Social media employ web- and mobile-based technologies to support interactive dialogue and “introduce substantial and pervasive changes to communication between organizations, communities, and individuals.” Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological multi faceted and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.” I.e. Social media are social software which mediate human communication. When the technologies are in place, social media is ubiquitously accessible, and enabled by scalable communication techniques. In the year 2012, social media became one of the most powerful sources for news updates through platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Social media technologies take on many different forms including magazines, Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, microblogging, wikis, social networks, podcasts, photographs or pictures, video, rating…