What is Social Media?

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From the course by University of Pennsylvania

English for Media Literacy

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University of Pennsylvania

English for Media Literacy

877 ratings

Welcome to English for Media Literacy, a course created by the University of Pennsylvania, and funded by the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Office of English Language Programs. To enroll in this course for free, click on “Enroll now” and then select "Full Course. No certificate." This course is designed for non-native English speakers who are interested in learning more about U.S. media literacy. In this course, you will explore different types of mass media, such as newspapers, magazines, television, and social media. This course will also give you the opportunity to develop a broader understanding of the role media plays in our lives, while building your vocabulary and giving you the language skills needed to analyze what you read and watch. The first unit in this course will provide an introduction to media literacy and give you an opportunity to evaluate your own media literacy level. In unit 2, you will learn how to identify facts versus opinions in the media. The next unit in the course will focus on the differences between social media and traditional media, while unit 4 will look at how gender and identity are covered in the media. In the final unit of the course, you will demonstrate your increased media literacy by through a culminating final project on social media. Development of this course was funded by the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Office of English Language Programs. Unless otherwise noted, all course materials are available for re-use, repurposing and free distribution under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution license.

From the lesson

Unit 2: Types of Media: Traditional vs. Social

In this unit you will learn about the differences between traditional and social media, and learn the language necessary to compare them.

What is Traditional Media?5:48

What is Social Media?4:55

Unlockable Achievement 30:09

Language Focus - Comparative Adjectives5:20

Meet the Instructors

Lauren Fiori
Advising Specialist
English Lan
Ian Nichols
Language Specialist
English Language Programs

Hello, you're probably familiar with Facebook, Instagram,

WhatsApp, Twitter, or YouTube.

These are all popular examples of social media.

In this video, we're going to answer the question, what is social media?

To answer this question, let's define social media and

then look at its important characteristics.

User-created content, two-way communication,

and an online social network.

We can start with the definition.

Social Media is the websites and applications, or apps,

that allow you to create and share media messages with other people.

These sites, or apps, allow users to create content,

which is the pictures, text or video that make up a media message.

What makes this media social is that users can then publish their own content so

it can be shared with other people.

Now, that we have basic understanding of what social media is, let's look at its

characteristics in more detail and see how they're different from traditional media.

One of the most important characteristics of social media and

maybe the biggest difference compared to traditional media is

the ability to publish user created content.

All of the text and picture and

video messages in social media are created by the users.

Remember, in traditional media content is created by big media companies or

the government instead of by users.

Another important characteristic of social media is Two-Way Communication.

Users of social media can send messages directly to each other to

have conversations about issues.

These conversations can be public so

even more people can join in to share their opinions.

In contrast with traditional media the communication only goes in one direction.

From the companies or

governments that create the media to the users who consume the media.

The last important characteristic of social media that we're going to talk

about, is your Online Social Network.

A social network is all of the people you know and interact with.

These people can be friends, family, coworkers, or

even the friends of your friends.

So, your online social network is made up of all the people you interact with

through social media: your Facebook friends, your Twitter followers,

and so on.

This online social network is something we don't see with traditional media.

We've been talking about the difference between social media and

traditional media.

But you might have noticed that these days,

traditional media is changing to be a little bit more like social media.

For example, a television news station might have a website where users can

make comments and talk to each other.

This is like the two-way communication of social media.

In addition, many websites for traditional media companies allow users to make

a direct connection to their social media accounts, such as Facebook or Twitter.

In this way, the traditional media company can connect to your online social network.

Connections between traditional media and social media are becoming more and

more common.

Later in this unit, we'll read about one example of these connections that explains

how many people are using social media to learn about the news.

So to summarize social media is the websites and online applications

that allow users to create content and share messages with each other.

Social media is different from traditional media in its important characteristics.

Which are User-Created Content,

Two-Way Communication and an Online Social Network.

Next, we'll play a game about traditional and social media.

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