Sociology is the study of social rules and processes that bind, and separate people not only as individuals, but as members of associations, groups, and institutions.
A typical textbook definition of sociology calls it the study of the social lives of humans, groups and societies. Sociology is interested in our behavior as social beings; thus the sociological field of interest ranges from the analysis of short contacts between anonymous individuals on the street to the study of global social processes.
Sociologists are those who study sociology.
Thought encompasses an "aim-oriented flow of ideas and associations that can lead to a reality-oriented conclusion".[1] Although thinking is an activity of an existential value for humans, there is still no consensus as to how it is adequately defined or understood.
Because thought underlies many human actions and interactions, understanding its physical and metaphysical origins and its effects has been a longstanding goal of many academic disciplines including philosophy, linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, biology, sociology and cognitive science.
Thinking allows humans to make sense of, interpret, represent or model the world they experience, and to make predictions about that world. It is therefore helpful to an organism with needs, objectives, and desires as it makes plans or otherwise attempts to accomplish those goals.
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In the field of psychology, social psychology is the scientific study of how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, and implied presence of others.[1] In this definition, scientific refers to the empirical investigation using the scientific method, while the terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors refer to the psychological variables that can be measured in humans. Moreover, the notion that the presence of others may be imagined or implied suggests that humans are malleable to social influences even when alone, such as when watching videos, quietly appreciating art, or even sitting on the toilet. In such situations, people can be influenced to follow internalized cultural norms.
Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the relation between mental state and social situation, studying the factors/conditions under which certain behavior, actions, and feelings occur. Social psychology, thus, is concerned with the way these feelings, thoughts, beliefs, intentions, and goals, are cognitively constructed and how these mental representations, in turn, influence our interactions with others.
Traditionally, the emergence of this discipline bridged the gap between psychology and sociology. During the years immediately following World War II, there was frequent collaboration between psychologists and sociologists.[2] The two disciplines, however, have become increasingly specialized and isolated from each other in recent years, with sociologists generally focusing on more macro features (e.g., social structure)—as the prefix of socio- denotes a societal influence—whereas psychologists may be more concerned with more micro features. Nevertheless, sociological approaches to psychology remain an important counterpart to psychological research in this area.
In addition to the split between psychology and sociology, there has been a somewhat less pronounced difference in emphasis between American and European social psychologists, as, the former traditionally have focused more on the individual, whereas the latter have generally paid more attention to group-level phenomena.[3]
Social media are interactive computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation or sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks.[1][2] The variety of stand-alone and built-in social media services currently available introduces challenges of definition; however, there are some common features:[2]
Social media are interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications.[2][3]
User-generated content such as text posts or comments, digital photos or videos, and data generated through all online interactions, is the lifeblood of social media.[2][3]
Users create service-specific profiles for the website or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization.[2][4]
Social media facilitate the development of online social networks by connecting a user's profile with those of other individuals or groups.[2][4]
Users usually access social media services via web-based apps on desktops and laptops, or download services that offer social media functionality to their mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets). As users engage with these electronic services, they create highly interactive platforms through which individuals, communities, and organizations can share, co-create, discuss, participate and modify user-generated content or self-curated content posted online. Networks formed through social media change the way groups of people interact and communicate or stand with the votes. They "introduce substantial and pervasive changes to communication between organizations, communities, and individuals".[1] These changes are the focus of the emerging fields of technoself studies. Social media differ from paper-based media (e.g., magazines and newspapers) and traditional electronic media such as TV broadcasting, Radio broadcasting in many ways, including quality,[5] reach, frequency, interactivity, usability, immediacy, and performance. Social media outlets operate in a dialogic transmission system (many sources to many receivers).[6] This is in contrast to traditional media which operates under a mono-logic transmission model (one source to many receivers), such as a newspaper which is delivered to many subscribers, or a radio station which broadcasts the same programs to an entire city. Some of the most popular social media websites, with over 100 million registered users, include Facebook (and its associated Facebook Messenger), TikTok, WeChat, Instagram, QZone, Weibo, Twitter, Tumblr, Baidu Tieba and LinkedIn. Other popular platforms that are sometimes referred to as social media services (differing on interpretation) include YouTube, QQ, Quora, Telegram, WhatsApp, LINE, Snapchat, Pinterest, Viber, Reddit, Discord, VK, and more.
Observers have noted a wide range of positive and negative impacts of social media use. Social media can help to improve an individual's sense of connectedness with real or online communities and can be an effective communication (or marketing) tool for corporations, entrepreneurs, non-profit organizations, advocacy groups, political parties, and governments.
The variety of evolving stand-alone and built-in social media services makes it challenging to define them.[2] However, marketing and social media experts broadly agree that social media includes the following 13 types of social media:[27]
blogs,
business networks,
collaborative projects,
enterprise social networks,
forums,
microblogs,
photo sharing,
products/services review,
social bookmarking,
social gaming,
social networks,
video sharing, and
virtual worlds.[27]
The idea that social media are defined simply by their ability to bring people together has been seen as too broad, as this would suggest that fundamentally different technologies like the telegraph and telephone are also social media.[28] The terminology is unclear, with some early researchers referring to social media as social networks or social networking services in the mid 2000s.[4] A more recent paper from 2015[2] reviewed the prominent literature in the area and identified four common features unique to then-current social media services:
Social media are Web 2.0 Internet-based applications.[2][3]
User-generated content (UGC) is the lifeblood of the social media organism.[2][3]
Users create service-specific profiles for the site or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization.[2][4]
Social media facilitate the development of online social networks by connecting a user's profile with those of other individuals or groups.[2][4]
In 2019, Merriam-Webster defined "social media" as "forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)"[29]
Classification of social media and overview of how important different types of social media (e.g. blogs) are for each of a company's operational functions (e.g. marketing)[27]
The development of social media started off with simple platforms such as sixdegrees.com.[30] Unlike instant messaging clients, such as ICQ and AOL's AIM, or chat clients like IRC, iChat or Chat Television, sixdegrees.com was the first online business that was created for real people, using their real names. The first social networks were short-lived, however, because their users lost interest. The Social Network Revolution has led to the rise of networking sites. Research[31] shows that the audience spends 22% of their time on social networks, thus proving how popular social media platforms have become. This increase is because of the widespread daily use of smartphones.[32] Social media are used to document memories, learn about and explore things, advertise oneself and form friendships as well as the growth of ideas from the creation of blogs, podcasts, videos, and gaming sites.[33] Networked individuals create, edit, and manage content in collaboration with other networked individuals. This way they contribute to expanding knowledge. Wikis are examples of collaborative content creation.
Mobile social media
The heavy usage of smartphones among young people relates to the significant percentage of social media users who are from this demographic.
Mobile social media refer to the use of social media on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Mobile social media are a useful application of mobile marketing because the creation, exchange, and circulation of user-generated content can assist companies with marketing research, communication, and relationship development.[34] Mobile social media differ from others because they incorporate the current location of the user (location-sensitivity) or the time delay between sending and receiving messages (time-sensitivity). According to Andreas Kaplan, mobile social media applications can be differentiated among four types:[34]
Space-timers (location and time sensitive): Exchange of messages with relevance mostly for one specific location at one specific point in time (e.g. Facebook Places WhatsApp; Foursquare)
Space-locators (only location sensitive): Exchange of messages, with relevance for one specific location, which is tagged to a certain place and read later by others (e.g. Yelp; Qype, Tumblr, Fishbrain)
Quick-timers (only time sensitive): Transfer of traditional social media mobile apps to increase immediacy (e.g. posting Twitter messages or Facebook status updates)
Slow-timers (neither location nor time sensitive): Transfer of traditional social media applications to mobile devices (e.g. watching a YouTube video or reading/editing a Wikipedia article)