Abstract
Social media is developing nowadays and it is widely used all over the world. In the Arabic countries, it can seem to be harder to use it, because of the cultural traditions, of censorship which differs from the one in Western countries and of a lot of other factors. However, it is becoming more and more popular to use it for business and for communication. Even though there are people who criticize social media, it is obvious that its usage can bring a lot of benefits in various spheres, such as sharing information, making friends, marketing products, seeking jobs, and knowing events. Advantages of social media in these fields will be investigated in the present paper.
The Positive Effect of Social Media in Qatari Society
Qatar is a sovereign Arab state with the capital in Doha. It occupies a peninsula and its only border is with Saudi Arabia on the south, while all the other territory is surrounded by the Persian Gulf. Qatar used to be a British colony and it became independent only in 1971. In fact, it soon became one of the region’s wealthiest states due to the enormous gas and oil resources. It also is on the top of Forbes list of the world’s richest countries with world’s highest GDP per capita.
As one of the world’s richest countries, Qatar must be involved in international communication, as well as in globalization. One of the traits of globalization is Internet usage all over the world. Internet-based applications that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content and software which helps human communication are called social media (Kaplan Andreas M., Haenlein Michael). Nowadays, social media is one of the most powerful sources for news updates, communication, sharing various types of information, and so on.
Social media technologies can be divided into different types in accordance with their main goal. Thus there are Internet forums, weblogs, social networks, and others. Kaplan and Haenlein define six kinds of social media, which are collaborative projects, blogs and microblogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual game worlds, and virtual social worlds (2010).
In addition, there are social media applications which can be used on mobile phones, and they are called mobile social media. Such applications differ from traditional social media due to an ability to display a higher time- and location sensitivity. They can be used on portable devices, such as tablets, phones, iPods, and so on (Kaplan, 2012).
The main advantage of social media in comparison with industrial media, such as television, newspapers, and so on, because it is easier to use them, they are more accessible and less expensive, and they do not require significant resources. Also, social media allows users search and track the information, which simplifies its usage.
However, there is a lot of criticism about social media usage. Some critics say that it may lead to disparity since only people familiar with modern technologies can use them, others claim that it is impossible to trust all the websites and weblogs and that they …