For several years, I have been using a framework for classification of types of social media that I have attributed to boyd & Ellison, 2007. I first used the framework in a seminar that I taught at the University of Minnesota in 2010 (with others) and have used it many times since because I feel it is a very useful framework (more about why below). Therefore, it is in several slides that I have used for presentations and made publically available on Slideshare and elsewhere – always attributed to boyd & Ellison, 2007.
In its simplest form, and the form that I have most often used it, it is a three-part framework that highlights the way that social media are used on an individual basis:
- Social network sites:
- Illustrates and communicates social networks
- Connected people are already known
- Social networking site:
- Facilitates establishment of new networks
- Meet new people with similar interests
- Social technology:
- Facilitates various forms of „socializing”
- Connected people not necessarily known
- Not necessarily enduring relationships
Because the framework takes as its starting point the way that social media are used, any specific social media service or tool may fall under more than one category. For example, the archetypal „social network site” is Facebook. However, there are many that use Facebook as a blogging site. In those cases, Facebook becomes more of a „social networking site” than a „social network site”.
Recently, I was getting ready to use this framework once again and decided to reread boyd & Ellison, 2007 to refresh. I should have done so long before. Much to my dismay, I discovered that, over time, I had forgotten about certain important contextual factors relating to my first use of the framework; the most important being that boyd & Ellison do not, in fact, define any such framework! Rather they imply it, especially in the way that they define what they are not talking about in the aforementioned article. The framework is my doing, but inspired by boyd & Ellison, 2007. I think it’s important for me to clarify this because I have come across several examples of it being used and (not entirely correctly) attributed to boyd & Ellison. It would probably be a good idea for me to work on it some more and get it published through more formal channels than this blog and Slideshare.
Why I think this is a useful framework
The reason that I have used the framework derived from (or inspired by) boyd & Ellison is that it encourages us to consider the way that people use social media and the creative forces at play when we use them. Other frameworks have been published that attempt to provide useful ways of classifying types of social media based on the ways that we encounter social media. Among ones that I have come across are, (to name only a couple):
- Dron & Anderson (2014) – Based on their classification of social forms, i.e. groups, nets and sets.
- Kaplan & Haenlein (2010) – Based on aspects of the ways that individuals experience themselves and others through social media, especially in terms of individuals’ „social presence” and „self presentation”.
- Wenger, White & Smith (2009) – Their concept of Digital Habitats integrates a number of very useful perspectives on social technology for community building.
There’s nothing wrong with these frameworks and they are useful for many purposes. However, I feel that they tend to depict social media as fully formed, objective things that are in some sense out there for us to bump into. They do not adequately represent in a simple and straightforward manner the iterative constructive aspects of our use of social media that allow us to constantly redefine them to serve our purposes. I believe that the boyd & Ellison-inspired framework does – and my new revelation about its origins might even prompt me to develop it further to do so better, as I’ve already mentioned.
Social media are not constructed for us, rather they are constructed by us through our use of them. In that sense, social media are not predefined tools. They are platforms for doing stuff that entails a variety of forms of communication and interaction, many of which may be entirely unanticipated by their original creators. Thus, their significance and their potential meaning is not to be found in some qualities of the platform itself, nor in the experiences of the users that encounter them. They are actively defined by the way that they are used at any given time.
