The Expansion of Social Media and the Emergence of Global Communication System: Theoretical, Methodological and Empirical Concerns

The mass media communication was considered as one of the key features of modern society and it was argued that mass media are responsible for creating cultural patterns at the mass level (mass culture). Later on, mass media were considered essential for communicating the messages of modernity in developing societies. Therefore, sociologists and mass media theorists used to make a distinction between traditional communication system and modern communication system and also a transitional communication system. These assumptions of communication theorists have been challenged in recent past with the conceptualization of New Media theory. The expansion of social media has transformed the communication world. Web 2.0 technology has revolutionized the patterns of communication and posed a challenge to theories of modern period. The global integration of media facilitated the emergence of a global communication system. In the early phase, main stream media (print media, broadcasting and audio-visual media) and social media (social networking sites) were compartmentalized by the media theorists. But now, social media and main stream media are also integrating with each other in a very complicated manner. This has transformed the entire media scenario and the theories, methodologies and conceptual framework of modern age are not much helpful in analyzing the empirical situation. The proposed session is aimed to explore and discuss pertinent issues in the light of the above discussion.