Typology; social media around the world and who is behind it

typology “2021 World Map of Social Networks”. Image created by Vincenzo Cosenza and used here without adaptation from the original on Vinco’s Blog under Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC.

In this assignment, you are expected to conduct web research to complete the profiles of different social media platforms. There are many approaches to specifying the characteristics of a social medium; for instance, one can consider the technology and the type of communication it facilitates, the user experience, or focus on the policy and strategy of the company that runs the social medium, the business model. These different approaches help to better understand what these different social media actually are and classifying their typology allows historians to more accurately analyse the digital sources that are produced by them as content.

3.a Social Media around the world|20 Min

In the two tables below, a number of social media platforms are listed. Some are popular worldwide and some are only known in specific regions. Fill out the table below in your answer form with the help of web research and/or literature. Remember, you can always make use of Google Translate for languages that you don’t understand fluently.

Table 1

  Facebook Cloob VK
Social element of the platform e.g.,blogging, discussing, sharing, connecting, crowdsourcing      
Content: What kind of content is produced on this platform? e.g., news, opinions, photos, personal stories, messages, games, films, clips, hobbies      
Closest similar set of practices in the analogue era e.g., pub, letter, telegraph, cinema, photo album, etc.      
Target audience: Who is the primary target of this platform? business or leisure?      
Device: What kind of device do you need to access the social medium? e.g., computer, tablet, smartphone, etc.      
Control:* Is what is posted monitored? If so, by whom and for what reason? (and if not, why not?)      
Privacy:* What does the company that runs the platform know about their users and what happens to this data?      

Table 2

  JamiiForums Ravelry Instagram
Social element of the platform e.g.,blogging, discussing, sharing, connecting, crowdsourcing      
Content: What kind of content is produced on this platform? e.g., news, opinions, photos, personal stories, messages, games, films, clips, hobbies      
Closest similar set of practices in the analogue era e.g., pub, letter, telegraph, cinema, photo album, etc.      
Target audience: Who is the primary target of this platform? business or leisure?      
Device: What kind of device do you need to access the social medium? e.g., computer, tablet, smartphone, etc.      
Control: Is what is posted monitored? If so, by whom and for what reason? (and if not, why not?)      
Privacy: What does the company that runs the platform know about their users and what happens to this data?      

3.b The companies behind social media | ? Min

Now you are going to focus on the companies behind a number of well-known social media platforms and the strategies and policies of these companies regarding their platforms. Fill out the table below in your answer form with the help of web research and/or literature.

  LinkedIn Whatsapp Youtube
Type of platform: blogging / discussing / sharing / connecting / crowdsourcing      
Creators: name of company, CEO, founding date, location of headquarters      
Business model: how do they generate income?      
What is their selling point? What maked the unique?      
Do they exert control on what is posted by users? Why or why not?      
What is their policy with regard to the data they collect?      

3.c Business models of social media

After having compared the different companies behind some of the world’s most well-known social media platforms, read this infographic post “How Social Sites Make Money” from CenturyLink as well as this 2018 Slate article by Will Oremus “Are You Really the Product?” and answer the following questions below in approximately 500 words:

What is the connection between personal data and income generation for social media platforms? What do you think about the ethics behind this?