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DEFINING SOCIAL MEDIA

The term social media is an overarching definition that commonly refers to a collection of differing virtual platforms that facilitate the establishment of communication pathways on a local and international scale. The phrase ‘Social Media’ can thus be broken down into two components:

a) Social: Indicates the connection and interaction of individuals sharing, sending and receiving information. b) Media: Encapsulates the underlying method of communication, such as the internet or more traditional forms being TV and radio (Nations, 2021).

The term social media is multifaceted and encompasses numerous subcategories. Whereby, the main features and tools of many social media platforms ultimately include: Personal Public and Private Accounts / Profile Pages Friends, Followers, Group Chats and Hashtags Newsfeed, Personalisation and Notification Information Updating, Posting, Sharing and Saving Likes and Comment Sections Review, Rating or Voting Systems

Websites and online applications have drastically revolutionised the way people interact, communicate and express themselves on a daily basis (TAPIA, 2021). The four key social media sites that form the basis of the investigation and are currently available to the community include:

Facebook: Founded in 2004 in the United States, it is the largest social media platform currently in the world, which allows people to connect and share internationally. All content can be made publicly accessible or chosen to be shared privately (Nations, 2021). Main Features - Sending private messages, posting status sharing content such photos, video & links.

Instagram: Founded in 2010 in the United States, the features allow users to create a “feed” known as their homepage, sharing posts with everyone they follow, liking images and commenting on them, these features can also be specified to a private or public audience (Stegner, 2021). Main Features - Posting images and videos, liking and commenting, saving posts, private messaging, sharing stories. Twitter: Founded in 2015 in the United States, a trending social media platform generally used to send and receive news, follow high profile influencers and stay in contact with followers. The platform allows users to discover stories regarding news and events, follow individuals and/or companies and to share thoughts with an wide audience (Forsey, 2021). Main Features - Microblogging and sharing of news in messages called tweets, which are limited to 280 characters making posts short and scan friendly. Tiktok: Founded in 2016 in China, a trending social media platform, used to share short videos. Tiktok is not only utilised to share dancing, comedy and lip-syncing videos but is being additionally used as an information sharing platform and for brand marketing and company use (Porter, 2021). Main Features - Sharing short videos, liking and commenting on videos of others, creating a personalised video feed, downloading videos, going live.

THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is commonly referred to as a powerful software that is thought to have primarily emerged due to the inherent human need to communicate. Merriam Webster further discloses that social media is a ‘form of electronic communication through which users create online communities to share data’ (2020). Whereby, due to the popularity of social media gaining traction over recent years, there are many questions surfacing in regards to the emergence of social media and how it has affected the everyday lives of large populations of people from differing demographics, such as the way in which it influences one’s lifestyle, how it impacts business and the economy, and the opportunity it presents for open communication between individuals and large groups of people. The following bullet points thus provide an overview of the general history of social media:

The notion of social media is believed to have first emerged on the 24th May 1844, following a series of electronic dots and dashes being drawn by a telegraph machine, now commonly referred to as morse code (Statistica, 2021). The first message that was sent electronically was sent from Baltimore to Washington Dc, by Samuel Morse who was the original inventor of social media (Statistica, 2021).

The emergence of the Advanced Research Project Agency Network came to light later in 1969, which was initially created by the US department of defence to enable the transfer of software, hardware and other data amongst scientists from different research facilities (Dollarhide, 2021).

Subsequently in 1987 the direct precursors of today’s internet launched the National Science Foundation, with the first true social media platform being launched in 1997 (Oberlo, 2021).Moreover, during the 1980’s to the 1990’s technology further improved and new trends emerged across digital sites. The internet further developed allowing more users to connect online with service providers, as well as the movement of emails, bulletin board messaging and real time chatting, opening a whole new channel to the original idea of social media. Following the introduction of these platforms in 2001, the registration of emails and basic online networking began to attract a large number of new users from the public (Statistica, 2021)

In 2002, the first career networking platform was launched by the name of LinkedIn, which sought to attract business professionals to connect and share career profiles (Statistica, 2021) The platform increased in popularity very quickly, with more than 675 million users worldwide utilising the online application to network and connect with individuals and businesses who are like minded (Statistica, 2021)

The launch of LinkedIn was later followed by Myspace in 2003. Within 3 years of its launch it was classified as the most visited website worldwide, however this was notably very quickly overturned when Facebook emerged in 2004 (Statistica, 2021)

Today’s modern social media is populated by a suite of services with the most prominent social media networks being Facebook, founded in 2004. Twitter founded in 2006, Instagram founded in 2010, snapchat founded in 2011 and Tiktok being the latest to launch in 2016.

SOCIAL MEDIA CONCERNS AND ISSUES

Social media has played a vital role in modern history, from empowering the citizens with free speech to creating social disruption through hate speech. The resulting debates on the extent of free speech and social appropriateness on social media platforms has formulated the key concerns addressed in this report.

Furthermore, the main concerns associated with social media primarily revolve around three main questions:

Governance: to what extent should government companies or technology be involved in regulating social media platforms? Monitoring: to which extent should social media platforms be monitored? Freedom: How do we understand freedom of speech in social media?

CENSORSHIP IN SOCIAL MEDIA

Censorship ideally refers to the restriction of speech or public communication, which is mainly driven through government, social media platforms through in-built algorithms and guidelines or community themselves in some cases (Meta, 2021). However, all these governance structures have their inherent issues.

In case of community censorship, there is always an underlying threat of silencing the unpopular opinion and amplifying the majority’s voices. While, increasing influence of government on social media have demonstrated the curbing of free speech and ‘anti-regime’ political opinions (Lim & Al rasheed, 2021; Warraich, 2017). However, on the other hand, disclosure of information by the social media companies to the Government have also saved human lives. For instance, an event of data shared to the UK and Indian government prevented a person from suicide and helped the government nab criminals, respectively (Meta, 2021). Censorship through Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms have demonstrated the lack of ability to understand the context. The algorithms which were supposed to minimise bias have evidence of introducing ‘Algorithm Bias’ (Lim & Al rasheed, 2021; Warraich, 2017). Latest interdisciplinary studies are working towards shifting from Algorithmic governance to Governance of Algorithms (Ebers & Cantero Gamito, 2021).

AUSTRALIAN AND INTERNATIONAL LAWS

Similar to other websites in Australia, social media platforms are censored by the nation’s criminal law system. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is recognised as possessing the power to both control and monitor content. Despite the existence of departments who have the authority to regulate social media content, unlike overseas there has been a significant policy issue with many proposals that are brought to the attention being refused (GuardChild, 2021). Therefore, in 2019 the Senate passed a bill in response to the Christchurch Mosque Shooting, stating that all content that is uploaded to a social media platform can be removed from the host social media service in order to ensure the removal of “inappropriate” content immediately (GuardChild, 2021).

Moreover, despite social media platforms providing their own guidelines, Australia has both Federal and State laws that outline what content can and cannot be posted on the internet. While the notion of freedom of speech is recognised in Australian legislation, the Government and High Court of Australia have further put forward policies that prevent the circulation of content that references violence, abuse and other harmful data (Statistica, 2021).

AUSTRALIAN AND INTERNATIONAL LAWS CONTINUED

Conversely, international laws regarding social media differ significantly depending on one’s context. For example China is thought to enforce very strict rules when it comes to the availability of particular social media platforms to their citizens, as many online applications are banned to the public and are replaced by their own platforms (Kepios, 2021). Iran has adopted a similar approach with many social media networks being banned in fear of their community passing on information to foreign countries (Kepios, 2021). The existence of censorship in these two contexts effectively reference a different governmental approach to the regulation of comments and posts, as the presentation of content is heavily influenced by law and cannot be disputed.

DID YOU KNOW...

1) There are currently 3.78 billion social media users worldwide (48%) (Oberlo,2021).

2) The daily time spent on social media worldwide increased from 90 min per day in 2012 to 145 min per day in 2020 (Statistica, 2020).

3) 88% of teens have witnessed another bullying another on social media (Guardchild, 2021).

4) 86% of the population aged 18-29, 80% of 30-49 year older, and 64% of 50-64 year olds use social media daily (Statistica, 2020).

5) 32% of teen girls say that Instagram has made them feel worse about their bodies (Northeastern,2021).

6) An account on instagram will typically get taken down after 3-4 reports (Gramto,2021)

7) From January to June 2021, a total of 351,471 user’s information has been requested to facebook by governments (Meta, 2021).

8) From July to Dec 2020, a total of 38,524 legal demands were made by governments to remove accounts from twitter (Twitter, 2020).

Figure 2: Censoring particular words can misconstrue and disassembles the message trying to be evoked (Global Voices, 2021). Figure 3: Social Media a source for (Mis)information (Whamond, 2021).