In my classes my students & I try to debunk & deconstruct the so called web2.0-terminology. The first item we dealt with was social media.

When searching on Google you get about 100 million search results. The first result which pops up is -not surprisingly- a link to Wikipedia which states that social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings.
I do think this definition -which is the one most commonly used- is lacking a bit of nuance as it stresses the ‘new media’ element too much. I much rather prefer the term (and definition) Sociable Media Judith Donath was using back in 2004 aka Web2.0-prehistory: Sociable media are media that enhance communication and the formation of social ties among people. She then refers to letter writing as one of the most commonly known and ‘old’ sociable media as it empowers you to be social via a medium.

In her opinion communication technologies are not developed to stimulate being social. As an example you could take the predecessor of todays internet, ARPA-net, which was indeed intended as a military & university network. Still, Donath continues, as we live and thrive on social interaction, all communication technology will eventually be used to be ‘social’. The SMS-protocol was in fact intended for system warnings or techno-communication, not for a widespread and highly succesfull means of communication among ‘ordinary’ mobile phone users.

As a conclusion Donath remarks that it’s not about the type of technology you’re using, it’s about the features (rhythm, format, bandwidth, permanence and identification) that affect how the technology can be used.

Maybe a nice ancdote to conclude. When searching for definitions and critique on the term maybe the most interesting and down-to-earth remark I got was the one at the AOIR-list. I’ve asked them to give me a definition of ‘social media’ and the first and only answer I got was Which media are asocial? .
True.

Source: Sociable Media

Update: I’ve written a second post on this topic.