times of its development were not actually able to find an interestingly attractive social web feature that they could utilize. People before actually thought how using the internet could benefit them if all that it could do is to connect large machines remotely from one point of reference to another. They may have not realized it but that was actually the start of the internet revolution that gave birth to different social web and content-filled websites that people can access via the internet today.
Social web now caters to a wide array of its users’ needs. From online gaming, online shopping, social networking and business interactions; all of these plus a lot new websites currently under development dramatically changed the way how people interact.
The most appropriate keyword that should be used here is the word “social”. The first thing that typically comes into people’s mind whenever they hear that word is probably “interaction”. All humans are bound to interact either with a virtual or a real entity. They use social interactions to buy ask for or buy food, to sell things, and to interact with things and people within their social environment.
Social Web Journalism
Journalism websites became an important part of the current worldwide social web community. News, public affairs and journalism firms have taken advantage of the fact that the number of people who are internet-attached and dependent is continuously and exponentially growing. Millions of internet users everyday seek the freshest and most relevant news that could feed their social awareness needs. Journalism websites continue to exist and proliferate because they can actually make money through internet marketing and advertising (McAfee, 2006). Businesses and firms can always be found in places and niches where there is money.
One of the most common schemes of internet marketing simply stipulates that the more traffic and clicks from real and individual users receive, the higher the advertising payments could be. Although social web journalism websites may also obtain money through other money-making schemes such as through fixed advertising partnerships with either a fixed or a negotiated fee, internet marketing and advertising has proven itself to be the most commonly used way of obtaining revenues.
The point of such explanation is to demonstrate the huge changes that social web has created in the way how people read news, educate and make themselves updated to the current issues of the society. Before, people receive news either by reading newspapers, listening to news radio stations or even by listening to the gossips in town. Now, they receive news in a more convenient and hassle-free way; and journalism websites seem to have adjusted accordingly to that fact.
Negative Effects of Social Web
Online Piracy, Copyright Infringement, and Online Piracy Activities
Ever since the use of social web and media boomed, there has been one particular issue that have made the companies and the appropriate government authorities, even some socially-aware users, concerned and continuously thinking: piracy and copyright infringement. Kathleen & Anuhea (2010), in their study about the advantages and disadvantages of social media stated that the increase in number of organizations and people who use social web increases the risks that the originally enforced copyright infringement, piracy and intellectual property management laws will be compromised.
Such laws were actually designed to facilitate and maintain the level of interaction between people and other media entities at a time when they are not so inclined and aware about the use of social web and the things that they could do with it. Meaning, the laws and ordinances that govern the use of these new types of media are already outdated. This can also serve as an explanation as to why cybercrime rates such as copyright infringement, intellectual property stealing and online piracy are at an all-time high level. It is verifiable that social web is one of the key factors in that issue (Leif, & Colin, 2010).
Integrity of the Academic Community
Since the social web freely allows its users, especially social website administrators and owners, to post and share their knowledge, the accuracy and integrity of the knowledge and information that an individual hoping to gain new knowledge by reading pages from a social website may be compromised. This has been backed by Nunes’ (2012) study about social web and networking. He explained that while the information that could be found in social web and other types of websites may be accurate and relevant, at least from a subjective point of view, there are still chances that some information that one could find and absorb over by reading through the internet could be wrong or misleading.
This has long been an issue that worldwide academic communities and organizations are still trying to solve. How could they possibly enforce a vast virtual system of media contents based on evidences, research as well as different people’s opinions and perspectives if every user is allowed to post both right and wrong information?
Conclusion
The development of the social web can be considered as one of the major technological breakthroughs ever achieved by man. With it, people are enabled to do things that they formerly do manually in a less complicated and more convenient way. It has opened doors of learning and social awareness opportunities for its users. Now they can read news and articles, and keep themselves updated with the latest trends and issues even if they never go out of their houses. People now interact in a whole new way, thanks to social web and media (Clark, 2010). However positive those impacts may be, social web and using it certainly have their drawbacks. Copyright infringement and intellectual property stealing, and a decrease in the integrity and accuracy of academic knowledge are just some of the negative effects as demonstrated by the over 2 decades of people’s reliance on the internet and the social web.
Works Cited
Davenport, T., & Beck, J. (2002). Just-in-time delivery comes to knowledge management. Harvard Business Review.
Burton, R., & Straub, D. (2006). Reconceptualizing system usage: An approach and empirical test. Information Systems Research.
Choi, J. (2007). Group Composition and Employee Cretive Behavior in a Korean Electronics Company. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology.
Kathleen, C., & Anuhea, R. (2010). Free Speech: Social Media and Companies. Student Journal of Media Literacy Education. Issue 1 Volume 1.
Leif, H., & Colin, N. (2010). The Importance of Being Literate. Student Journal of Media Literacy Education.
Clark, S. (2010). Frameworks for Integrating WSNs nd External Environments. In proceedings of the 5th Internatonal Conference of Management and Control of Production and Logistics.
McAfee, A. (2006). The Dawn of Emergent Collabortion. Shan Management Review.
