Social Media - The Fourth Pillar

Social Media: Reconstructing

the Fourth Pillar

 

Social media permits multiple identities - tribal, feudal, regional, linguistic, national, religious, ... It allows the material impulses/instincts to be satisfied by proxy, in the virtual world. The very nature of the network allows hierarchical and horizontal connections with others

 

Recent technological innovations put the tools of production of media content in the hands of common man. It allows anybody with access to the Net to reach across to millions. It gives voice to erstwhile voiceless. Access to these tools empowers the powerless.  

For the traditional large corporate media houses, however, it has been very disempowering. Grandmothers start chitchatting with their grandchildren on the other part of the world, disregarding their favourite serial - because that is the best time to interact with people on the other part of the world. Young householders living in rented flats are attending to their virtual farms and decorating their virtual houses, fulfilling their instincts and dreams. Young children making up animation stories using applications in iPad... Attracting eyeballs to any mass entertainment has never been more difficult.  

From the traditional mass media point of view, the new media is seen as merely another platform for delivery. But the new media is much more than that. It is a platform for interactions, conversations, searching, creating and sharing. Sharing is a two way process but media delivery is a one way street. The traditional business models for media are not yet really ready for this transformation. 

Challenges to traditional media 

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Social Media-A Double-edged Sword

Social Media- A Double-edged Sword 

We need to guard against the negative impact of the social media, which ought to be used in the correct manner for creative or productive purposes so that it is progressive to mankind and society at large, rather than regressive

 

The term social media is being used quite often by everyone and has become a popular topic of conversation, debates and controversies. Contrary to popular belief and perceptions of the general public, social media is not just restricted to sites like Facebook and Twitter. Social media, in fact, encompasses all the web services that facilitate creation, sharing and exchange of user-generated content. These include but are not restricted to Internet forums, groups, blogs, microblogs, networking sites, social bookmarking sites, wikis, podcasts, content communities for articles, video/photo sharing sites, Q & A sites, review sites and so on and so forth, the list is endless. The number of people accessing and using the social media is increasing exponentially day by day. But how many of us truly understand what social media is and the effect it has on people as individuals and the society at large. 

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Social Capital through Social Media

Social Capital Creation Through Social Media

 

In a country as diverse and complex as India is, a properly restructured and prioritized social media can act as a catalyst for the creation of the social capital in step with the creation of the economic capital, synergetically reinforcing each other 

 

Social media means different things to different people. It can be used for hobby or as a serious and effective business tool. Behind every organizational success story in this media is a lot of patient planning and a sharp focus on getting things right – putting all the right elements in the right way in the right place at the right time. Like any other technology or facility, social media technology or facility too becomes good or bad depending on how it is used. In this article we forecast the evolutionary path likely up to the year 2020 for the ICT -ambience as well as the social media shaped by it and show how the enhanced or new features of this media can be well utilized to create social capital in the process of socio-economic development of the country. 

Evolution of ICT-Ambience For Social Media 

Formal technology forecast exercises carried out by the author in the past four years had predicted the IT-ambience supporting the social media, among others, up to 2020 in terms of Converged Mobile Handset  (CMH), Bandwidth Enablers, Fourth Generation Long term Evolution (4G-LTE), Nanotechnology, web 3.0, Mobile Intelligent Agents (MIA), Cloud Computing and Reusable Component Software. These are briefly outlined below :  

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PLANNING COMMISSION GOES SOCIAL

Planning Commission goes Social 

TO Demonstrate why government bodies in India need to be on social media, we would like to draw your attention to one fact – by June 2013, 66 million Indians will be on social media*. This number is fast growing, with over 150,000 new users joining social media platforms every month. While these statistics appear relatively minor in comparison to the total population, it is important to note heir influence. For instance, a new study asserts, “at a very conservative estimate, the fortunes of contestants seeking election to the next Lok Sabha from not less than 150 constituencies will be determined by Facebook users”. The point here is that government institutions can no longer ignore engagement on social media platforms. These platforms provide voice to people, and it is essential to not only listen to them for feedback but also engage in dialogue through them. This engagement is not just a marketing tool prior to elections. Rather, it allows for a constant engagement between Ministries and the public, and is now an important component of the government’s service delivery to citizens. 

Governments around the world have recognized the power of social media. President Barack Obama uses Twitter town halls to take questions from the people, the Russian law department periodically seeks feedback on new policies through their Twitter handle, and in Ontario the province crowd-sourced ideas on how to better integrate social innovation in the government. Even in India, our Prime Minister’s Office uses Twitter to inform its 5 lakh plus followers on the activities of the PM. These are just a few examples to show that there is a growing acknowledgement that greater transparency can be achieved through proactive dissemination of information from the government. 

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E-Governance- Need for Bottom-up

E-Governance: Need for a

Bottom-up approach

 

Achieving success in e-governance requires active partnerships between government, citizens and the private Sector

 

In its journey to improve services for citizens, the government has undertaken several successful e-governance initiatives such as MCA21 (to improve the speed and certainty in the delivery of the services of Ministry of Company Affairs), online submission of income tax returns, Passport Seva Kendra (PSK), etc. Also, to roll out all the planned 1,100 e-governance services by 2014, the government is making huge investment -up to Rs 40,000 crore. This investment will cover the cost of all kinds of hardware and software that will be required for capacity building. 

‘At your service’ or Mee Seva is Government of Andhra Pradesh’s window to its citizens. Nearly 6,000 Mee Seva Counters are servicing over 50,000 requests per day, which are geared to handle 100,000 transactions a day. It has converged all National e-Governance Programme (NeGP) initiatives in rendering G2C services in a fast and secure way – thus ended the “tyranny of ink signatures”. Back-end applications interact with database and pull out information and front-end application receives the citizen’s request and communicates with departmental application – therefore gives a single view of the citizen. It involves departments like revenue, registration, municipal administration, education and other service delivery channels.  

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