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Running Head: SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 1
Social Media and Group Dynamics:
A State of Cooperative Conflict
Jared Laswell
Cedarville University
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 2
Table of Contents
Abstract...……………………………………………………………………………………….....2
Social Media...…………………...………………………………………………………………..3
Introduction….…………………………………………………………………………….3
Background………………………………………………………………………………..4
Facebook…………………………………………………………………………………..5
Twitter……………………………………………………………………………………..7
Communicating Interpersonally on Social Media........................................…….............10
Personal Communication and Group Dynamics...…...…………………………………………..11
Introduction to Interpersonal Communication…………………………………………...11
Group Dynamics/Communication….…………………………………............................13
Comparing and Contrasting Group Dynamics and Social Media……………………………….15
Group Dynamics Effects on Social Media………………………………………………15
Social Media Effects on Group Dynamics………………………………………………18
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….19
References……………………………………………………………………………………….21
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 3
Abstract
Social media is swiftly changing the way that humans interact in their day-to-day lives. The big
question is, though, to what extent is this taking place? There are various vantage points to study
this communicative revolution from, but this paper takes the interpersonal route. Here, social
media and conventional group dynamics are studied separately, while then combining research
from both to better understand each topic. This paper defines the terms “social media” and
“group dynamics” and studies them separately, while closing with an observation of the two
jointly. It is not the aim of this paper to explain whether technology has made communication
better or worse per se, but the pros and cons of social media-mediated communication will be
touched on sporadically. Instead, this paper focuses on comparing and contrasting typical group
dynamics and modern day social media-mediated communication.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 4
Social Media and Group Dynamics:
A State of Cooperative Conflict
Social Media
Introduction
Social media is a term that everyone in the developed, twenty-first century world is
familiar with. But what makes social media, social media? Is it the fact that there are masses of
people using one content-producing outlet? Perhaps social media is some sort of interactive
online source? As it turns out, it is a bit of both of these answers. According to Merriam-
Webster, social media is defined as “forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social
networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share
information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos)” (social media, 2015). In
other words, social media is any online content site that is capable of building community. Types
of sites that fit into this category include, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and the like.
However, it could also be argued that the umbrella of social media also covers outlets like
movies, video games, and music. After all, are not all of these types of media social in nature?
They encourage interaction and conversation about respective topics, while at the same time,
creating communities of agreement. Discussion in and amongst the movie-going, music-
listening, and video game-playing communities are indeed meant to better understand their fields
of interest. However, while it would seem that they are indeed social mediums, for the focus of
this paper, social media will be applied to those specifically online and mobile sites/applications
designed for social networking and interacting. To look more specifically, Facebook and Twitter
will be the major players that are studied. This is because they are the mediums that seem to
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 5
affect the largest communities of people and are among the most publicized of networking
platforms.
Background
However, make no mistake. These platforms are not the first, nor will they be the last, of
the successful online, public-forum platforms that are in existence. The history of social
networking can be traced back to its origins roughly twenty years ago. The internet was young,
but was being molded into forms never previously imagined. In the 1990s, people started using
the internet in a new way: blogging. Blogging is the act of writing a blog, and blogs are “Web
site[s] on which someone writes about personal opinions, activities, and experiences” (blog,
2015). Essentially, blogs are and were online diaries.
The idea of blogging gained ground on platforms like Xanga. Though mostly dead now,
this platform was formed, in 1999, as a place to talk about music and books, and later morphed
into an online, Myspace-esque community (Oshiro, 2013). The ‘90s also gave birth to the former
internet giant, America Online; better known as AOL. AOL changed the game with a program
they released in the late-90s/early-2000s called AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM, which
revolutionized the way people chatted (Abbruzzese, 2014).
Both of these, Xanga and AIM, were brand new in design and purpose. They
differentiated themselves from email, which was invented by V.A. Shiya Ayyadurai in 1978
(Garling, 2012) by not only being internet-based, but, in AIM’s case, allowing messages to be
sent back and forth in real-time. AIM encouraged direct messaging, like the messaging seen
today via text messaging, Twitter Direct Messaging, and Facebook Messenger.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 6
Like Xanga, LiveJournal followed suit with the blog structure. However, it differed itself
from Xanga by giving people the ability to share their blogs online, and giving other people
access to the online diaries of fellow LiveJournal members (Boyd & Ellison, 2008). By 2003,
these modern-day unknowns gave way to some more recognizable names; namely, Friendster,
LinkedIn, and Myspace. LinkedIn aimed itself mainly toward the business-class Americans, and
as it shows on its corporate page, its goal is to be a social media site for professional use. Since
2003, LinkedIn has thrived and has grown to over 300 million global members today (A brief
history of LinkedIn, 2014).
Meanwhile, Friendster continued with the idea that blogging was an important social
media pastime. Unfortunately, they had decided to start charging fees to their users. Because of
this, many Friendsters switched over to Myspace (History of Online Social Networks, n.d.).
According to Danah Boyd and Nicole Ellison, Myspace and sites like it were unique, in that
“Sites like Myspace allow users to choose whether they want their profile to be public or
‘Friends only.’” Boyd and Ellison also outline a string of social media sites that come forth
between 2004-2006, with the big names jumping into existence, like Facebook and Twitter. The
first of those major players being Facebook, which, over that three year span, had grown from a
Harvard-only site to a non-exclusive worldwide network (Boyd & Ellison).
Facebook is the pioneer for social media and social networking in the modern age.
Following the noticeable pattern for successful media sites, Facebook was an upgrade to
Myspace. But how did Facebook beat Myspace out? The two were identical in target market and
reach, so what happened? Well, according to Forbes’ Adam Hartung, it comes down to one key
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 7
aspect: “professional management” (Hartung, 2011). In other words, what enabled Facebook to
overtake Myspace was who was at the helm directing the growth of the sites. For Facebook, the
users were in control. What ultimately set the course for almost every social media/network
platform is that each of them discovered that success comes not from where the media company
wants its website to go, but is driven toward success by the direction of its users. The users
decide where it should go. Facebook states this bold-facedly on their corporate website as far
back as in 2009: “Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they
share it with.” They go on to say, “People want full ownership and control of their information
so they can turn off access to it at any time” (Chan, 2009).
This ushered in a new age of Facebook and brings up an important part of how people
interact online. On Facebook, the users decide who they communicate to and when their
audience can view what they have posted. In fact, Facebook has prospered in the sheer quantity
of ways to communicate. Sarah Morse, for the Houston Chronicle, puts it this way:
On your profile, you can post messages, selecting an audience of the public, only your
friends and even only yourself. If you want a more private conversation, you can send a
direct message to a particular friend and start up a chat in that way. If you want to meet
new people with similar interests, you can seek them out in Facebook groups or
Facebook pages. Whatever your social comfort level, you can find a place to
communicate with others on the social network. (Morse, n.d.)
Facebook allows users to not only to communicate with users they know, but can allow them to
post to friends of friends, and to those even further outside our immediate spheres of influence. It
allows users to post to an undefined number of people from an undefined number of groups.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 8
Best of all, Facebook pages have been, and for the foreseeable future always will be, free
to make. All someone needs is an email and the basic required information, and they are in.
Because it is so easy, and because Facebook has become so popular, roughly 1.01 billion people
have Facebook pages (“Company Info”, 2015), and that number is only expected to grow.
Twitter has a history that is quite unlike any of the others that have been discussed. This
is because Twitter was not initially designed to be any sort of microblogging or social media site.
Instead, it was created by a company called Odeo, and was designed to be an SMS-hack system
that enable users to send a single SMS message to everyone in their contacts. As Nicholas
Carlson covers in his article “The Real History of Twitter”, Twitter, or Twttr as it was originally
named, had a bit of a hard time getting started. Odeo was originally a company built for
podcasting. Their main Odeo podcast product was tested, and put into market, but ended up
flopping once Apple announced in 2005 that it was preinstalling all new iPods with a podcasting
platform. Knowing that its end was in-sight, Odeo employees rushed to find the next new thing
that Odeo could be; in hopes that they could keep their business alive. Launching several
‘hackathons’, Odeo’s CEO encouraged his employees to find and pursue new ventures through
group work. During which, Odeo co-founder Noah Glass started to take interest in the project of
Jack Dorsey. Dorsey was fascinated by the idea of status, which is defined in Carlson’s article as
“what people were doing at a given time”. Thus, Twttr was born, as a way for someone to
instantly broadcast what they were up to, to everyone they knew (Carlson, 2011).
Twitter ultimately has turned into what Michael Wolff calls a “public telegraph”,
explaining how it is a modern day publishing tool with little understanding or direction. Wolff
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 9
also points out something incredibly important about how communication on Twitter is different
from any other form of modern interpersonal communication. He says “Twitter was not about
communicating with your friends or community. It was a broadcast function. It attracted people
who had an ambition to speak to the wider world,” later stating how Twitter’s largest
breakthroughs were the results of large-scale catastrophes; whether the catastrophes were natural
disasters, social disaster-based, or otherwise. (Wolff, 2015).
So an interesting question to ask is, ‘Is Twitter the same Twitter that Twttr was designed
to be, or has Twitter strayed?’ All indications resoundingly allude to Twitter’s deviation from its
ultimate goal. As both Wolff and Time’s Alex Fitzpatrick point out, Twitter has been losing
money because “[t]he company has strayed too far from its roots as a group messaging app”.
Originally, as outlined above, Twitter was designed to share one’s status to his or her group of
contacts. Since then, it has become a broadcasting hub, creating a new sensation of identity.
Fitzpatrick outlines how it is no longer the group messaging app that it was designed to be, but is
now more of a publicity factory. Users see it as a place to connect, yes, but many are using it to
have access to celebrities (Fitzpatrick, 2014).
Twitter is remarkable in how it has transformed. It has shifted from a system of group
messages to a whole new beast in itself. It is still largely a mobile business, as evidenced by
Twitter’s website, sharing that as of September 2015, 80% of users are mobile users (“Twitter
Usage/Company Facts”, 2015). Now, it is no longer merely a texting app; Twitter enables users
to interact far beyond that. Twitter introduced the idea of hashtagging, as well as tagging via
Twitter handles (handles are Twitter’s usernames). More importantly, instead of updating
statuses, users tweet. In these tweets, hashtags and tagged handles are used for a variety of
reasons.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 10
Twitter is a very broadcasting-oriented platform, a very public forum. So, in order for a
user to tweet in a way that catches the direct attention of an individual, all they would need to
include is the Twitter handle of that individual. For example, one can tweet, “I love the taste of
Pepsi @pepsi,” and the tweet will be public, yes, but the recipient (@pepsi) will be notified that
they were talked about. Just like if a student at Cedarville University wanted to tweet to the
University President, Dr. Thomas White, they would include his handle @DrThomasWhite in
their tweet.
Hashtags put a bit of a spin on the way Twitter functions as well. According to Twitter
Support, hashtags were created “organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages”
(“Using Hashtags on Twitter”, n.d.). This means that if an individual was to search #pepsi, they
could find every tweet that ever included the hashtag. In doing so, the hashtag takes the widely-
public tweets and puts them into categories for people to search through and stay up-to-date on.
This posting phenomenon was shown to be successful, as other networking competitors decided
to hop on board with the hashtagging frenzy; platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook
are the most notable of recent converts.
Finally, there is also the direct messaging feature that stems from the long line of its
predecessors: Email, AIM, and Facebook. This is obviously not unique from the others, but is a
staple for all successful social media platforms that affects how users communicate privately
over social media. Like the others, all you do is look for the username, find the icon to message,
and fire away. Unlike tweets, which are limited in characters and public, direct messages are
private and, as of mid-2015 they are virtually unlimited. According to Casey Newton of The
Verge, the recent upgrading of the direct message text box changed the text box character limit
from 140 characters to 10,000 characters (Newton, 2015).
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 11
Communicating Interpersonally on Social Media
With the foundation of understanding about Facebook and Twitter, how can one analyze
the impact of the type of communication that they allow for?
Well, to look at Facebook, the shift that it caused in the interpersonal spheres of
communication is evident. It has two main features: status updates and Facebook messaging.
Status updates enable users to broadcast their pseudo-blogs to whomever they desire. Most
importantly, using their innovative privacy settings, users can control exactly who they wish to
reach with their posts. More personally though, direct messages allow direct contact to an
individual, like texting and AIM do, just over the internet/Wi-Fi and 4G/data connections.
Neither posts nor Facebook messages have character limits.
On top of these, Facebook has adopted a way to bridge the gap between standard face-to-
face/ voice-to-voice communication by launching video calling and voice calling as recently as
April 2015 (Chudnovsky, 2015). This changes the standard debate over whether or not
technology is destroying communication by allowing users the option to simulate a regular
conversation mediating it through the Facebook Messenger App/program.
Twitter on the other hand is unique in how it allows users to communicate. Noteworthy is
Twitter’s shift from interpersonal to seemingly-public communication, as it is especially
interesting to look into. The progression of communication has transformed from communication
to peers and family, to the ability to broadcast one’s thoughts and ideas publicly to friends and
strangers locally, to being able to broadcast ideas and thoughts worldwide. If anything, I would
argue that Twitter has not abandoned interpersonal communication, but rather, has redefined it.
This is because it now brings into the fold not the number of people involved in a conversation,
but rather, it brings into account the type of relationships that fit under the interpersonal
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 12
umbrella. It has enabled more people than ever to get into contact with, and to be connected to,
each other.
Personal and Group Dynamics
Introduction to Interpersonal Communication
The most important thing to understand about how social media communication is
studied is the lens that it is studied through. As addressed many times throughout this paper, the
focus of group dynamics and interpersonal communication has come up. For this paper,
interpersonal relationship is defined as how two parties communicate with each other verbally
and non-verbally. Parties can consist of individuals or groups. While mass communication
covers the transmission of a message between an individual or group to a large audience and
intrapersonal communication covers the conversations that every person has with himself or
herself, interpersonal communication is meant to cover the intermediate category of human
interactions. Namely, it covers person-to-person, person-to-group, and group-to-group
interactions. The study of person-to-person communication is known as personal
communications, while the study of person-to-group and group-to-group interactions are known
as Group Dynamics. For the sake of this paper, it is best to understand the latter more so than the
former, that is, Group Dynamics.
Group Dynamics/Communications
The roots of the study of group dynamics are famously attributed to German
psychologist, Kurt Lewin, who began studying them in-depth during his time at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, more commonly referred to as MIT, in the 1940s.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 13
According to Julie Greathouse of Muskingum University, the focus of Lewin’s study on group
dynamics were meant to answer six questions:
(1) Group productivity: why was it that groups are so ineffective in getting things done?
(2) Communication: how influence is spread throughout a group. (3) Social perception:
how a person's group affected the way they perceived social events. (4) Intergroup
relations. (5) Group membership: how individuals adjust to these conditions. (6) Training
leaders: improving the functioning of groups (T-groups) (Greathouse 1997).
However, interestingly enough, though group dynamics is very heavily involved in studying the
actions of groups, it is not the groups that Lewin was interested in learning about. Instead, he
wanted to learn more about the individuals in the groups, and how individuals responded to
groups. As the University of Michigan states “Lewin was interested in the scientific study of the
processes that influence individuals in group situations” (History, n.d).
In 1947, Lewin unexpectedly passed away. This caused some difficulties for MIT as far
as funding went, so the program was relocated to the University of Michigan in 1948. The
University of Michigan named its group dynamics study center the Research Center for Group
Dynamics, called the RCGD, and joined with the Survey Research Center to form Michigan’s
Institute for Social Research in February of 1949 (History).
The RCGD traces its history online, stating that shortly thereafter, various research
endeavors were studied regarding topics like discrimination in the workplace, and overcoming
discrimination, and the effects of discrimination on morale and work. All the while, still holding
true to Lewin’s original purpose: “to explain the behavior of persons within groups”. Colleagues
of Lewin’s that carried on his work include men like Dorwin Cartwright and Leon Festinger.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 14
Cartwright widened the study of group dynamics by explaining that a mathematical
approach could be used to help understand social systems. This is better known as Graph Theory,
which allowed “social networks to be analyzed both as objective systems…as well as
psychological or cognitive systems” (Swanbrow, 2008). According to Diane Swanbrow, who
penned his obituary in 2008, Cartwright’s other contributions to the field of group dynamics
include the studies of social power, group structure, and the causes for risk taking in groups.
Festinger, on the other hand, widened the field in his own ways. His contributions include
the study of Social Comparison, as well as the famous Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Leon
Festinger, 2014). “Social comparison theory states that we determine our own social and
personal worth based on how we stack up against others” (Social Comparison Theory, n.d.), and
is very similar to Cognitive Dissonance Theory. By dissecting the words, we see that cognitive
refers to our beliefs and opinions, while dissonance is the result of notes playing out of harmony.
So, Cognitive Dissonance implies that everyone has a desire to not cause dissonance, as
individuals do their best to attain harmony within relationships and groups.
Comparing and Contrasting Group Dynamics and Social Media
Group Dynamics Effects on Social Media
The aforementioned researchers, Cartwright and Festinger, were included in this paper
because their understanding of Group Dynamics is invaluable to the lens this paper hopes to
evaluate social media through. Cartwright’s contributions to the field of group dynamics
included Graph and Group Risk Taking Theories. While Festinger’s contributions included
Social Comparison and Cognitive Dissonance Theories.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 15
Through Graph Theory, research is able to be quantified and studied accordingly. With
that being said, because of this theory, analyses of things like ‘How many people are on social
networking sites?’ can be studied objectively, while studying ‘Why are people using social
media sites more and more?’ can be studied psychologically. The Pew Research Center has the
answer to both of these. As of July 2015, 76 percent of all internet-using adults are on social
media sites, as opposed to April 2009 when that number was only 46 percent (Social Networking
Use, 2015). Around the same time, Pew conducted polls that showed why people use social
media. The top finding was that “Social networking sites are increasingly used to keep up with
close social ties,” (Social Networking Fact Sheet, 2014). According to a similar study, the Pew
Research Center found that in most cases “use of the internet and cell phones was associated
with larger and more diverse social networks” (Hampton et. al., 2011). So, because of the study
of Graph Theory alone, researchers are able to come to the conclusions that the rise in social
media usage among adults online is due to factors like a desire to connect online. Not only this,
but they are also able to find that social networking users have larger and more diverse networks
of people in their immediate groups.
Cartwright’s approach to Group Risk Taking stems from an earlier study by James Stoner
in 1961, which stated that groups are ultimate riskier than individuals (Cartwright 361); in other
words, groups are more likely to take risks than individuals are. Cartwright challenged this,
saying that there were too many variables unaccounted for and that there are different outcomes
that were not taken into consideration. His words, exactly, were “The findings concerning
subjects' expectations about the choices of others, the choices they most admire, and their
evaluations of people who make various choices suggest that the dilemmas generate a conflict
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 16
between ideals and reality” (375-376). In any case, Cartwright ventured on in his career to
analyze how individuals respond in and to groups.
Had he been around today, he would likely look into the social media revolution and
notice how people are attracted to online communities—whether that be political, religious,
racial/ethnic, or otherwise. Not only this, but he would likely look into topics like virtual
anonymity and why it causes individuals to post risky content, like suggestive videos and
pictures, or out-of-character posts on forums like Yik-Yak, 4chan, Facebook, and Twitter. He
would likely look to ask if individuals act riskily because the communities they are involved in
promote it, or do communities act riskily because their members consist or individuals who
already have a certain bend toward risky behavior?
Risky, also, are the movements that individuals involve themselves in. Most notably, they
have resulted in large groups rising up against cultural injustice, like the Arab Spring, the Black
Lives Matter movement, and the We Are the 99% movements. They organize online, and act
offline. The risk comes from the types of protesting they commit themselves to in order to show
their devotion to their movements and the importance of their causes. Arab Spring movements
noted individuals setting themselves on fire to bring the world’s attention to the injustice they
were facing (Lam, 2012), while Black Lives Matter demonstrations have been characterized by
often violent protests to battle against police brutality in African-American communities
(Adams, 2015).
Switching gears, Cognitive Dissonance and Social Comparison Theories are massive in
understanding how users, especially millennials, use social media. This is researched and
reported by Vogel et. al on why, because of Social Comparison, social media use produces
dissatisfaction. Their study found that “people who had the most chronic exposure to Facebook
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 17
(i.e., used it most frequently) tended to have lower trait self-esteem,” (Social comparison, social
media, and self-esteem, 2014). This is due to the high concentration of visual content available to
those who use social media frequently and are often comparing themselves to others in digitally
enhance and edited images.
Now, instead of merely having the people in immediate proximity to compare themselves
to, millennials and others now have the ever-expanding internet-full of pictures and people to
compare themselves to. Because of this, there is a mentality to compete with others online to be
more appealing; which has led to, what psychologists are saying, is an “increasingly narcissistic
society” (Firestone, 2012). Firestone implies that social media has led to a rise in narcissism
alongside a drop in self-esteem.
All-in-all, Group Dynamics has provided researchers with a better understanding of how
users function online and how it has changed with respect to how they react in person.
Social Media Effects on Group Dynamics
However, social media has had its effects on group dynamics in return. First and
foremost, social media has changed what it means to exist in how users are able to project
themselves as virtually whoever they want to be. As Susan Tardanico reports, “Awash in
technology, anyone can hide behind the text, the e-mail, the Facebook post or the tweet,
projecting any image they want and creating an illusion of their choosing. They can be whoever
they want to be,” (Tardanico, 2012) and she attributes this to the lack of nonverbal cues involved
with online communications. Social media is hinged on the verbal aspect of communication, and
often lacks a lot of conversational tidbits because users are unable to see how their
conversational counterparts respond with their body, tone, and gestures; of which, make up to 93
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 18
percent of regular communication (2012). In doing so, individuals can project themselves to
others as whoever they desire to be—whether that means that they act and post more boldly than
they would offline, or if they post in ways that hold true to their offline self. This makes groups
shaky and uncertain, as people can switch who they are whenever they want to.
Aside from this, it has changed what it means to communicate interpersonally by
redefining what a group is, and more importantly, by blurring the line between public and
interpersonal communication. When users post or tweet, they normally do so in a way that
allows those that they know to see and respond to it. That is interpersonal in nature, one person
to a small group. However, the line is blurred when posts are shared and liked and when tweets
are favorited and retweeted. If enough people do this, the post can go viral. This means that the
post is popular and is being circulated rapidly (“Viral”, n.d.). So, this all brings into question
how large a group becomes before it becomes public or mass communication. Often times, it is
not individuals posting on behalf of companies or out of marketing purposes, but under the focus
of self-promotion.
Because of this idea of online popularity, a sensation of social media celebrities has come
about. These are individuals and accounts who post content that has so regularly been popular,
that they gained large numbers of followers and fans. The terms Vine-famous, Instagram-
famous, and Twitter-famous are ways to locate such individuals. The most notable Twitter
celebrity is Kelly Oxford, who ended up using her ability to write witty one-liners to gain nearly
half a million followers, and then used her stardom to start selling books and then recently, to
hop into screenwriting (Hoby, 2013). Because of the success of individuals like Oxford, there
has been a mindset that anyone can be Twitter famous, and millennials are focusing their tweets
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 19
to ultimately join the ranks of the social media famous. This is the result of the rise in narcissism
and the need for social self-esteem.
Lastly, social media has also affected group dynamics through redefining interpersonal
communications by switching around how we communicate online. Most recently, the use of
emoji/emoticons and gifs are used to accentuate text-based messages, while there has also been
the implementation of video and audio calling features to help people communicate more
effectively. People around the world are using emojis and gifs, because they are not only fun, but
because “Emojis can remedy message misalignment in the same way we use nonverbal cues
during face-to-face communication” (Saunders, 2015). Likewise, gifs followed soon behind, as
text messages first allowed them, and then, as of March 2015, Facebook started supporting them
too (Isaac, 2015). In short, social media is defining how we communicate interpersonally and in
groups by changing the forms by which we are able to communicate in. Now more than ever, the
nonverbal cues that have been outside the realm of media-related communication, are returning
in typical internet-style fashion. This does more and more to synthesize the regular type of face-
to-face communication that people are used to, and generate it online.
Conclusion
In the end, it is clear that social media and group dynamics have had many instances of
clashing and unification. But it is also clear that both adapt as the world progresses. It is worth
mentioning that while many view social media as an assassin of communication, the online
forms of conversing are still young and developing. In any case, at the most basic of
understandings that can be grasped from the research gathered, it is evident that the two are now
inseparable. The two have done much work at refining and reshaping each other to the point that
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 20
social media has gained a valuable place in the study of Group Dynamics and in Interpersonal
Communications as a whole. As both have been changed and reformed through their various
states of cooperation and conflict, it is clear that the relationship has indeed been for the best.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND GROUP DYNAMICS 21
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