A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY OF EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND ITS INHERENT CHALLENGES
The evolution of Social Media is not an outcome of some deliberated efforts but just the by- product of the Digital Revolution and expansion of Internet services. It is quite interesting to explore the chronology of advent of Digital Era and Internet Revolution in context of the world. Progress in the field of digital technology paved way to more precise and smooth sharing of information and prepared a base for the boom of electronics. Internet Revolution brought Media platforms on the very screen of our personal computer and mobile phones. These developments facilitated updating and sharing of information and prepared foundation of Social Media. Today Social Media has developed as a tool to communicate with groups and people, far away physically but just a click away virtually. Seeing its growing popularity we need to understand the inherent challenges of Social Media. One such challenge is authenticity of the content as there is no regulatory authority or the observers. Authenticity of people one deals with in a physical context is much aided by visual and behavioural clues that are absent in online interaction therefore issue of authenticity becomes important in Social Media. Social Media also has to cope up with the issues of legality involved due to unrestricted dissemination of information which jeopardize the trust of common individuals and also leads to legal intricacies. Issue of hate speech, defamation and privacy invasion raise doubts on the credibility of Social Media. The present Paper tries to make a descriptive study of these developments which changed the ways of our interactions and information sharing. Paper also focuses on the challenges mentioned above so as to make tool of Social Media more effective.
Digital, Digitization, Social Media, Legal Challenges, Issue of Authenticity