Abstract
World Wide Web (Web) is commercialized at the very end of 20th century and now, in the 21st century, almost half of the human society is using it. Web technologies have evolved and a relatively small set of them has a capacity of simulating complexity of sociality via interpersonal interactions; to define this small set many terms have been suggested, yet social media has been widely used by many scholars. Social media is a set of online communication networks that constitutes a crucial hub for producing, accessing and diffusing information. Inquiry on understanding the online flow of the information, it is essential to understand the topological position of social media within web’s mesh structure. In this paper at first communication and information terms will be defined and social media will be discussed within the scope of complexity and information flow terms from network science and communication science perspective. At last, a graph analysis example on social media’s topological position within web will be shared to emphasize social media’s importance on online information flow.
Highlights
Different perspectives have different definitions of communication yet it can be systematically defined as Rogers and Kincaid (1981, 63) did: a process in which the participants create and share information with one another in order to reach a mutual understanding
World Wide Web is one of those technologies that affected human kind since Tim Berners-Lee invented it by the end of 20th century; and for several years, at the first quarter of 21th century, social media as another socio-technical change agent has been developed within the World Wide Web ecosystem
As an online communication network, social media is a hub within web for producing, accessing and diffusing information
Summary
Change is the only constant in nature. Systematic changes create transformations and transformations affect sociality. World Wide Web is one of those technologies that affected human kind since Tim Berners-Lee invented it by the end of 20th century; and for several years, at the first quarter of 21th century, social media as another socio-technical change agent has been developed within the World Wide Web ecosystem. Social media is a relatively small set of web technologies with a capacity of simulating complexity of sociality via interpersonal interactions. As an online communication network, social media is a hub within web for producing, accessing and diffusing information. Users of this technology are free to transmit messages between each other; users of this technology are experiencing mass communication and interpersonal communication at the very same time. It must be emphasized that this research has a pilot study status for further researches, which will create a synthesis between network and communication sciences
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