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The Limits of Social Media: What Social Media Can Be, and What We Should Hope They Never Become

May 2015
Social Media + Society 1(1)

DOI:10.1177/2056305115578676

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Oakland University

Social media are among many tools that people use to articulate culture. However, it must be remembered that social media are websites that afford community building regardless of the morality, social benefit, or social detriment of the communities that get built. At their core, social media sites are products created by their respective corporations with the intent of monetizing the labor of their users. The values that these sites might offer are dependent on the users and the users’ ability to claim some social benefit. In this regard, the author argues that social media can be beneficial spaces where society articulates and records culture “only if” users can maintain that use despite corporate actors’ efforts to monetize users’ labor.

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DOI: 10.1177/2056305115578676

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SI: Manifesto

Social media can be among many media tools by which

we articulate our culture. They can be ways in which we

socialize and share who we aspire to be with those who

are closest to us. Social media can be these and so much

more. But what they also can be are ways through which

corporations monitor us for marketing purposes, exploit-

ing our fears and desires (Andrejevic, 2011; Bilton, 2014;

boyd & Hargittai, 2010; Facebook, 2013; Fish &

McKnight, 2014; Gillespie, 2014; Ippolita, Lovink, &

Rossiter, 2009; Lilley, Grodzinsky, & Gumbus, 2013). Of

course, there are other ways in which social media are

used to exploit us (see Hill, 2011). But addressing corpo-

rate marketing specifically, I believe we should hope

social media never become merely ways through which

we are marketed with no benefit in return. If we must live

in a corporate media–dominated world, at least we ought

to claim some social benefit.

What Social Media Can Be

It should come as no surprise that for some of us, such as

myself, social media are tools that can potentially benefit

society. This is, after all, the inaugural issue of Social Media

+ Society. If we are generous and optimistic, we can imagine

social media as a liberating forum for self-expression or a

medium that might, in its own way, usher in a more demo-

cratic form of content distribution or civic participation

(Burgess & Green, 2013; Caren & Gaby, 2011; Iskander,

2011; Johnson, Zhang, Bichard, & Seltzer, 2011; Kaye, 2011;

Kreiss, 2012; Neumayer & Raffl, 2008). Groups can form

and freely associate (Iskander, 2011; Johnson et al., 2011;

Oiarzabal, 2012; Parks, 2011). People can discuss ideas with

others in ways and with such speed that a couple of decades

earlier would have seemed far-fetched.

Social media can be places where self-expression occurs

(DiMicco & Millen, 2007; Gilpin, 2011; Zhao, Grasmuck, &

Martin, 2008). However, it can also be a place where the

harsher tides of identity politics can define an “us” and a

“them.” For instance, boyd (2012) found that white teens

fled MySpace in the early 2000s for Facebook in an instance

of white-flight when black teens started to join the service.

Those white teens felt that MySpace became a “virtual

ghetto” because of the influx of profile pages belonging to

black bodies (boyd, 2012). Today, services like Facebook

Groups can also be a place where, for example, ethnic groups

gather to form communities (Oiarzabal, 2012; Parks, 2011).

Or Facebook Groups can become easy places for people to

engage in identity tourism or as captive audiences for adver-

tisers (Grosser, 2011; Srauy, 2012). Social media might be

578676SMSXXX10.1177/2056305115578676Social Media + SocietySrauy

research-article2015

Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

Corresponding Author:

Sam Srauy, Department of Communication and Journalism, Oakland

University, 316 Wilson Hall, 2200 N. Squirrel Road, Rochester, MI 48309-

4401, USA.

Email: srauy@oakland.edu

The Limits of Social Media: What Social

Media Can Be, and What We Should

Hope They Never Become

Sam Srauy

Abstract

Social media are among many tools that people use to articulate culture. However, it must be remembered that social media

are websites that afford community building regardless of the morality, social benefit, or social detriment of the communities

that get built. At their core, social media sites are products created by their respective corporations with the intent of

monetizing the labor of their users. The values that these sites might offer are dependent on the users and the users’ ability to

claim some social benefit. In this regard, the author argues that social media can be beneficial spaces where society articulates

and records culture “only if” users can maintain that use despite corporate actors’ efforts to monetize users’ labor.

Keywords

manifesto, monetization of user labor, social value

2 Social Media + Society

spaces for social protest where divergent political voices liv-

ing in oppressive regimes might find a forum (Caren & Gaby,

2011; Iskander, 2011; Marichal, 2013; Neumayer & Raffl,

2008). Or social media may simply become spaces where

divergent brand loyalties are contested and played out under

the watchful eyes of corporations all too eager to exploit our

desire to share our lives with our friends and families (Bilton,

2014; Facebook, 2013; Fish & McKnight, 2014; Gillespie,

2014; Hansson, Wrangmo, & Soilen, 2013; Lilley et al.,

2013).

Social media sites are all of these and none of these at the

same time. What they are, at their core, are websites with

features that afford community building in one fashion or

another regardless of the communities that get built (see

boyd, 2011; boyd & Ellison, 2007). That is the take-away

and the charge for scholars and users as we study and engage

with social media—social media are nothing without users

(see Burgess & Green, 2013; Jenkins, 2013); however, we as

a society ought to be mindful as we determine how, in the

future, social media are useful to us. Whatever they are today

is a result of how we choose to use them. Whatever they

become is also the result of our engagement with them.

What We Should Hope They Never

Become

Social media are refractions, tools to record a particular user

base’s moment in time. Yet, social media are also products

created by their respective corporations with the intent of

monetizing our labor (e.g. posts, comments, “likes,” and

content we create) through market research, advertisements,

or our content (Facebook, 2013; Tumblr, 2014; Twitter,

2014; YouTube, 2010). For all our hopes and fears about

what social media are or could be, they are first and foremost

a product or website designed to monetize us in some form or

another (see Fish & McKnight, 2014; Gillespie, 2014).

Perhaps, this is the crux of what we should hope social

media never become—a way for corporate actors merely to

collect the most sensitive information about us so that we

may be advertised to. The emphasis of my claim is on the

word “merely.” We cannot fully control how corporate actors

use our information all of the time. Since there is the implicit

deal that these “free” services come at a cost to our privacy,

we can at least extract some social and cultural benefit—pre-

suming we assume that advertising has no social or cultural

good—from our social media use.

In a way, the perception that we tend to have about social

media mirrors and refracts what the perception of television

offered us a generation ago (see Hilliard, 1958). Social

media, such as television, can be an educator, an equalizer,

an exploiter, a social unifier, a social divider, and so on. Of

course, social media are forms of media that afford some

positive uses and some questionable actions. Social media

can be all of these and none of these at once. Our task as a

society, then, is to ensure that some of their uses enable the

“better angels of our nature”1 while avoiding—to the extent

that we can—our unfettered exploitation by capital.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to

the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, author-

ship, and/or publication of this article.

Note

1. I borrowed this quote with apologies, from Abraham Lincoln’s

First Inaugural Address, 1861.

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Author Biography

Sam Srauy (PhD, Temple University) is an Assistant Professor of

Communication at Oakland University. His research interests

include the roles that race and economics play in identity construc-

tion in various forms of new media.

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