Do virtual social networks destroy the social fabric?

There is some debate as to whether virtual social networks have a net beneficial or net detrimental effect on society. [1]  And it must be admitted that the question is difficult to answer. For instance, what is the social fabric that is threatened by social networks? Research on social capital could provide an answer.

The social Internet has come to stay

Critical voices have accompanied the development of the internet from the very beginning. Recently, there have been increased warnings against the dangers of the social media. The main reason for this: Facebook's blatant misconduct and the way in which the company deals with its mistakes. However, we will all have to get used to the social internet, because it has come to stay. The social media are the expression of our human nature.

“Can we go back to using Facebook for what it was originally for - looking up exes to see how fat they got?” (Bill Maher)

Recently, Apple CEO Tim Cook made a name for himself when he spoke out in favour of restricting the use of technology in schools, suggesting that he had banned his nephew from participating in social networks. And Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster and long-time Facebook consultant, is quoted as saying,"God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains". Social media has a problem, and not just since Facebook's inglorious role in the American election campaign. Platforms whose self-declared goal it is to bring us all closer together and make us happy seem - indeed - to have the opposite effect.

What makes a good instructional video?

Video supports education in many areas and online courses regularly include instructional videos. Video transports the content both audibly and visually, creating a multisensory learning environment that is said to be particularly conducive to learning. The fact that multisensory learning environments can be beneficial to learning (and when it does so) has been investigated a lot of times in laboratory experiments. In practice, however, there is still uncertainty about what really makes a good video.

What's with the hype about videos in Social Media?

Videos are currently being hyped in connection with social media. Look at your social media accounts and you will see that videos have become a dominant form of content. And apparently, the supply is matched by a corresponding demand. A company like Facebook would not place so much emphasis on videos if it hadn't come to the conclusion that this kind of content is particularly popular with users.

Successfull Managment of Online Health Communities

Browsing the Internet, I stumbled across these three interesting articles about the successful management of online health communities. Here are the (slightly modified) abstracts:

Six functional building blocks of social media platforms

In their paper "Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media" Kietzmann et al. (2011) present a (honeycomb) framework that defines social media by using seven functional building blocks. The blocks are intended to provide a better understanding of the audience of a particular social media platform and their engagement needs:

Personality and Culture Influence Self-presentation and Self-disclosure on SNSs

Baiyun Chen and Justin Marcus conducted a non-experimental study to investigate how university students (N = 463) use Facebook, and examined the roles that personality and culture play in disclosure of information in online SNS-based environments. The research seeked to extend existing theory on self-disclosure to the online arena in higher educational institutions and contribute to the knowledge base and understanding about the use of a popular social networking site (SNS), Facebook, by college students.