An introduction to the special issue on social media, or why this isn’t a special issue on social network(ing) sites

What is social media? When I posted the call for this special issue, several colleagues alerted me that I had assumed an answer to this question, and it was an answer they did not share. The initial draft of the call invoked Ellison and boyd’s (2013) tripartite definition of social network sites:

a networked communication platform in which participants 1) have uniquely identifiable profiles that consist of user-supplied content, content provided by other users, and/or system-level data; 2) can publicly articulate connections that can be viewed and traversed by others; and 3) can consume, produce, and/or interact with streams of user-generated content provided by their connections on the site. (p. 158)

It is a useful, valuable definition and I feature it in my communication technology courses. In the special issue call, I had assumed that social network(ing) sites are equivalent, at least roughly, to social media. After pushback from scholars I respect and trust (including Ellison herself), I added to the call, “Although social media encompasses a range of technologies beyond social network sites proper, the purpose of this special issue is to consider and theorize those technologies that constitute ‘social media’ apps and websites in popular discourse.”

These colleagues were right to challenge my implied assumption of definitional equivalency. Their feedback led to a better call, and the call introduced new stakeholders into the mix: the public. How do they talk about social media? In a twist that will sound familiar to scholars operating from a critical paradigm, in addition to asking what social media is, the call now subtly grappled with who gets to decide the definition. Here, I will consider three possible answers.

Those who study it. Readers of the introduction to an academic journal’s special issue on social media probably possess some sympathy for this answer, as do I. Scholars are experts, and although experts do not always get things right, it is unwise to dismiss expert advice out of hand. Remarkable academic consensus exists regarding the definition of social network(ing) sites, with scholars almost universally citing boyd and Ellison’s (2007) definition or its revision (Ellison & boyd, 2013). Less agreement exists regarding the term social media (Carr & Hayes, 2015; Kane et al., 2014; Leonardi et al., 2013; Obar & Wildman, 2015), but several common threads seem to unite attempts to define it, including a focus on the Internet as a technological backbone, user-generated content, and connections among users.

Regarding the relationship between social network(ing) sites and social media, researchers have framed the former as a type of the latter. For example, Ellison and boyd (2013) described social network(ing) sites as “a genre of social media,” and Carr and Hayes (2015) warned against conflating the terms: “Unfortunately, this definition has frequently been errantly cross-applied as an overarching definition of social media. Although SNSs—by their nature—are typically social media tools, not all social media are inherently SNSs” (p. 49). McEwan (2020) presented social network sites as, along with “online communities,” a type of social media; she employed the Ellison and boyd (2013) definition to identify Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn as social network sites, whereas Reddit and Tumblr’s topical focus (rather than network focus) renders them online communities. These and other scholars have moved the discipline forward by devoting sustained theoretical attention to the affordances that shape human communication via technology.

Those who make it. boyd and Ellison’s (2007) initial definition of social network(ing) sites said nothing about streams of content. When technology companies invented that feature and made it fundamental to site experience, Ellison and boyd (2013) updated their definition accordingly. This revision reveals that choices by technology companies drive what characterizes social media at a given historical moment. Indeed, Ellison and boyd (2013) remarked of the adoption of terms such as social software and Web 2.0 (and, eventually, social media): “While many scholars have eschewed these labels … many in Silicon Valley were enamored by the potential of this new wave of information” (p. 160). Those who create, recreate, and market the technology wield much influence regarding the definition and discourse surrounding that technology.

If the definition of social network(ing) sites needed revision after just six years, one might reasonably expect more such changes in the near future. The definition of interpersonal communication or organizational communication or health communication changes little (if at all) across the span of decades, but communication technology is shifting ground, continually remade by the choices of programmers, marketing specialists, research-and-development tinkerers, and corporate executives. As of this writing, perusal of the corporate websites for social media companies reveals an absence of both social network(ing) sites and social media. Instead, they describe their sites as places for “connect[ing] with friends, family, and communities of people who share your interests” (Facebook, 2020), discovering “what’s happening in the world and what people are talking about right now” (Twitter, 2020), “where your interests connect you with your people” (Tumblr, 2020), “connect[ing] the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful” (LinkedIn, 2020), and engaging with “thousands of communities, endless conversation, and authentic human connection” (Reddit, 2020). In contrast to academic definitions that privilege the technological affordances of sites, corporate definitions emphasize the uses and gratifications the sites satisfy in human relationships.

Those who use it. The term social network(ing) sites appears frequently in the scholarly literature, and as noted above, scholars have agreed that it is a subset of social media. Indeed, it was the violation of this distinction that triggered concern about the initial version of the call for this special issue. This academic consensus faces a problem: The term social networking sites just is not popular anymore (and the term social network sites never was, as logical as that term might be; Ellison & boyd, 2013).

Looking at search engine data via Google Trends, the terms social media and social networking sites appeared with about equal frequency until 2009, and then social media rocketed ahead. On the day I am writing this (1 November 2020), social media is about 67 times more popular as a search term than social networking sites. Examining The New York Times across the past year, the term social media yields 5878 hits, whereas social networking sites yields just three. At The Wall Street Journal, the ratio is 1583 to 4; at The Chicago Tribune it is 3837 to 0. A Twitter search reveals 25 tweets using social networking sites in the past day, whereas the term social media was tweeted 25 times in the past 45 seconds. Reddit has three posts using social networking sites in the past day, whereas social media appears a multitude of times.

As technology scholars who (rightfully) value the last decade and a half of careful thinking about definitions, we must reckon with what might be an uncomfortable empirical fact: Users—along with journalists and the corporations that make the technologies—have abandoned the term social network(ing) sites. That verbiage seems well on its way to joining nostalgic phrases such as information superhighway, electronic frontier, and surfing the web. In the public discourse, at least for the moment, social media carries the day.

Rethinking the definitions. Let me be utterly clear that my intent is not to disparage the solid work devoted to conceptualizing and (re)defining new social technologies. It is good work by good scholars. Exploring new theoretical territory is not easy and such pioneering work deserves much praise.

Given that social network(ing) sites is a phrase that has disappeared from popular use, I suggest we reconsider the gap between public and academic discourse as we speak about technology. As communication scholars, we enjoy words (and arguing about their definitions). Sometimes we coin new terms; for example, although laypeople experience relational dialectics, most do not talk about them that way. Social media is not that sort of term. We did not coin it; we do not own it. The phrase appeared in the culture and entered academic discourse, not the other way around.

On this point, I am reminded of what Craig (1999) wrote about the word communication: “All communication theories are relevant to a common practical lifeworld in which communication is already a richly meaningful term” (p. 120). This is likewise true with social media (and theories about it). It may be wise to minimize the distance between academic discourse and the practical lifeworld that discourse describes. In any case, it would seem undesirable to hitch scholarship to an archaic term.

Where does this leave us for the purpose of this special issue, to theorize social media? As I hope is apparent by now, I think an issue that theorizes social network(ing) sites would lack relevance (although perhaps there is room for such a special issue with a historical emphasis). Because the focus of this special issue is on the contemporary landscape, and because social media is the public’s preferred term, I have edited this special issue with a lay definition of social media in mind (albeit informed by the foundational work of Ellison & boyd, 2013). The papers in this special issue center around diverse instantiations of social media (Facebook, Twitch, Twitter), ranging across interpersonal (Pennington & Hall; Peterson & High), organizational (Lai & Fu), advertising (Zarouali et al.), journalistic (Davis et al.), and gaming/mass(personal) (Leith) contexts. Similar to how the corporate discourse emphasizes what people do with social media, so the articles theorize many behaviors, including broadcasting community news, interacting with livestreaming celebrities, maintaining interpersonal relationships, collaborating among organizations, seeking social information, and interpreting persuasive messages.

I imagine that some who read this introduction will not agree with my argument that it is time to abandon the term social network(ing) sites in favor of social media. Sometimes scholars need technical jargon, and perhaps this is one of those times. In that case, scholars should practice transparency about the reasons why academic discourse departs from general use. Fortunately, scholars do not need to agree on definitions before we can theorize—after all, despite some areas of general agreement, our discipline also possesses no definitional consensus on the first word in the title of this journal. Yet nevertheless, our theoretical understanding of communication moves forward, and my hope is that the six papers in the special issue will likewise advance theoretical understanding of social media and its uses.