To answer the question what is social media academically, when used properly, social media can be a valuable addition to a department’s communications strategy, because many employees have expressed an interest in developing and maintaining a social media presence in personal and professional ways, the Office of University Communications and Marketing has crafted the following introduction to social media. Please read the overview before engaging in social media.

What is social media academically?

Social media is an internet-based form of communication. Social media it’s a platforms that allow users to have conversations, share information, pictures, videos… and create web content. There are many forms of social media, including blogs, micro-blogs, wikis, social networking sites like facebook and twitter, photo-sharing sites, instant messaging, video-sharing sites, podcasts, widgets, virtual worlds, and more.

What are the benefits of using social media?

Billions of people around the world use social media platforms to share information and make connections. Social media on a personal level, allows you to communicate with friends and family, learn new things, develop your interests, and be entertained. Social media on a professional level, you can use it to broaden your knowledge in a particular field and build your professional network by connecting with other professionals in your industry. At the company and businessnlevel, social media allows you to have a conversation with your audience, gain customer feedback, and elevate your brand.

How Social Media Works?

Since social media covers so many different kinds of mobile applications and websites, the function of these tools also varies. However, most social media sites and applications start with a user creating a profile, usually by providing a name, an email address and password to secure your account.

Once a profile has been created, users can create and share content like photos, videos and text. For instance, an Instagram and facebook user with a new account can take a picture and share it on their profile with a caption. In addition to creating content for their profile, social media users can find other users whose content they want to follow or comment on, depending on the kind of social media, a user may “follow” another user in the same app or web site, add them as a “friend,” or they may “subscribe” to another user’s page such as famse puble pages.

Social media often use “feeds” that allow users to scroll through a various of content. Social media creators or owner companies use algorithms, based on a user’s profile data and his interest, to determine the content that appears and the order that it appears in. The feeds will include content from users you “followed”, as well as from entities that pay ads fees to promote their content.