Social media's new feature redefines "instant connection"

Social media has changed communication – It has made information more accessible, made instant international connections possible, and has globalized cultures, ideas, and languages.

The newest social media trend is now inciting even more change. Many social media applications, such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram now have “live feature.”

This feature permits social media users to take video and uploaded it real time. It also lets other people watch it and comment on it as it’s happening. Like live news, but on social media, where a mom, co-worker or friend can see what a person is doing real-time.

By allowing any social media user to upload live videos, the platforms are allowing for amateur journalists, creative minds, and people with fun things to say to explore a platform previously reserved for television and broadcasts.

Facebook Live has currently been the outlet for fun videos, like a suburban mom wearing Chewaka mask; news, like the countdown to the 2016 Presidential election, and violent and controversial videos, like a girl in South Carolina committing suicide.

Senior Multimedia Journalism major, Blake Keller, said he’s used Facebook Live already, and he really likes it.

“I’ve used it mostly to promote stories that I’m working on,” he said. “As a fellow journalist it’s really helpful to give people behind the scenes look at what you’re working on before you actually post it or put it up for everyone to see.”

Keller, Executive Producer at Loyola University Chicago’s sport show Rambler Sports Locker (RSL), hasn’t only used it to promote his personal stories as an undergraduate journalist, but also to promote RSL. He used the live feature when students from RSL went to Arch Madness, a basketball tournament that Loyola’s men basketball team played in, to promote a very interesting video he did with the host of the tournament.

Trisha McCauley, also RSL Executive Producer and Multimedia Journalism senior at Loyola, said it they used to update their viewers and followers about what they were doing at the tournament while it was happening.

McCauley said they used Facebook live instead of another platform because they were more familiar with it since it was the first platform to launch the feature, in April 6, 2016.

Keller and McCauley both agreed that all social media platforms having the same features, such as the live option, is making them too similar.

“You can see where they’re kind of mimicking each other,” Keller said. “There’s not that uniqueness of each platform anymore and it makes things super I guess boring. It makes people reluctant to use it.” 

Cheryl McPhilimy, Public Relations Professor at Loyola, said that it is not beneficial for all the social media platforms to adapt the same features, because users will post the same things in all the different platforms.

“The concern I have is that in an effort to be comprehensive or thorough, content posters will post the same material in multiple places, making their fans and friends a little bored,” McPhilimy said. 

However, McPhilimy agrees with the students that the live feature, especially Facebook Live, is very interesting and useful. 

She said live video is more real than other features on social media.  

“We don’t stage or photoshop ourselves in live video the way we might in a photo for Instagram or facebook," she said.

The biggest downside McPhilimy sees in the trend is the decreasing value of the videos that people see and post. 

 “I was watching a legal expert who writes brilliant, polished blog posts conduct a live video and probably only half of it was worth consuming,” she said. “Between valuable moments, I watched her walk and talk about walking her cat on a leash.” 

Sociology professor at Loyola, Talmadge Wright, studies the effects that mass media has on human behavior. 

He said that the new live feature is a great way to keep people engaged and informed.

“There’s a certain excitement generated by that, that people respond to,” Wright said. 

But Wright is concerned about some user’s level of maturity and the discourse that those users can create on social media. 

Recently, Facebook Live given way for some controversial videos. On January 22 a 14-year-old girl from Jacksonville, Florida hanged herself with a scarf and broadcasted it on Facebook live. On March 18 a 15-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by a group of gang members in Chicago, who broadcasted it on Facebook Live. On April 16 a man in Cleveland, Ohio killed a man and broadcasted on Facebook Live. 

These are just three of the most talked about controversial live videos that have been uploaded on Facebook. 

Keller said it blew his mind that people would want to show things like that to other social media users. 

“I know that’s obviously not the intention of Facebook Live when coming up with the idea,” he said.

He said that although it might cost Facebook a lot of money, the company should have people who monitor videos and take them down if they’re not appropriate. 

McPhimily said that strategy is “near impossible to do.” 

“I don’t think proactive policing can be the responsibility of the platform,” she said. “The best Facebook can do is swiftly investigate complaints and alerts from users when something questionable or offensive goes up.” 

While social media grows, so do its users. As of February 1, Facebook had over 1.86 million users, according to CNN. And users have increased around 17 percent year after year, increasing the social media population and making the world a more connected place.