Social Media a communication revolution or just hype?

Social Media is in my perspective a different way of communicate, if it is a revolution can be discussed but it takes the communication from a one-to-many to a many-to-many perspective. Social media is not a strategy in it self but a part of the overall communication platform. I would not call Social Media for hype either. Social Media is a sustainable tool which in many regions round the world gives both professionals and non professional people a new voice and a different way of expression their opinions and views and their product and services towards the many in a non expensive way and even get the opportunity to get a feedback get an exchange of opinions.

You can find regions where some would call it a revolution in the way of government communicating with the people to give the people a fair chance of knowing what is going on in the country. In the case of Mexico, the one-to-many media has been set out of influence when giving a picture of the drug ware going on. The drug cartels have used threads and even liquidations of journalists who write about the drug business – here government uses social media – twitter to warn the local population about where to go and not to go and tell about government actions towards the drug cartels (Quid Nunc 2010).

In Myanmar /Burma the Social Media YouTube have been used to show the world how the Junta of generals are suppressing the population and how they are using the countries resources for their own benefit while the general population are suffering. Due to YouTube evidence, sanctions can be set towards the Myanmar junta regime.

But also less intimidating incidents are brought to life when the youth are using all the mobile devices to express them self as being authors of their own blogs sending tweets to followers and even get famous by using FaceBook and YouTube to present themselves  toward the world showing their skills and abilities to others through the Social Media. During national Danish elections politicians “fighting” towards each other to be the one with most friends on FaceBook – this gave the politicians an indication of where the election were going. Social Media is not just for enterprises to show and communicate products services it is more like a flow of goods and information’s as well as financial and social exchanges takes place in the network (Håkansson, 1982). In some regions of the World Social Media are considered, as a communication revolution as it helps spreading the word easy and cheap, but it will not be considered just hype as long as it is used as part of the overall marketing strategy.