That wasn’t always the case. The concept of social media evolved due to the fact that in the early days of the internet, the choices for interaction were limited. The usenets and message boards of bygone days (the last century) were what early television networks were to the modern myriads of channels ranging from those very archaic networks to cables and video-feature film providers like Netflix and Hulu. By the same token, the actual process that Lomborg describes as “design skills” to upload content have built in restrictive algorithms that prevent a great deal of content from being published.
The author uses three variables to describe his theory of flux: First, hype around new services; second, data abundance and third, the definition itself;
“There are surprisingly few attempts in the literature to define and conceptualise social media, perhaps because the term itself is nonsense – all media are social, albeit perhaps in very different ways (Jensen, 2015). (8)
In the opening paragraph, Lomborg attributes the term social media as having emerged in the “early 2000s;” that is patently false. The term has been around for over one hundred years but only recently applied to its role on the world wide web. Lilian Whiting wrote in The New Orleans Times-Democrat in 1892;
“The wide and extended circle of acquaintances furnishes a social media through which it is easy to approach the world of current events.” (Whiting, Boston Days)
That very sense of flux of the original definition can be found in how it gradually evolved so that by the next century, in the Fifties, a rather peculiar reference is made in The Montgomery Advertiser with regard to “The Upper Bohemian;”
“Mr. and Mrs. U. B. ‘are not joiners and are likely to shun country clubs, ladies clubs, civic organizations, and all other forms of what they consider aatificially (sp) contrived social media.’ ”
However odd as it may seem, the sentence certainly gives a clear insight as to what social media is, or was, before the term was subverted to its now “unique” use on the world wide web. In a sense, then, social media vis-à-vis the internet is nothing more than an extension of those anti-Bohemian “country clubs, ladies clubs, civic organizations…” Lomborg alludes to that with his reference to the clash between the utopian and the dystopian components of the medium;
“dystopian commentators have lamented what has been labelled ‘the cult of the amateur’ – the demise of the power of the establishment, of informational, political and cultural expertise, in favour of the publication of false news, popular but uninformed opinion pieces and speculations by lay people, and the overflow of amateur content on everyday trivial matters (e.g. Keen, 2007).“ (Lomborg, 9)
The platform itself is the cause of the flux instead of the continuity, where the level of professionalism, if it exists at all, is vague and obfuscated; where the amateur reigns supreme, at least until the next platform comes along. Every generation thrives in the delusion that it has discovered something totally new.
II.) McFadden’s timeline, though impressive and no doubt thorough, fails to begin at the beginning. As seen in the previous section, the term social media has been around for a long time and only recently subverted to an ethnocentric limited viewpoint to describe activity on the web. Lomborg noted the flux of the medium and that’s no different in the traditional, versus the revisionist, definition; the first related to ladies clubs and civic organizations, the second to likes, emojis and hashtags. The ladies club would eventually dissolve when all the ladies married off, moved, or passed away. The same held true for the rise and fall of Friendster and Myspace.
A timeline is only as good as how it fits into the scheme of things, that being space-time. The current use of the term social media is relative, within the general framework of the definition itself, overlooked by Lomborg’s researchers.
Cited
Lomborg, S., “A state of flux: Histories of social media research,” European Journal of Communication 2017, Vol. 32(1) 6–15
Whiting, L., Boston Days, The Times-Democrat, New Orleans, 04 September 1892, Page 15.
The Upper Bohemian, The Montgomery Advertiser, 02 March 1953, Page 4-A
McFadden, C., A Chronological History of Social Media (interestingengineering.com)
Image credits: NYU