The concept of social media, which began in 1971 with the e-mail transmission of two computers, was on the rise with e-mail groups and spread all over the world with chat rooms called “chat”. Both e-mail groups and chat channels enabled internet users to discuss the same issues with each other according to their interests, and internet users who met on a common ground became the subject of mass events and situations.
Producing blog-style free internet content, the blogger had given internet users the opportunity to freely write and disseminate their ideas. Users who hide themselves by using numbers in chat rooms such as nickname, ICQ, and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have started to communicate with their real personalities, ie profiles, and to follow people according to their interests and to be included in groups.
The global increase in the use of the Internet in all this development process, the Internet and the social media users connected to their ideas, political views, ideological perspectives according to blogs, chat rooms, social media groups and each other by following each other interacted in micro blogs caused.
According to the report titled “World Population Expectation” prepared by United Nations (UN), the world population is currently 7.7 billion. There are currently 4.38 billion Internet users in the world. In other words, 56% of the world uses the internet. Social media users in the world is 3.48 billion. In other words, 45% of the world’s population uses social media.
This is a great power!
The power of social media is multiplying with the multiplier effect. For example, 100 followers are 4 times stronger and more effective than a person or group, not twice as strong as a person or group with 200 followers.
The impact of 100 people is calculated as 100×100 = 10,000 while the power of social media is calculated as 200×200 = 40.000. This multiplier effect becomes very rapid, even viral, of any idea, ideology, view or approach.
The most effective mass communication tool of social communication is the media. Ek In today’s new world, the most effective and fast communication is the internet and related social media. If we examine social media as a field of propaganda; The media, which is involved in an independent and effective view in the context of social communication, is in fact the most effective means of spreading the ideology of the ruling group in the social sphere.
Social media, on the other hand, is an effective and motivated structure in the context of directing the masses and creating social sensitivities and reacting to the impact, despite being ineffective on an individual basis, in contrast to the dominant group. Although social media interacts by polarizing and bringing together many ideologies in the new world order, it also enlarges the active structures close to radicalism that are affected by these ideologies and ideas.
In this sense, social media literacy ”trainings should be given to individuals who form the society as quickly and effectively as possible by accepting the fact of using social media in the society and starting from the education curricula and raising the level of awareness.
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