The ambiguous role of social media in today’s social context is well known and determined by their binaries as creators of a new communicative environment, new sociality that contributes to the finding of personal and national authenticity as against a field of information wars, political games and exploitation for the economic interests of the big Internet corporations. Social media are deinstitutionalized so that users have multi dimensional features to create and modify personal values and identities by transforming networking content and sharing it with other users. The audience of social media can be divided into extremely active users or "insiders", then those who are in process of training and searching for personal behavior in networks - "newbies", and also those who are “lurkers" of social media – the readers of blogs or the visitors of social networks without active participation and creation of own content. Nevertheless, so long the Internet users are included in different network resources; they become both influential founders of production and object of the hidden or open commercial or political interests of big Internet corporations and political actors.
Digital activists assert that social media have radically transformed the world promising new forms of community, alternative ways of knowing and sensing, participatory culture, networked activism, and distributed democracy. Digital pessimists argue that digital culture has not brought about positive change, but has rather deepened and extended domination through new forms of control as well as networked authoritarianism, digital dehumanization, alienation 2.0, networked exploitation and violence.
Oksana LYCHKOVSKA-NEBOT, Odessa I.I. Mechnikov National University, Ukraine and Daniela FRUMUSANI, Univ. of Bucharest, Romania
