History of the development of social networks

The Evolution of Social Networking

Social networkings are social structures where individuals are encouraged to create and maintain relationships. Social media are the social networking tools that support this behavior. As humans, we have the need to communicate with others in groups. In a social network the individuals are interconnected; they interact and may have more than one type of relationship between them. The internet has been a great platform for social media because of its effectiveness to connect people from all over the world having a positive effect in social capital. Social capital is a key factor for strengthening democracy. It promotes the development with equity and social inclusion. Also, it facilitates the integration of developing countries into the globalized world. As a result, the internet encourages the development and expansion of social networks. Social networking tools have been greatly accepted in our days, many individuals have now an online virtual profile, but can social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter generate a tangible impact in today society? How so? Is this different in societies other than ours? This work will provide enough evidence to suggest that social networking tools have a great impact in today’s society. The cyberspace can potentially enlarge social networks and it has served as an important platform to deliver democracy. In this paper, I will present a newspaper article, where the people from Venezuela have raised in protest against the current government. They have used social networking tools, such as Twitter, to inform other countries of what is currently happening in the country. Now, the international community may intervene to protect these protesters’ most basic human rights.

Social networks are online communities of people with common interests or activities. Connecting through internet generate related contacts with both, social and commercial purposes. Online social networking has gained huge popularity in recent years because it is very easy to have a virtual profile: anyone can do it just by signing in for free (Krinsky, Crossley 5). One can compare older forms of media to recent ones; statistics show that in order to achieve 50 million of users the radio needed 38 years, the television took 13 years, the Internet 4 years, and Facebook took only 9 months to get 100 million users (Anderson, 475). According to Karen L. Anderson, the increasing usage of social media has redefined the community boundaries, which are no longer defined by their immediacy. Nowadays, the community’s margins of the cyberspace are no longer visible, but the connections have multiplied (Anderson, 474). The two most popular networking sites are Twitter and Facebook according to a social media report in 2011 (Nielsen, 1). These sites promote the creation of borderless communities, which can be acquainted as rich in terms of social capital:

According to Bourdieu and Wacquant “Social capital can be defined as the sum of resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition” […] These resources can take form of useful information, personal relations, or the capacity to organize groups […] Greater social capital increases commitment to a community and the ability to mobilize collective actions. (Ellison, Steinfield, Lampe, 1145 - 1146)

They also argue that social networks are divided in bridging and bonding in terms of social capital. The links between the individuals become weaker but larger in online social media, whereas face-to-face communication creates stronger but fewer relations. In terms of democratization, intimacy does not matter, yet the share of collective ideals do. Thereof, in consequence to the online social networking tools, the power of judgment and discussion of information has amassed and democratized. Individuals have made use networking sites to share ideas and to express their opinions. Social networking tools can transform virtual discussions into citizen activism. Although “governments have traditionally relied on their control of the mainstream media to silence or limit opposition voices while restricting access to alternative, mainly foreign, media sources” (Abbot, 335), recent forms of social media can help to consolidate democracy because they create spaces for deliberation and accountability where individuals can post their own stories and become citizen “journalists”; sharing thoughts and evading even the harshest censorship controls of repressive regimes (Abbot, 335). With the development of telecommunications networks and interactive technology people can join projects, question their representatives and generate opinion; democratizing information that was previously shown in only a few local channels.

Recently, a great part of the Venezuelan populace has been protesting against the president Nicolas Maduro, expressing discomfort of the social stratification experienced in the country; they argue over the government’s failure on tackling the problematic on crime, corruption and economy. The Venezuelan government has censored different news channels of the opposition party, allowing only the government-run channels like “CANTV” filtering and manipulating information (Bajak, 6). For this reason, the internet and social networks became the best tools to participate in the democratic process and to exercise fundamental freedoms (Eltantawy, Wiest 1208). When freedom of expression is been manipulated by the government, social networks have become very useful

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