Our media is now in our pockets and consumed in our hands or on our lap. The invention of fast food like fast media created an expectation that it's available everywhere with instant access to whatever consumers want has created a media environment where everyone is always connected. One expectation from this environment is that all media always be available and updated.
The audience-centric journalist producing audience-centric stories knows that with social media people expect to be involved in some way in the production or commentary of the story (Kolodzy, 2013). The always-connected person also has the expectation of "vomiting" every inane detail of their lives onto the internet.
There is an expectation from peers that certain social media accounts are established and used. The social networking services want you to always be connected to their service because that's how they generate revenue. The businesses that pay large amounts of money to have consumers see their advertisement, click their link or view their video. The amount of money isn't small, Facebook alone, generates over 100 billion in revenue from advertising annually and is one of the biggest in the business.
The expectation of always being connected to SNS is societal but also created by the new way people consume media. It's much easier for society to enforce the idea of always looking at your phone than it was for people to make sure you were watching the nightly program on television. This societal expectation loop reinforced by SNS and media conglomerates may have long-term effects on cognition, including some that are already coming to fruition like shrinking attention spans.
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| Screenshot from Statista webpage showing growth of Facebook advertising revenue since 2009. |
References
Asay, P. (2019, October 8). We’re Always Connected, Thanks to Social Media. Why Do We Feel So Alone? Plugged In. https://www.pluggedin.com/blog/were-always-connected-thanks-to-social-media-why-do-we-feel-so-alone/
Kolodzy, J. (2013). Practicing convergence journalism : an introduction to cross-media storytelling. Routledge, Cop.
Statista. (2021). Facebook ad revenue 2009-2018. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/271258/facebooks-advertising-revenue-worldwide/#:~:text=In%202018%2C%20Facebook
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