In my summary of this week\u2019s chapter, I started by stating that research in social media and strategic communication helps professionals understand whether their content and strategies are actually working. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But in course of the week, I have been reflecting on these questions:\u00a0why do we share<\/em>?\u00a0What motivates us to share? Do we share to connect or to cash in or both?\u00a0<\/em>Or maybe just to show off? I know this sounds awful, but I am referring to our identity performance, that is, how we show our values, signal our tastes, which is the way human beings have always communicated their status or sense of belonging.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n But to share is to spread. Unlike when spreading the media was top-down (think traditional broadcasting etc.), social media spreads sideways especially because audiences\/consumers\/followers\u00a0choose<\/strong>\u00a0to share.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sharing is content\u2019s oxygen. When sharing stops, the oxygen supply is halted, and content becomes invisible and irrelevant. It dies. If it doesn\u2019t spread, it quietly stops to matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To share is also to participate in embellishing the content because the process of sharing offers feedback to the creator. Conversations about content reveals what audience care about, and how they interpret the content. In this process, creators build relationships with audiences who become co-creators because they help in making the message matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If creators of content have economic intentions, audiences\/sharers are driven by social reasons when sharing content. When we share content, our intention is not to help the creator make money. We share what we consider to be a resource or a gift to a friend (friend is here broadly defined). Creators often see media as a product; consumers\/ audiences see or experience it as a gift. Promoting someone else\u2019s economic interest is rarely the point among everyday users. Users value their friends more than they value producers. Sharing works best when a) content has social value to the person sharing it, and b) when it creates economic value for the creator<\/p>\n\n\n\n The tension between gift and commodity, expression and promotion, is at the core of social media research.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In my summary of this week\u2019s chapter, I started by stating that research in social media and strategic communication helps professionals understand whether their content and strategies are actually working. But in course of the week, I have been reflecting on these questions:\u00a0why do we share?\u00a0What motivates us to share? Do we share to connect […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1010,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/wachanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/wachanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/wachanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/wachanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1010"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/wachanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/wachanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":245,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/wachanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions\/245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/wachanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/wachanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/wachanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}