Social Media and Social Life Fall 2022

 For this blog post I decided to look at the Dunbar number in relation to social media platforms I use on a regular basis. When examining social media platforms I use on a day-to-day basis, the main platforms that jump out to me are TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram. While these platforms all have a different operating model, the Dunbar number can be applied to each. Firstly, the Dunbar number can be applied to TikTok in two different ways. Through the friends section within the app, the Dunbar number with the grouping "friends" which Dunbar counts to be fifty people. In the friends section of the app you are only shown videos in which you and the other profile follow each other.  This section allows for you to only see posts from people that TikTok deems as your friends based on mutual following status. However, the FYP embodies the generalized Dunbar number as it shows you people you may or may not know. Snapchat and Instagram follow the same operating model as far as the Dun...

     After going through the readings for unit II, one of the readings that  stood out to me have been “What TikTok does to your mental health: ‘It’s embarrassing we know so little’” written by Kari Paul. Social media has become a part of our daily lives, creating an online version of us. However, this online version of us is taking a toll on our mental health without us realizing. TikTok specifically in the few years since it has been launched, has attracted more than 1 billion users. One main concern about TikTok is the dangerous challenges users have been exposed to. For instance, the article mentions the “blackout challenge” which led to the deaths of several young girls. The “blackout challenge” was a choking game which involved intentionally trying to choke oneself or another in order to obtain a brief euphoric state or “high.” This was just one of the many challenges that were introduced on TikTok and put many individuals lives at a risk. Another underlying is...

   Due to the in-depth discussion we have done in class on BeReal, I found it fitting to write my last blog post about the presentation on it. Their video summed up how "authentic" BeReal claims to be. Interestingly, although BeReal is claimed to be so different from other social media platforms, their login platforms are very similar to Snapchat or TikTok (Athanasatos et al., 2022). One substantial difference between BeReal and other social media platforms is that BeReal does not have an algorithm (Athanasatos et al., 2022). Therefore, BeReal does not hand-pick content to feed its users and lets them see their "Friends for Real" in the order they post, which avoids the addictive tendencies of other social media platforms (Athanasatos et al., 2022). In addition, there are no in-app purchases, which is a refreshing approach where a social media platform is not trying to profit off its users, appealing to the Generation Z market, as stated by the presenters (Athanasat...

     For this blog post, I wanted to look at popular culture, specifically humor and how the medium may shape a cultures ideas of humor. In this post I will examine the rise of prank culture in the internet era. In the video How the medium shapes the message  it is clear that there may be some truth in Marshall Mcluhan's hypothesis that the medium is the message. Or at least it shapes the message. What about humor and entertainment? Well lets look at the rise web 2.0 and Manuel Castells idea of Mass self-communication.  Castells (2008) explains the web 2.0 and the prosumer allowed for individuals to communicate themselves to a mass (para. 3). Therefore we see that a shift in medium (the internet), leads to or correlates with self-expression to the masses.      Now lets look at pranks. "According to YouTube: “Prank videos have been part of the online video culture from the very beginning." (Linkr, 2019, para. 4). This sort of culture has almost dr...

  Blog Post 4: Since this post is our choice of topic, surprisingly, I am going to talk about social media. We all know social media distorts our perception of reality, as professor Herman put it, it puts a “veil overtop real life”, which I think is a perfect way to describe it. Anyways, I mainly want to talk about the dissociative side of the medium. It's something that our generation glosses over like a dumb headline in the news that actually turns out to be pretty important in the end. We are constantly projecting ourselves, our personality, into the virtual world where we can be whoever we want to do. That sentence itself feels like a utopian sci-fi film and I don't think we are far off from that. Regardless, we have become so preoccupied by who we are online that our sense of self in the real world begins to diminish and we begin to feel split between our virtual lives and our actual lives.  Dissociation is the feeling of being disconnected from yourself or the world. It...

One concept that stuck out to me was Robin Dunbar’s theory around the magic number of 150 and how applicable it is to social media.  Dunbar argues that the average group size in social settings has always been around 150 people, with 50 of those people being acquaintances, 15 good friends and 5 close friends.  I find this theory very interesting and do find that my social network on social media sites differs depending on the platform.  For example, on Instagram, I have over 1000 followers and the majority of these people are acquaintances that I know of but am not personally close friends with.  This makes me a lot more mindful of what I post on Instagram and I typically only post photos that represent my best self as I know many people can see my posts who I do not personally know. Compared to apps such as Snapchat and BeReal where I only have people I know personally and am friends with. I'm a lot less cautious of what I post and not worried about posting my true ...

                        The film The Social Dilemma (2020) provides the audience with critical insight from technology experts from Silicon Valley. The deep dive discussion concerns the dangerous impact of social networking platforms and the ways in which users are manipulated in their everyday lives by companies.            The film refers to users as lab rats but not lab rats that are creating good instead, we are the traffic on platforms that are generating money for the site. The cues that are embedded into platforms conclude that those platform aspects affect real-world behaviours and emotions without the users ever being aware. For example, we see this in platform algorithms and how apps like TikTok are embedded into the fabric of everyday life, and the ability to mindlessly scroll and continue to new videos that are suited to our desires moves away from our awareness while the...

 Hi everyone! In this post, I'd like to discuss The Dunbar Number and how applicable it is to today's social media users, particularly those who use Snapchat. According to the Dunbar Number, human social networks typically have 150 members. Four categories—close friends, good friends, friends, and acquaintances—are used to classify the 150 people in this list. There can only be 15 people in the category of good friends. This group is reserved for those individuals who you communicate with frequently and who are too consistent with you to be classified as a friend or acquaintance. Nowadays, social networking apps like Snapchat compel users to have a wide variety of people they communicate with every day because of the way the software is designed. Snapchat streaks are a feature on Snapchat that involves sending someone a photo or video back and forth on both ends at least once every day to start a streak that counts how many days in a row you both snapped back and forth. I could...

 A concept that really stuck out to me was Dunbar's theory of the magic number. He considered the size of human social networks is around 150 individuals. This is called Dunbar's number. The people in this group are broken down into 4 essential groups. There are close friends, good friends, friends and acquaintances. He states that 5 people are your close friends, 15 are good friends, 50 friends and the rest are acquaintances.  If we bring Dunbar's theory into the realm of social media, we can see that many of the people we are "friends" with may not be as close as we believe.  One of the ways we as social media users can see that we often have many more followers or friends than people who actually like or interact with our posts. The example I think of is Facebook. The majority of the posts on Facebook are liked by a closer, more intimate group of friends. If it is not friends, then it is a family member. Family members may feel obligated to like your photos as ...

      For this weeks blog post I would like to reiterate the topic that was covered throughout the midterm - Plato and Socrates critique of writing. Plato and Socrates argue that intimacy and authenticity of communication is only valid when it is spoken, not when it is written down. They believe that effective communication comes from when we exchange information out loud in order for the message to be understood properly, since written information can be easily distorted and manipulated, making the message hard to follow along with. We can relate their critique of writing into today's social media platforms. Certain users on social media platforms use their account in order to spread information based off their interests and beliefs, such as politicians, which can also be used in a negative way. The negative aspect of this is that it creates bias and false information in order to persuade one into believing certain information hoping it will influence them into believing...

       Within this course, one theme we have discussed is media/medium. The term “medium is the message” is mentioned in our lecture. It means that medium is the form of communication we choose. Some examples of this are using social media to communicate, phone calls, texting, and FaceTime . Media/medium is also how the symbolic meaning of communication is conveyed, this can be done through speech, writing, or print. The difference between communication over the phone and on social media compared to talking face-to-face is that you lose the intimacy of the conversation. Speaking rather than talking over the internet allows you to connect with people and communicate better. In this day and age, we use social media to communicate a lot more than we do through speech or writing. According to Couldry and Hepp, there are two dimensions of connection to the media. These two dimensions are communication devices such as the smartphone and communication infrastructure like th...

Hi everyone, For this week’s post, I will be discussing the ancient Greeks’ concerns regarding the written word, particularly those of Plato and Socrates. In Platos’ Phaedrus , Socrates and Phaedrus engage in a long discussion during which they weigh the advantages and disadvantages of writing. They compare it to dialogue, which Socrates clearly much prefers. He explains that writing does not have a soul, meaning it cannot defend itself nor explain itself to readers. Furthermore, he believes that it enables forgetfulness as readers become reliant on information being written down rather than remembering it. Plato and Socrates lived in a society dominated by the spoken word which raises the question; given their views on written text, what would they think of the world we live in today? Today, society would not function without written text. It is how we spread and preserve all information and communicate with each other. Instant messaging and email are some of the most common and impor...

Much of the content from Unit II of this course has focused on Robin Dunbar’s famous ‘Dunbar number’ and the social brain. The Dunbar number claims that humans can manage up to a maximum of 150 stable social networks, which is broken down into several categories based on the closeness of one’s relationships: acquaintances, friends, good friends, and close friends. In this quickly evolving digital age, the accuracy of the Dunbar number has been questioned due to the privileges of social media, which allows individuals to reach and befriend hundreds to thousands of other users on an app. Consider the article “What TikTok does to your mental health: It’s embarrassing we know so little”, which recognizes that “TikTok is uniquely performative” and “provides an endless stream of emotional nudges” to users (Paul, 2022). It is evident that TikTok can have such detrimental impacts on users due to its content being highly personalized, replacing face-to-face social interaction. Although the Dunb...

As communication studies students, I'm sure many of us are familiar with the phrase: "The medium is the message", coined by mass media theorist Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s. What does that mean though? In essence, the representations of certain messages differ across various mediums as they all have a range of different affordances and biases that impact the way in which we receive information and what that information is, fundamentally changing our understanding of our world and ourselves. Think of film adaptations, for example. So many people critique films when they are adapted from novels, in part due to a lack of fidelity to the original text, but also due to the fact that the medium of film inherently transforms the message of the book. Through written language, an author can create boundless worlds and has a means to describe virtually anything by relying heavily on the reader's imagination. A film, however, employs cinematography rather than literary devices,...

Hello everyone! After reading one of the articles from unit 2 my perception of TikTok changed a lot. The article is called W hat TikTok does to your mental health: 'It's embarrassing we know so little'. In summary, this article is revealing the negative side of TikTok that so many of us do not think about, know about, or that is being hidden. Some of these negative effects include taking part in dangerous trends (for example the blackout challenge, or the Benadryl challenge) that have led to numerous deaths (Paul, 2022). Another effect that caught my eye is the fact that TikTok has become a space for people to share "very intimate and intense things" about their lives (Paul, 2022). People follow these behaviours over TikTok because they want to fit in and because this seems to be the platform's spirit (Paul, 2022). One of the examples that the article speaks about is how many individuals use TikTok to discuss their mental health and the abuse that they are dea...

     Within our course, one of the highlighting themes in relation to social media is how scholars such as Standage contribute to the argument of how many friends one can really have as Robin Dunbar's social theories conclude the defining magic number, Dunbar's Number, is 150. Of these 150 however, not all are of the same magnitude when it comes to interaction however. Of those 150, you'll have five close friends, 15 good friends including your close friends, 50 friends including your good friends, and 150 acquaintances including your 50 friends with most of your mental dedication place towards the 50 or less.      With 150 being the approximate number of maximum relationships the human can handle, I want to touch on a discussion from my last blog post on Instagram's influences on mental health and anxieties. While I discussed the correlation and connection between such mental health issues in teenage girls brought on my social media influencers, from my un...

 In this week's post, I will speak about Robin Dunbar's social brain hypothesis. The social brain hypothesis is an explanation for the fact that primates evolve large brains to manage complex social systems. Dunbar suggested that the size of human social networks stabilizes at around 150 individuals, known as Dunbar's number. He broke it down into several categories: close friends(5), good friends (15), Friends (50), and acquaintances. When you apply the theory to social networking, people with thousands of followers on many different media accounts are not truly friends with that many people. Studies have shown that followers and friends on social media do not personally know most of these people, and some have probably never interacted with one another. I have almost 2000 followers on my social media. I can comfortably say that a significant majority of the people I have on social media if I were to see them face-to-face, I wouldn't approach them as I know them. I wou...

Nancy Baym speaks about how digital media practices through everyday life are often a source of collective and individual anxiety. An example of this would be in the movie eighth grader. The main character Kayla publishes her video blogs about interacting and making friends with people and getting out of your comfort zone. The issue with her giving out those types of advice is that she spent the majority of her time making those types of videos but not following the actions of her advice. She was making videos about how people should get out of their comfort zones to make new friends insinuating that she would follow her advice. But honestly, she struggled to make friends as she spent more time on her device and making videos instead of trying to get out of her comfort zone to make new friends and socialize with her peers. This shows that people online don’t truly show you who they really are and what they’re genuinely going through; they only show you a version of themselves that they...

Hey everyone, my blog post this week centers around main subjects covered in our midterm. Social media, as discussed by Baym, remains an impersonal form of communication due to a lack of intimacy and authenticity. Part of this reason can be subjected to the amount of followers people interact with on platforms such as Instagram and Twitter. According to Dunbar, the size of human social networks stabilizes around 150 individuals, known as Dunbar’s number. He states that our brains can only capacitate to know a max number of 150 people. Dunbar further elaborates that 150 is made up of 50 friends, 15 good friends, and 5 close friends. However, with many users interacting with more than 150 people, the level of intimacy decreases further. Many friend groups contain more than five people; however Dunbar suggests that not everyone in the group has the same level of intimacy. Now applying this to social networking, people have thousands of followers that a percentage they don't even know....

 Hello everyone, For this week’s blog post, I will be discussing something that was focused on within the lectures and was also a significant aspect of our Midterm. I am deciding to talk about Robin Dunbar’s number and the Social Brain Hypothesis reflecting on “The Dunbar Number,” which represents the number of people with whom humans can be intimate and form close reciprocal relationships. The Dunbar theory stems from research on primates allowing them to form alliances as a group to strengthen social bonds, similar to how society and relationships operate today. The Dunbar Numbers states that the number 150 demonstrates an average group size but emphasizes that out of those 150, you can only form intimate connections with five. The Dunbar number can relate to the way relationships are formed in society today. Many have a large friend group with more than five people, and according to Dunbar, it is unlikely that every member of the group is close and intimate with everyone.  ...

  For this week’s blog, I have decided to analyze the platform of BeReal, and argue that it is nearly impossible to do so on SM. The purpose of the application is to be innovative in the sense of the user provides friends raw content from their daily life. Furthermore, to “capture a BeReal and see what your friends are up to!” We take pictures. We post. We scroll” as highlighted in Haigny’s (2022) article. Furthermore, “If you want to become an influencer you can stay on TikTok and Instagram” (Haigney, 2022). While this utopian vision may be heading in a new direction for SM, users are able to postpone their posts or wait until the perfect time. For example, if a user knows they are going to be spending time with friends in the new few hours, it is ideal for them to take their BeReal then whether it is consciously or subconsciously. Ultimately, I am arguing that it is not possible for a platform to be fully authentic since users have the ability to control the technology in that se...

           In this week's blog post, I will discuss the reading by Couldry and Hepp, "History of Waves of Mediatization," which discusses three waves; mechanization, electrification, and digitalization. The reading discusses how society has changed throughout each wave, resulting in a fast-paced, technologically advanced society. The midterm allowed us to understand how social media can be considered 'media manifold' and 'mediatization' through how technology is ingrained in our everyday lives. An interesting quote from Nancy Baym's readings states that "new technologies affect how we see the world, our communities, our relationships, and ourselves" (Baym, 2019). The quote stuck out to me as I can see the presence of social media evolving and shaping our perception of how we see the world and ourselves, which relates to Couldry and Hepp's reading on mediatization of how we live in a digitized world. An interesting article I found called ...

For this week's post, I will be discussing Robin Dunbar’s Number and his social brain hypothesis. Dunbar discusses how the neocortex of the human brain size allows humans to only maintain a group size of 150 individuals. This group size is categorized as 5 close friends, 15 good friends, 50 friends, and 150 acquaintances including the previous numbers. This is because humans may only maintain close relationships with 150. However, in our society this has all changed as social media allows us to connect with as many people as we want. Most individuals do not really tend to keep personal and meaningful relationships online, they just keep as many connections as possible for their own benefit. Most people that I know have 150 plus friends on their Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat accounts. This theory was relevant before, but with our developing society that is not the case anymore. If this theory was still prevalent in our time, then social media influencers or celebrities would not...

One concept that I found particularly interesting from this week's readings was Dunbar's concept of the social brain and social grooming.  Dunbar theorized that the size of the neocortex in a primate's brain correlates with the size of their social group. Based on this theory, human social groups should consist of 150 people as this is the largest group size where everyone can know everyone and order can be maintained through peer pressure alone (Dunbar, as cited in Standage, 2013). Within this large social group, primates form smaller subgroups through social grooming. This theory is still very relevant today as the exchange of social information and gossip is a regular pastime that many people engage in either to strengthen social bonds or further their own personal agendas. Often when we are told a piece of secretive information followed by the phrase "don't tell anyone", we are even more compelled to share this information with others. By telling someone a...

      One concept that we have learned and touched upon in class that really interests me is in regards to the Dunbar number. Before learning about it in class, I was not well versed on the concept. Although, I always questioned the idea of the amount of followers most post individuals have, and out of that number how many do they really know? This is highly due to the fact that in regards to my Instagram account, I do not know all of my followers. Or if I do know them, I would not necessarily call them all my close friends. We have learned that the Dunbar number is based on the concept of everyone obtaining a social network that ranges to about 150 people. However, within that number of people, there are subcategories with different amounts of people associated with the specific category.      I believe that when people question how relevant the Dunbar number is due to the rise of social media, I would still say that the number for the most part is still a...

 Hello Everyone, following the midterm, I will be discussing the social media app BeReal. BeReal is a platform that emphasizes personal authenticity, which is something that is lacking with other social media platforms such as Instagram. Additionally, the app allows for your photos to only be viewed by your friends, which is usually a far smaller number than the amount of followers you may have on other platforms due to the intimacy BeReal provides. This relates to Dunbar's number, which states that the social network of humans averages 150 people, consisting of close friends and good friends. By having closer friends on BeReal, you can express yourself in a more authentic way as you do not need to worry about the idea of being a social media star and representing yourself in front of others that you may not know on a personal level.

 Hi there, Following the midterm, it seemed appropriate to discuss the Standage reading, more specifically the pages referencing Robin Dunbar's number and use it with the concept of authenticity. This was the idea that the average human can only maintain a personal and reciprocal relationship with 150 individuals before some would be strangers to others (Standage, 2013). It is unrealistic to be able to know that many people and have everyone interact beyond an acquaintance level.  Personally speaking, as a longtime Instagram user, I have built a decent following and at first, this made me feel cool. Now, after I post a picture or post a story, I see names that I do not recognize at all. It makes me wonder who I have let follow me just to see my followers climb and appear more popular. In elementary school and high school, my friends and I would use how many followers someone had to to determine how attractive and admired they were. The more followers they had became an indicat...

For this week's post, I will be talking about the midterm we just submitted as I enjoyed looking into the BeReal app as opposed to how they communicated in Ancient Greek Times. It was interesting to learn more about the Platonic critique of writing as Plato and Socrates believed writing was not an effective way of communication. At first, being a theorist I thought that they would enjoy writing but the biggest critique was there writing can be misunderstood and would lose its meaning. It was seen through their dialogue that face-to-face communication is the most effective way. I would be interested in hearing what they think about the new forms of communication as you do not need to be in the same room as another to have a conversation without delay. Back in Ancient times, they would have to write to each other and their conversations would take days if they were not close.  The new forms of communication continue to evolve, and apps like BeReal are the most popular app f...

For my blog post #4, in light of our midterm, I will be discussing Dunbar’s number and his social brain hypothesis. To begin, Dunbar’s social brain hypothesis looks at the comparison between primates’ brains to body ratio. “Compared to other animals, they have strikingly large brains relative to their bodies” (Standage, pg 8). Dunbar believed that the evolved brain of the primates was used to manage their complex social system. What does that have to do with us? Well Dunbar had a number that linked the size of a human social network system that was made up of 150 people. This was called Dunbar’s number. Of the 150 people (Dunbar’s number) there could be multiple categories comprised. One of them was called close friends, this was made up of 5 people. Next was good friends. This category was made up of 15 people. Thirdly, there was friends, a category that consisted of 50 people. Lastly, there was acquaintances, a category made up of 150 people which included all above categories. ...

In this week’s post, I decided to focus on Robin Dunbar’s Number and the Social Brain Hypothesis. Dunbar’s number discusses the limit on human groups, which is around one hundred and fifty individuals. According to the theory, individuals have five close friends, fifteen good friends, fifty friends, and one hundred and fifty acquaintances. This can be applied to early hunter-gatherer societies in the past as well as many modern-day groups. Individuals need to meet their own requirements as well as match their behaviours with others in the group. These numbers represent a range where introverts tend to concentrate on a smaller group of contacts while extroverts tend to have a larger network. Nonetheless, the advent of social media has made Dunbar’s Number not as relevant as it used to be. People are able to make friends with hundreds of people on these social media platforms by easily keeping up with their interests and lives online; we start investing in superficial relationships rathe...

       Hello everyone, for this week's blog post, I am going to talk about Nancy Baym's seven key concepts for understanding the affordance powers of communication technology and applying them to the social media application, TikTok. As we learned, these power affordances are used by social media applications to control their users on their platforms. These seven key concepts include interactivity, temporality, social cues, storage, replicability, reach, and mobility.      In regards to Interactivity, TikTok uses this power affordance very effectively. The application hooks its user using an algorithm to feed their users with content they will like, based on their viewing history on the app, which results in a longer time on the application. The app also allows users to communicate through commenting, dueting, and responding to each other which also results in more time on the app and using the platform to communicate with others.      T...

Hello everyone, In my blog post for this week, I thought it could be important to talk about the social media app that has been continuously rising in popularity known as "BeReal". As all of you know, this app is designed for friends to share double-sided photos of whatever they are doing at that very moment when they receive their daily BeReal notification. One of the main differences between this app and others is that BeReal tends to be seen by only the friends of an individual rather than hundreds of other followers that may be recognized but may not be considered friends. This can be related back to the Dunbar Number as it reflects a smaller social circle or brain that is more plausible than other apps such as Instagram where followers consist of a wide range of people. BeReal allows you to share information with your close-knit group of friends as opposed to oversharing with people who do not need to know information about you. The culture of most social media platforms...

 For this weeks blog post, I decided to look at Dunbar's Number and the Social Brain Hypothesis. As Dunbar's number is rooted in the notion that the average group sizes of people has historically been roughly 150 people, it can be applied today to how many people tend to be in an individuals circle. According to Dunbar, people have 5 close friends, 15 good friends, and 50 friends and anything other that is to be considered an acquaintance. As this was based on historic primal groups, this number is now debated to be outdated. This is based in the idea that social media allows people to know many more people than ever before. Many people I know, myself included, have well over 150 people on social media apps such as Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. This does not take away from the fact that the exceeding number is likely to fit Dunbar's friends or acquaintances category.  When it comes to Dunbar's Social Brain Hypothesis, although applicable in the past, to ar...