Week 05 Media Analysis Project - Final Paper

Facebook Analysis

Institution: Rasmussen College

Name: Rodney Wheeler

Course: G332/MMC3407 Section 03 Visual Communication in the Media

Date: 10/30/17

Introduction

You should be forgiven if you bear the thought that Facebook is predominantly a site for socializing, apart from socialization, Facebook has appeared useful for business purposes where businesses have leveraged the economic benefits through advertisement and networking.

Personal perspective

Facebook is a profit-making American company based in Menlo Park California. Facebook enjoys the monopoly of being the world's most famous social media platform. The website makes it possible for users to connect with family and friends by sharing personal photos, status updates and other items of interest. The platform was created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg while still studying at Harvard .At that time Zuckerberg designed the platform for inter-university student’s socialization. The idea quickly spread and became a global phenomenon harboring more than 160 billion users (Park et al., 2009).

Historical perspective

Facebook has a wide range of technology and software features which makes it possible for many users to get connected online, this has made it stand out from other social networks thereby it remains a great asset in leveraging out the social wealth for purposes of community policing, civic education and other activities that may need the attention of the society.

Technical perspective

Even though Facebook has contributed to bringing the world together thereby defying geographical barriers to socialization, the site has had its dark side too. Facebook is known as one of the breeding sites for cybercrime. This includes cyber bullying where people create parody accounts and perpetrate malicious activities meant to harm others yet they hide their real identity. To respond to such ethical concerns, Facebook has rolled out a set of support tools, and security features which have been developed in collaboration with researchers and these are meant to serve the sensitive and vulnerable users. Researchers have advised that ethical consideration should be more than what is offered in the system. The considerations should be infused all through the life of research to ensure that the final results are practically relevant to help solve such issues (Pempek et al., 2009).

Ethical perspective

Facebook has also considered resorting to an ethics review process which seeks to innovate on process though not so much has been disclosed to the public regarding the ethical values which inform their product and service development.

Cultural perspective

Space as a social surrounding provides significant social information through different forms of communication among the space users. Online space is greatly affected by the interpretations of individuals and indirectly or directly influences collaboration. The usage of social media sites also shapes the cultural environment of the space. The global cross-cultural environment makes the space to be culturally sensitive. Facebook is seen as a private socializing platform with full of cultural diversity. Thus as a social media site, Face book has become a global collaborative space which harbors people of diverse cultural origins thus should adopt a cultural context which will enhance equality of collaboration (Park et al.,2009).

Critical perspective

Critical analysis of Facebook as a social media site reveals that the privacy of the users in the context of user privacy and many think that this is compromised yet several users feel that they still may need to use Facebook because they do not have a choice.

Conclusion

Facebook has continued to make major advancements in a bid to improve the user experience and to enhance socialization which has spurred unimaginable developments in the corporate world, however guaranteeing the users their security has become a major challenge with the threat from cybercrime being a hard to slay monster (Park et al., 2009). Cybercrime targets governments, individuals, and businesses at a rapidly growing rate and the digital platforms enhanced by social networks are just a good breeding ground for this vice. Facebook has however provided a way of reporting to them any suspicious issues that a user might encounter through the report icon.

REFERENCES

Park, N., Kee, K. F., & Valenzuela, S. (2009). Being immersed in social networking environment: Facebook groups, uses and gratifications, and social outcomes. Cyber Psychology & Behavior, 12(6), 729-733.

Pempek, T. A., Yermolayeva, Y. A., & Calvert, S. L. (2009). College students' social networking experiences on Facebook. Journal of applied developmental psychology, 30(3), 227-238.