Social Media and demographics

Johanna Blakley: Social media and the end of gender | Video on TED.com

Johanna Blakley, Deputy Director of Norman Lear Center, studies the impact of mass media and entertainment in our world.  She concentrates her studies in how mass media and entertainment influence out political, commercial, and social habits.  Blakely discusses social media and the possible end of gender due to the mere fact that demographics can not be taken into account through the use of social media outlets.


What I found so interesting is not the fact that women are the largest users of social media, nor the fact that social media has taken us out of the demographic stereotypes, but the idea that companies will have a difficult time appealing to their audience, if they do not understand who their audience is.  It is very interesting to see how social media outlets connect people who may not be originally associated in the same social demographic.  She provides excellent examples of how social media has broken these stereotypes.


What will these companies do to market? Will they need to appeal to women just because they are the largest group in social media in every demographic category?  Like Blakely, I do not believe so.  I do feel however that gender roles can no longer be stereotyped as well as any other demographic factor such as age, income, race, ethnicity, relationship status, occupation, etc.  Since the use of the internet, the world has become smaller in the sense that we are now more closely connected and openly communicate ideas, personal beliefs, political views, etc publicly.  If we tend to like a movie, a show, a designer, a restaurant, we will say so through our social media outlet.  Word of mouth is the best advertiser and this is where social media has come to play.