International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 2, Issue 5, May 2012 1 ISSN 2250-3153 Effectiveness of Social Media as a tool of communication and its potential for technology enabled connections: A micro-level study Trisha Dowerah Baruah Department of Mass Communication Krishna Kanta Handiqui State Open University, Dispur, Guwahati-781006, Assam, India Abstract- With the world in the midst of a social media people close to one another specially those living in far off revolution, it is more than obvious that social media like places. Facebook, twitter, orkut, MySpace, Skype etc., are used However, these days it has been witnessed that most of the extensively for the purpose of communication. One of the most business houses also engage in social networking while important advantages of the use of social media is the online promoting their products and services. Very often, the head sharing of knowledge and information among the different honchos of the business groups tries to maintain a healthy groups of people. This online sharing of information also relationship with their valued customers. Social networking sites promotes the increase in the communication skills among the are now seen as a promising means of publicity, which every people especially among the learners/students of educational ‗brand‘ must embrace. Social media as a medium of promotion institutions. Online tools and technology has not only mediated contributes, through its immediacy, to a healthy and direct communication in countless ways, but that the very ways we relation between brands and their public in an online communicate and even the ways we talk and think about environment. This immediacy offers the public the ability to be communication are changing as a result. Social media have the present, to communicate, to influence and retain a stronger potential to fundamentally change the character of our social position towards brands. In addition to using social platforms to lives, both on an interpersonal and a community level. monitor conversations about their industry, competitors, and products, companies are increasingly reaching out to their Index Terms- Social media, communication tool, publicity, customers via the social Web to communicate messages about branding, Social media tools what they have to offer. In fact, social media is transforming the way organizations communicate — the many social tools that are I. INTRODUCTION available today are very cost-effective compared to traditional he term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and approaches such as email and online advertising. Blog posts and T mobile technologies to turn communication into an tweets enable businesses to create communities, offer immediate interactive dialogue. Social media takes on many different forms feedback or assistance, and promote their products and services. including magazines, Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, This paper basically tries to analyze the effects of the growth of microblogging, wikis, podcasts, photographs or pictures, video, social media and its implications in the society. This paper also rating and social bookmarking. With the world in the midst of a tries to find out the usefulness of social media as a tool of social media revolution, it is more than obvious that social media communication. like facebook, twitter, orkut, myspace, skype etc., are used extensively for the purpose of communication. This form of II. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY communication can be with a person or a group of persons. The main objectives of the paper are – Today most of the people specially the youngsters are hooked on (i) To analyse the impact of Social Media as a means of to the different social media for keeping in contact with their communication tool peers. Social media is media for social interaction as a superset (ii) To assess the usefulness of social media as a too, of beyond social communication. There are pros and cons to the use communication of social media. One most important advantage is the online (iii) To assess the potential of social media as a tool for sharing of knowledge and information among the different technology enabled connections groups of people. This online sharing of information also promotes the increase in the communication skills among the III. METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY people especially among the learners/students of educational The study is basically a qualitative and quantitative analysis of institutions. There is also a flip side to the use of social media the role and importance of social media as a tool of effective tools. Sometimes, such tools are misused by people which leads communication. In order to empirically examine the to interference into one‘s privacy. Such instances can lead to effectiveness of social media, survey method was used for dangerous proportions keeping in view the ethical aspect of the investigation, as this was found to be the most appropriate use of such media. The social media tools have virtually bought method to carry out a survey in order to find out the growing www.ijsrp.org International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 2, Issue 5, May 2012 2 ISSN 2250-3153 importance and the use of social media as a tool of maps social media data to tie strength. The model builds on a communication. Observation method was also used for the dataset of over 2,000 social media ties and performs quite well, present study. distinguishing between strong and weak ties with over 85% The area that has been selected for the present study is accuracy. Guwahati city which is fast becoming an industrial region in the north-eastern part of India. A sample survey was carried out V. AN OVERVIEW OF SOCIAL MEDIA among the residents of Guwahati city. A total of randomly The term ‗Social media‘ refers to the use of web-based and selected 200 sample of people residing in the urban areas of mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive Guwahati city has been taken into consideration. dialogue. In the words of Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein, Sources of data : Data have been collected from both primary social media is "a group of Internet-based applications that build and secondary sources. Primary sources include survey work on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and done among the residents of Guwahati city. Document analysis that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content." of the secondary sources includes internet , magazines, books Social media is media for social interaction as a superset beyond and journals has been carried out to study the impact and the sue social communication. Enabled by ubiquitously accessible and of social media in the social context and its potential for future scalable communication techniques, social media has growth. substantially changed the way organizations, communities, and individuals communicate. Social media takes on many different IV. REVIEW OF PAST LITERATURE forms including magazines, Internet forums, weblogs, social In the paper ‗Predicting the Future With Social Media’ by blogs, microblogging, wikis, podcasts, photographs or pictures, Sitaram Asur and Bernardo A. Huberman. They demonstrate video, rating and social bookmarking. By applying a set of how demonstrate how social media content can be used to predict theories in the field of media research (social presence, media real-world outcomes. They further demonstrates how sentiments richness) and social processes (self-presentation, self-disclosure) extracted from Twitter can be further utilized to improve the Kaplan and Haenlein created a classification scheme for different forecasting power of social media. In the paper ‗Workplaces social media types in their Business Horizons article published in and Social Networking’, the authors Andrea Broughton, Tom 2010. According to Kaplan and Haenlein there are six different Higgins, Ben Hicks and Annette Cox talks at length the policy types of social media: collaborative projects (e.g. Wikipedia), and practice relating to the use of social media by employees. blogs and microblogs (e.g. Twitter), content communities (e.g. They were guided by the fact that they had already engaged to Youtube), social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), virtual game some extent with the issue of social media, what it might mean worlds (e.g. World of Warcraft) and virtual social worlds (e.g. for their organization and how they were going to formulate and Second Life). Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, communicate a policy to staff in two major UK employers. The vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, first organisation was British Telecom (BT), and the second crowdsourcing and voice over IP, to name a few. Many of these organization was Her Majesty‘s Revenue and Customs (HMRC). social media services can be integrated via social network In the paper, ‗Predicting tie strength with Social Media’, Eric aggregation platforms. An overview of social media has been Gilbert and Karrie Karahalios, d presents a predictive model that shown below- Figure 1: Overview of social media www.ijsrp.org International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 2, Issue 5, May 2012 3 ISSN 2250-3153 Massively Multiplayer Online game (MMO) is a multiplayer social interaction, as opposed to playing games in solitude, like video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or some card games (solitaire) and the single-player mode of many thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are video games. played on the Internet, and usually feature at least one persistent Social networks sites like orkut, MySpace, YouTube etc. and world. Cartrider, World Warcraft are some of the examples of numerous other similar sites ( including the social bookmarking ‗ MMO. Through social media, a person can also publish any news sites like www.redit.com, www.digg.com and and views via web. Digg is one prime example of such media. It www.facebook.com ) on the Web help create new virtual is a social news website.