Social Impact of Social Media

From last many days, I have been noticing many major events unfolded on social media stage.



Google’s action to quit China has become a major reason of sleepless nights for many & have brought into attention of the messy affair of hackers running in China, Haiti has mobilized hundreds of thousands to open up their hearts & wallets, BP oil spill in Gulf of Mexico; another crumple in the history of collapses has raised the eyebrows of environmentalist & human rights agencies.



All the above major crunches above were in flash on social media sites. The alleged Google hacking came into news when the search engine giant experience some issues in the system & later found out that it has been a target of a coordinated hack attack combining encryption & stealth programming. Not only Google but many other dozens of software firms are experiencing same problems.



Following this awful/unpleasant event led the internet blockade of many social media sites such as Flickr, YouTube, Bing by Chinese authorities. Haiti earthquake – which smashed one lakh lives after a 60 second show has marked another landmark in the history of deafly earthquakes. The role played by social media in spreading the updated news as well as contributing in relief aid was unimaginable task which no one thought off.



News updates remains the interest area of politics or other parties but what is more important at the time was providing relief aid to the affected & the news of well being of people who escape from the crisis.



BP Oil Spill in Gulf of Mexico – a disaster that'll going to have a forever effect on the earth, here too social media act as an mediator, spreading the news & calling for the volunteers from all over the world to donate via sms (texting "WILDLIFE" from your mobile & $10 will be deducted from the account). The effort of Dawn detergent in donating $1 with every purchase & Matter of Trust, An NGO, is asking for human hair charity to clear up the oil from the sea surface, these all got hype because of social media sites only and the effect was positive.



Did you notice how social media is contributing in three different incidents. In all the above three cases, the part played by social media is real time communications, which has helped creating a awareness too early if compared to any other media.



Now it’s upon human nature either to utilize it as creative way or tag ourselves as a destroyer...



What's your choice...??



Arifa Raj



The author is a business researcher with CheckBuzz, a social media monitoring company.



About CheckBuzz : A Social Media Monitoring Company, which tells brands/corporates what bloggers, journalists, powerful consumers, or even ordinary people are saying about them. Having a healthy experience of 3+ years, this company gives its solutions on Social media consulting, Social media marketing and Social media monitoring.



For any inquiries, please feel free to write our team: info@checkbuzz.com