Dr. Matiur Rahman & Shishir Reza :
Social media offers a substitute avenue for human interaction, creating new behaviors for sociologists to review. Social media thus began as an interaction between people using new sorts of technology, and therefore the conversations in social media became increasingly public. In recent years, social media has created a completely new area for sociological research as sociology is the study of human interaction.
Technology continues to supply new ways to satisfy people’s needs, and social media isn’t different. It is a tool to satisfy a number of humanity’s deepest desires: relationships. Social media allows society to take care of these relationships on a worldwide scale, with instant access to nearest friends and family also as people around the globe. Through interactive technology, users can make connections more easily and interact in many various and artistic ways. Now that numerous use social media, it’s intriguing to ascertain how this influences their behavior.
Social media engagement demonstrates humanity’s innate got to network; people feel happy and fulfilled once they interact with others. So, of course, with each interaction- on variety of various levels- a person’s satisfaction increases. As people interact on a huge scale, there’s more potential for them to influence each other’s personal and professional lives.
Research has proven that humans experience a change in their conscious and unconscious behaviors once they interact with others. Therefore, it’s helpful for people to know just how others influence them and the way those connections affect their lives. Often, these connections give people richer experiences. Due to the emotional dependence among humans, social networks end in both negative and positive experiences.
Ultimately, the success of social media centers on sociology and not on the sophistication of user experience of the technology. People drive the success of social media by taking any number of actions, from cultivating an outsized group of friends on Facebook or thousands of Twitter followers. They do so by consistently grooming their profiles to stay their followers and friends updated and interested.
Social media engagement is additionally necessary to stay businesses afloat by helping them engage potential customers. The interactive quality and simple use helps organizations establish a rapport and trust. At the same time, businesses need to understand that social media marketing needs to consist of genuine interaction, which involves listening, reading and participating, instead of simply throwing out mass marketing messages.
Social media also enables users to make bonds associated with common causes and organize events for social and political causes. Social media has changed the way humans communicate. They no longer have to interact face-to-face. They can easily engage others around the world. This new aspect of sociology can create new power dynamics, where some voices become stronger than others because of their greater social media presence.
Sociology is that the study of social change, how we live our everyday lives and the way we interact with other people. The evolution of the internet has erupted a social shift in how we interact and communicate, with offline human behavior being replicated through popular platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
Social media allows us to be social on the web and exposes a world that reflects the culture of immediacy in our society which allows us to unravel our problems quickly and communicate more effectively. The technology is vital but only is a tool that supports and enables us to attach with others during a very personal and compelling way, through posts and conversations that really happen on a really human level.
In an article published in Lancet mentioned that with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, social media has rapidly become a crucial communication tool for information generation, dissemination, and consumption. From an analysis of 81 studies, five overarching public health themes were identified concerning the role of online social media platforms and Covid-19. These themes focused on: surveying public attitudes, identifying infodemics, assessing mental health, detecting or predicting Covid-19 cases, analysing government responses to the pandemic, and evaluating quality of health information in prevention education videos. For Covid-19, social media can have a crucial role in disseminating health information and tackling infodemics and misinformation.
Social media is about human being, so interactions must be engaging and meaningful among them. It is not just about what devices are used to connect us to one another; dealings need to listen carefully to their addressees to be adept in providing valuable and meaningful content that serves their needs to establish trust and act as a source of information to enable loyalty? a meaningful relationship links to a trusted relationship.
(Dr. Matiur Rahma is Research Consultant, Human Development Research Centre and Shishir Reza is Environmental Analyst and Associate Member, Bangladesh Economic Association).
