Post one: What is your interpretation of the term ‘social media’? What have you learned from the Sensis reports? Include 2 or 3 references from academic sources.

For me, social media is an online platform that allows for networking, circulating and exchanging information and media. This could include a multitude of things from sharing personal information over a messaging application, to online dating, to publishing work for commercial purposes. In 2014, Osborne-Gowey explained social media in its most basic form as “a collection of websites and applications designed to build and enhance online communities for networking and sharing information” which supports the same interpretation I have, even before the massive evolution of these platforms. The ‘social’ aspect of social media is of the utmost importance to me when interpreting the term as I believe the networking aspect of these platforms is what ultimately determines their success, when a platform creates opportunity for widespread sharing and consuming, this is when I believe they are of the most use to content creators and theoretically ‘businesses.’

Being an avid social media user and having studied these platforms in the past couple of years, I felt that the Sensis report findings were self-evident and most of the results reflected my pre hypothesised thoughts on social media use. The results felt almost obvious to a social media user as habits of consumption are very similar between each user.

The one statistic which did surprise me and caused some confusion was that “63% of consumers say they are less likely to purchase a brand if they notice any social influencers or celebrities posting something about that brand on social media.” I definitely thought that this would have been reversed, with people being more influenced to buy a product that had been promoted by a celebrity/influencer. Also, to rebut this, Yellow found that 61% of businesses found paying social influencers to promote their business was effective. I would be keen to investigate further into the imbalance of these results and understand the correlation between influencer culture and consumption habits.

Osborne‐Gowey, J. (2014). What is Social Media. Fisheries (Bethesda), 39(2), 55.

Yellow. (2020). Yellow Social Media Report 2020 – Businesses.