New Media Culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

New Media Culture - Essay Example Indeed, social interactions and relationships have fulfilled several aims and social psychological aims of people. But in ages past, people have been more familiar with a traditional form of social relations whereby the people we come across in person become the only people we continue to relate to in our own unique social worlds. With technological advancement however, much of this trend has changed as technology has created an avenue for people to establish a social setting without really having to come to meet on a personal basis (Fiske, 1992). Sociality and communities have been digitized and advanced through technology and by the power of the internet through various social network platforms. In this essay, there is a careful scrutiny to new sociality and new communities as substitutes of old sociality and communities. As part of the scrutiny, the role of culture in technologically advanced societies shall be invested to come to conclusions with the merits and demerits associate d with new sociality and communities. Role of culture in technologically advanced societies Culture may generally be explained as the way in which a group of people live. This means it is the way of life of people and thus entails key variables that distinguish these people including language, meals, dressing, courtesy, social perception and interactivity. Culture has always been a key part of societies and communities. This is because most often than not, any given society is made up of people with core cultural similarities and the more these people are able to share these cultural similarities, the better it is for them to have their communities established (Wellman, B. et al., 2001). In cases where there are cultural differences, tolerance and acceptability have been identified to be the key to developing an effective community. Indeed, as much as this principle applies in the traditional setting, it has also been found to be useful and influential in this era of technologically advanced societies (Castells, 2001). Using various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Whatsapp as examples, it can be noted that there is virtually none of these social media network that allows an open form of networking that lacks permissiveness by end users to decide who will be their social members and those who will not. This means that hosts and makers of these social networks understand the need for any two people to get along culturally well before relationships can be established in a technologically advanced society. Culture therefore plays the role of defining the kind of societies that can be established and how effective these societies will be once they are advanced into communities. Culture also determines whether or not people will have their social psychological needs satisfied in technologically advanced societies. Approaches to Social Network Theory Generally, social network theory makes use of two major approaches or schemes namely nod es and ties. As far as nodes are concerned, reference made to individual actors who are found within the network, while ties refer to the nature of relationships that are established between these actors (Granovetter, 1983). Social network theory has actually been related to traditional sociological studies, where it has been said that