Social Media, Quo Vadis? Prospective Development and Implications

Laura Studen,Victor Tiberius

doi:10.3390/fi12090146

Abstract

Over the past two decades, social media have become a crucial and omnipresent cultural and economic phenomenon, which has seen platforms come and go and advance technologically. In this study, we explore the further development of social media regarding interactive technologies, platform development, relationships to news media, the activities of institutional and organizational users, and effects of social media on the individual and the society over the next five to ten years by conducting an international, two-stage Delphi study. Our results show that enhanced interaction on platforms, including virtual and augmented reality, somatosensory sense, and touch- and movement-based navigation are expected. AIs will interact with other social media users. Inactive user profiles will outnumber active ones. Platform providers will diversify into the WWW, e-commerce, edu-tech, fintechs, the automobile industry, and HR. They will change to a freemium business model and put more effort into combating cybercrime. Social media will become the predominant news distributor, but fake news will still be problematic. Firms will spend greater amounts of their budgets on social media advertising, and schools, politicians, and the medical sector will increase their social media engagement. Social media use will increasingly lead to individuals’ psychic issues. Society will benefit from economic growth and new jobs, increased political interest, democratic progress, and education due to social media. However, censorship and the energy consumption of platform operators might rise.

Highlights

Since the launch of the first social media network SixDegrees in 1997 [1], social media have become an immensely popular and ubiquitous medium
Our study contributes to the existing knowledge base of social media research by adding a foresight perspective, which is relevant for both researchers and practitioners
The paper is structured as follows: After setting the background of the study and formulating projections (Section 2), which builds the foundation for the empirical study, we describe the procedure of the conducted Delphi study (Section 3)

Summary

Introduction

Since the launch of the first social media network SixDegrees in 1997 [1], social media have become an immensely popular and ubiquitous medium. Over the last two decades, social media as applications that allow the creation and exchange of user generated content [3] has significantly changed, based on technological advances, and new platforms have emerged while others have vanished [4] Given these dynamics and the relevance of social media for individuals, organizations, and society [5], we engage in foresight [6,7,8,9] and ask the following research question: How will social media change over the five to ten years? We aim to identify the most probable future scenario for social media in regard to interactive technologies, platform development, relationships to news media, institutional and organizational users, and effects of social media on the individual and the society To achieve this goal, we conduct an international, two-stage Delphi study. Our study contributes to the existing knowledge base of social media research by adding a foresight perspective, which is relevant for both researchers and practitioners

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion