CONTENTS

1. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT..2
2. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.3
3. SOCIAL MEDIA: AN INTRODUCTION4
4. ATTRIBUTES OF SOCIAL MEDIA.5
5. ETHICS AND SOCIAL MEDIA.7
6. DEMOCRACY, FREEDOM AND SOCIAL NETWORKING SERVICES IN THE
PUBLIC SPHERE....10
7. REFERENCES.11







ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I take this opportunity to express my profound gratitude and deep regards to
Professor Reeta Raina for her exemplary guidance, monitoring and constant
encouragement throughout the course of this thesis. The blessing, help and
guidance given by her time to time shall carry me a long way in the journey of life
on which I am about to embark.
I also take this opportunity to express a deep sense of gratitude to all the faculty
members of FORE School Of Management for giving me valuable information,
guidance and diversifying my horizon to think different aspects, which helped me
in completing this task through various stages.
I am obliged to all my batch mates, for the valuable information provided by them
in their respective fields. I am grateful for their cooperation during the period of
my assignment.
Lastly, I thank almighty, my parents, brother, sisters and friends for their constant
encouragement without which this assignment would not be possible.





Amandeep singh sandhu
FMG23-A
R.NO-231019


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Social media is integrated technology that allows users to generate their own
content and share that content through various connections. Social media is
commonly associated with Web 2.0, technology that focuses on integration,
collaboration, and interaction. With attributes that can affect the way people
interact online, social media open up new ways for collaboration and discussion.
One of these is persistence, meaning that a great deal of content posted on social
media sites may remain there permanently by default. The last two decades have
witnessed a rapid transformation of traditional media into new media that
encompasses digital, computerized, and networked information and
communication technologies. This shift has raised concerns and discussions
around the positive and negative implications of the new media, and other issues
such as: control of information, volume and speed of communication. Social
media unlike traditional media are usually interactive in nature, so users can
comment on and edit published material, making it difficult to control content.
Technologies of social networking have added a new sense of urgency and new
layers of complexity. As is the case with privacy, identity, community and
friendship on SNS, ethical debates on the impact of SNS on civil discourse,
freedom and democracy in the public sphere must be seen as extensions of a
broader discussion about the political implications of the Internet.


Social Media: An Introduction
Social media is integrated technology that allows users to generate their own
content and share that content through various connections. Social media is
commonly associated with Web 2.0, technology that focuses on integration,
collaboration, and interaction. There are numerous social media tools available,
with different characteristics, user demographics, and functionalities. Examples of
social media tools include blogs, social networking sites, microblogging sites,
photo- and video-sharing sites, wikis, RSS feeds, and podcasting.
Social media has many unique characteristics including:
Immediacy Because of this users are able to control the conversation by being
the first to disseminate information and by having the ability to immediately
respond to incorrect or negative information.
Interaction Social media also helps facilitate interaction and engagement
between the community and agency, helping to improve communication and
relationships.
Audience Many social media sites operate free of charge and are accessible by a
large and diverse audience through mobile devices and computers.
Scalable Social media can be tailored to meet the unique needs of any
organization and can be integrated into an agencys communication and outreach
strategy.
People from all walks of life and from all over the world have embraced social
media. Organizations of all shapes and sizes are achieving dramatic benefits by
using these tools to reach out to customers and community members in new
ways. Law enforcement agencies are finding immense value in social media
technology. Departments are using these tools to share alerts and press releases,
reach out to the community, and prevent and solve crimes.

Attributes of Social Media
With attributes that can affect the way people interact online, social media open
up new ways for collaboration and discussion. One of these is persistence,
meaning that a great deal of content posted on social media sites may remain
there permanently by default. Other characteristics are replicability (content can
be copied and shared) and searchability (content can be found easily using online
search tools). The characteristic of accessibility is also important: social media can
be used anywhere, at any time, where an Internet connection is available.
These attributes shape the dynamics of social interaction online. For example, the
invisibility of the reader raises questions about the context, appropriateness
and even comprehensibility of a communication. Moreover, just as it is difficult to
know who might be reading content posted on a social media site, the identity
and motives of those who post content are not always clear. For example, there
have been instances of companies using social media to market products through
fake blogs or sponsored postings on social media sites.
Today the world is rapidly using social mediums for different purposes. And the
effect of social media on society is so large that it can be said 19
th
century was of
colonization, 20
th
century was of becoming superpowers and 21
st
century is of
getting closure because of social media. Following is the point-wise description
of the attributes of various social media and their advantages and disadvantages
as compared to other versions, viz;
1. Most of the social media is limited to social networking sites and it has
been proven by various studies that it is taking a form of new kind of
addiction now a days. The picture below gives a better view of how time
spent on social networking is increasing with time.


Social networking sites is a good platform to interact with many friends,
relatives and strangers etc. at the same time. Social networking provides us
a better platform to communicate with many people in minimum time.
However, because of friendly features social networking is becoming an
addiction in large young population. The time spent on social networking by
young people is sometime greater than their entire other mandatory daily
activities. It is also very much responsible for sedentary lifestyle as kids and
young people are devoting that time on social networking sites which
earlier they were spending on playing and meeting friends.

2- Blogs are another social media where we can share our thoughts to large
number of people. It is a very interactive and effective way to popularize
ones thoughts and ideas. However, there are many limitations to blog
writing. Although one have independence of choosing many themes and
other stuff to communicate better but still it is not possible to completely
convey your thoughts with emotions in blog writing. Blog reading is leading
to the ignorance of the editorial section of newspaper, which is more
dynamic and full of diverse knowledge.

3-Also social media is dependent on internet, which is still not available
everywhere in our country. It may be a good thing to the INDIA however, it
is still an alien thing for BHARAT. The penetration of social media is not
deep inside the country and hence we cannot connect to everyone on the
social media in a country like ours.

4-Language is also a barrier to the social media. Most of the social media
apps and networking sites still do not have regional language facility and
hence their usage is limited. To connect better with our dear ones, a
mixture of lingua franca is very necessary.

5-Social media like blogging, facebook, twitter, google, yahoo etc are also
emerged as efficient business tool to communicate the target audience
about your product or strategies or policies etc.




Ethics and social media
The last two decades have witnessed a rapid transformation of traditional media
into new media that encompasses digital, computerized, and networked
information and communication technologies. This shift has raised concerns and
discussions around the positive and negative implications of the new media, and
other issues such as: control of information, volume and speed of communication.
Social networking sites, video- sharing sites, wikis, blogs, among many others,
have evolved as a result of web concepts and new media technologies. Millions of
people around the globe, through social networking like internal, external, or
mobile are recently building online local, regional, and global communities to
communicate their shared interests and activities, disseminate information, and
interact through a variety of web-based tools. The use of new media and social
networks (e.g. Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter,) has implications for society,
culture, and politics that has encouraged researchers to investigate a variety of
related issues such as: social identity, privacy, distance learning, social capital,
sociopsychological effects of the web, misuse of cyberspace, diaspora, social
status, and access to information.
ETHICS, DISCLOSURE AND THE MORALITY OF TECHNOLOGY
Social media unlike traditional media are usually interactive in nature, so users
can comment on and edit published material, making it difficult to control
content. Social media blurs private/ public boundaries when personal
information and opinions enter the public domain. The boundaries between
personal and work life also become blurred as companies make use of social
media, designed primarily for personal use, for business purposes, and likewise
employees access personal sites while at work.
There has been a transformation in communication because of social media.
Here are some changes that have occured in the process of the flow of
information.
People have now become both the producer and consumer of information.
News can be shared instantly online before it even reaches the television.
The judgment of communication is both positively and negatively affected.
It is up to the reader to decide whether or not the information is true and
credible. The reader must carefully look at the context, channel, and author of
the information.
Because more people communicate online, the value of face-to-face
communication is lost. This has multiple effects on the way a message is
received and interpreted.
People have the scope to filter out and choose the types of messages they
need and those they do not.

SOCIAL NETWORKING SERVICES AND PRIVACY

Technologies of social networking have added a new sense of urgency and
new layers of complexity. Some fundamental practices of concern include:
the potential availability of users data to third parties for commercial,
surveillance or data mining purposes; the capacity of facial- recognition
software to automatically identify persons in uploaded photos; the ability
of third- party applications to collect and publish user data without their
permission or awareness; the frequent use by SNS of automatic opt-in
privacy controls; the use of cookies to track online user activities after
they have left a SNS; the potential use of location-based social networking
for stalking or other illicit monitoring of users physical movements; the
sharing of user information or
patterns of activity with government entities; and, last but not least, the
potential of SNS to encourage users to adopt voluntary but imprudent, ill-
informed or unethical information sharing practices, either with respect to
sharing their own personal data or sharing data related to other persons
and entities.



THE ETHICS OF IDENTITY AND COMMUNITY ON SOCIAL NETWORKING
SERVICES
Technologies social networking open up a new type of ethical space in
which personal identities and communities, both real and virtual, are
constructed, presented, negotiated, managed and performed. SNS such as
Facebook can also be viewed as enabling authenticity in important ways.
While the Timeline feature displaying my entire online personal history
can prompt me to edit my past, it can also prompt me to face up to and
assimilate into my thoughts and actions that might otherwise be
conveniently forgotten.

FRIENDSHIP, VIRTUE AND THE GOOD LIFE ON SOCIAL NETWORKING

SERVICES SNS can facilitate many types of relational connections: LinkedIn
encourages social relations organized around our professional lives, Twitter
is useful for creating lines of communication between ordinary individuals
and figures of public interest, MySpace was for a time a popular way for
musicians to promote themselves and communicate with their fans, and
Facebook, which began as a way to link university cohorts and now
connects people across the globe, has recently seen a surge in business
profiles aimed at establishing links to existing and future customers. These
sorts of questions about how online friendships measure up to offline
ones, along with questions about whether or to what extent online
friendships encroach upon users commitments to embodied, real-world
relations with friends, family members and communities, defined the
ethical problem-space of online friendship as SNS began to emerge.










DEMOCRACY, FREEDOM AND SOCIAL
NETWORKING SERVICES IN THE PUBLIC
SPHERE
As is the case with privacy, identity, community and friendship on SNS,
ethical debates on the impact of SNS on civil discourse, freedom and
democracy in the public sphere must be seen as extensions of a broader
discussion about the political implications of the Internet. A related topic of
concern is the potential of the Internet to fragment the public sphere by
encouraging the formation of a plurality of echo chambers, informational
silos for like-minded individuals who deliberately shield themselves from
exposure to alternative views. The worry is that such insularity will
promote extremism and the reinforcement of ill-founded opinions, while
also preventing citizens of a democracy from recognizing their shared
interests and experiences. Finally, there is the question of the extent to
which SNS can facilitate political activism, civil disobedience and popular
revolutions resulting in the overthrow of authoritarian regimes.













REFERENCES
Forbes magazine issue, January 2014.
IACP centre for social media
http://www.parl.gc.ca/content/lop/researchpublications/2010-03-
e.htm#a4
http://orissa.gov.in/e-magazine/Orissareview/2012/nov-
Special/engpdf/51-53.pdf
Wikipedia
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/social-media.asp
Social Media use in Organisations: Exploring the Affordances of visibility,
Editability, Persistence and Association-Jeffrey W. Treem and Paul M.
Leonardi- Northwestern University.
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-05-
29/news/39602221_1_social-media-communication-platform
ACIS 2014
http://www.jeffbullas.com/2010/02/01/social-networks-10-contagious-
attributes/