Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
extent to which the community is interested in taking part to the decision process.
In the past, the participation level was very low and was limited to a small
oligarchy; more recently, the spread of television programs based on talk shows
has increased the level of consciousness in people, but interactivity was not
allowed. Now interactivity is the new vehicle through which information is
delivered, at all levels, and it seems that also politics and common goods can be
managed using the citizens opinions travelling on the Internet.
This new concept of Smart Governance connects the technical aspects to the
social ones meant as not only a strictly governance tool, but also as an educational
and communication tool for thoughts and opinions of the citizens.
With the expression Social Media are to be intended tools and services created
in contrast to those that are defined industrial media, such as newspapers, radio,
TV and cinema.
The classical media have one direction transmission and centralized creation of
contents; a few people create the information and decide what to transmit, and a lot
of people are passive users of this service. The Social Media are at the exact
opposite, allowing a lot of people to create the contents and to spread them.
This type of participative media can be implemented thanks to the technology.
If with the first generation Web only tentative forms of social participation
were introduced, with Web 2.0 the Social Media are fully implemented and the
so-called User Generated Content (UGC) characterizes them.
This fundamental transformation on social participation has shifted the centre
of gravity on which marketing has its foundations for years. In traditional media
the message had to be supported on a one-direction channel with no possibility of
contradiction. In social media it is instead quite possible that the consumer
expresses and opinion, and in general, his contribution is fundamental to support
the spread information about that item among a lot of people.
The proliferation of such environments for social media is huge, but they can be
divided into two main categories: Blogs and Social Networks. Blogs are virtual
environments where individuals, groups of people or enterprises publish contents
that are considered interesting for the community. The subjects can be divided in
classes or general, but most important is the possibility given to users to take freely
part to discussions that arise on the different subjects. All this allows generating
what is called counter-information, and that is basically important for all those
who want to 'understand' the market.
The Social Networks are instead virtual environments finalized at intercon-
necting people based on features or common interests, everything in the aim of
sharing resources or simply discuss of any kind of subject.
Worldwide phenomena like YouTube, Facebook, and Tweeter are some of
these platforms where people can share something. Photos, videos or simply
written text, what brings together these Social Networks is the enormous partici-
pation of people. This obviously makes imperative the consideration of these
platforms as the most important places where desires and people's needs can be
figured out.
