Let's ponder the question in the singular. What is a social medium? Well it's quite obvious that the qualifier 'social' sets social apart from unsocial media.

Contemporary discussions around social media however, tend to define social media, in contradistinction to traditional media. Does that mean that traditional media i.e. pre-Internet media are unsocial? And what would an unsocial medium be like?

All media are social

I think that every medium of communication is social in so far it achieves its essential role, that is, to successfully mediate communication between two or more people. Unsocial media are broken media. All media are by definition social.

The most oft quoted distinction between social and traditional media has been the direction of communication. Social media are two-way while traditional media are one-way. But communication does not have to be two-way. That is why we speak of one-way communication; because it involves the successful communication of one person's message to another. But then pre-Internet media are also social. Then why is everybody talking about 'Social Media'? What is new about them?

Because there is something absolutely novel about this kind of media:

• Because they allow everyday people, every member of what was formerly called the audience, to easily become a media owner/publisher. They give every pair of eyeballs a mouthpiece.
• Because they allow their audience to become a self-conscious social unity whose members can identify and communicate with one another. They are not isolated in their own homes and therefore they are not passive.
• Because they enable their audience to communicate with the publisher through the same user-friendly medium.

I ve written a blog post that discusses in depth what is novel about the so called 'social media' by contrasting their features with traditional media. If you have the time, check it out here.

Is the name 'social media' appropriate if all media are social?

From this point of view the name 'social media' is not really correct in that social media is a characteristic of all media that work properly - is not the exclusive property of 'new media'. However as the philosopher Kripke taught us this is not the way names work, and, therefore not the way they should work. Darthmouth was a village built near the mouth of the river Dart. After a few hundred years the river Dart is nowhere near Dartmouth. Nevertheless people's reference to the village works just fine. Nobody is confused by the fact that the mouth of the river Dart is no where near Dartmouth.

Similarly, although all media are by definition social, the majority of the people that read, write and discuss about social media, have reserved this term to refer exclusively to internet media such as blogs, wikis, social forums and networks etc And this works just fine. Everybody understands what particular media 'social media' refers to. Similarly in 20 years time these media are not going to be new. But we may still be referring to them as 'new media'.