Essay 2: The quality of Social Media

Personally, social media is not an issue of quality to me as a user because whether an effective quality control mechanism should be set up towards any means of social media should be the concern and responsibility of the companies behind the scenes, but not of the users. If you ask any user of social media whether a quality control mechanism should be built up under the anarchy of internet, you are most likely to get an answer with “Yes”. However, how should it be built and who are responsible for it would probably appear to be vague in most people’s mind.

In my opinion, building up such a mechanism should fall into the responsibility of the companies, which are employing social media in their business. I have two reasons supporting this. No. One: both the users and the company agree that ensuring the quality of web content is necessary. No. Two: building up such a mechanism is vital to the success of the business run by the company in concern. On the side of users, it is expected that they could behave in a self-regulating manners. However, nothing on this side is obligatory and compulsory. On the side of the companies, winning the users equals winning the business, and this is just simple market regularity that every player must follow. In a rather fierce competitive market, users possess more bargaining power and have more options that they could possibly choose. Under this circumstance, low quality stuff is bound to be eliminated and be knocked out of the game. This gives any player in the game some indication that if they want to secure their position in the market, they have to do something to bring up stuff up to the accepted standard. Looking at the real examples in reality, both Slashdot and Wikipedia have adopted effective way of ensuring the quality of content published on their website, and this is also partly why they can stand at a higher position than their rival.

Another question would be “Do we need to involve the users’ participation in the quality control mechanism”. My answer would be it is not necessary, but it would be better if we can. As mentioned previously, it is the responsibility of the companies to build up a quality control mechanism. However, this doesn’t mean that users cannot participate in the censoring process. When comparing to the traditional media, new media is much more interactive. To a large extent, it changes the role of users in the whole value chain. Instead of just viewing the content, users are given the chance to create content. Similarly, instead of being censored, they can also participate into the censoring process. By doing so, not only can the company in concern benefit financially, but also the users will obtain a sense of value creation and be motivated at the same time.

To sum up, due to the fact that users of social media indeed have more and more options to choose in the more and more competitive market, companies should try whatever it takes to ensure the quality of the content on their website in order to stand at a higher position than their rivals. That is to say an effective quality control mechanism needs to be built up, and under the mechanism, user participation should be also encouraged since it is mutually beneficial.