Mushroom Growth of Social media Influencer

By: Bramhacharimayum Sadananda Sharma
In today’s society the momentum of engaging in social media has rapidly rising and hence with the number of users increases day by day, social media has turn into a medium of everyone’s daily needs. And to be specific, earlier social media is being described as a medium of social interaction and communication. Also this medium benefited different people in terms of their profession, works and needs.
It was never too easy to become a journalist, activist and experts in any field but nowadays the trend of opening a social media page and groups, through that platform one can become anything they want behind that interface. Nobody sees or knows about them, which in turns may leads to misuse of social media.
With the advancement of social media platforms, people shows less interest in newspaper rather they prefer social media for news and events happening around the world. Generations have shifted from reading newspaper to reading off of phone screens and from watching local news to looking at laptop screens. Millennial are increasingly making an impact on today’s media. Almost everything is digitalized now. As media digitalization has made its way towards social media platforms, it has brought forth its economic benefits and its consequences.
It was fine to acquire information from any medium or source until it becomes a fake or propaganda based news or misguided news. Now with the advancement of technologies, opening a social media page or a website becomes a simple task but such pages or portal operator are mostly anonymous. Even though, if all this criteria doesn’t violate any policy there could be cascade of disaster in future. So Anonymous social media administrator should be very cautious and aware of what they are doing online and should start taking responsibility. Also by using many free and public applications, rather than credible news sources, there is a flood of posts by many people voicing their own opinions on serious subjects. When scrolling through timelines of posts, millennial can easily stumble upon a person of high social standing whose account has a large number of followers and believe that the source is credible.
On the other hand some website and page administrator doesn’t want to perform their role properly; they posts controversial ideas so that users and subscribers get involved in the posts conversation, by replying to comments and questions. “Likes” aren’t enough and it is not just about broadcast, they targets for peoples engagement.
We can recall that, recently a minor girl was brutally gang rape and succumbs to her injury, what is more insensitive is that many Facebook page in Manipur without even knowing the gravity of the situation started posting the news disclosing the details information of the minor girl including her photos and videos. This sort of insensitive and unwanted situation prevails when public pages are running without proper knowledge or understanding.
Such Situation raises the question thatshould we consider them as ‘Social Influencer’ – Do they actively engage in research and make useful content or just barking using someone’s content. Do they share knowledge and offer advice in Social media that are universally acceptable? The psychology behind influence can be broken down into separate parts. Primarily seen in this situation is identification: when people are influenced by someone highly liked or respected, in this case, an account with millions of followers. Then, there is the sad case of observance. Under this category are the ones who publicly agree, but privately hold a differing opinion, therefore, agreeing with the majority.
These days, self-style celebrities accounts have larger followers than fact news sources. Most of the time, news posts are flooded by other entertainment photos and videos posted by accounts with large followings. By burying the news under entertainment and miscellaneous media, millennial lose their own opinions on serious news topics. Their thoughts are lost behind a phone screen, and soon enough will be taking what is fed to us rather than feeding the masses. Since Fake news has become a topic of household conversation. It is more important than ever to have a firm understanding of what authentic and reputable journalism is, and what is actually fake news. When in doubt, we can fact-check the information that we read! We can start with a simple search to look into the keywords or the event that is being reported on.