Ephemeral Social Interaction On Snapchat

Ephemeral social media, allowing shared content to last, at times, seconds or minutes, has been rapidly growing in society. In “Sharing the small moments: ephemeral social interaction on Snapchat,” published in Information, Communication & Society, Joseph B. Bayer et al. address fellow scholars of information, communication & society as they analyze quantitative and qualitative data to understand the relationship between ephemerality and user experiences through college students’ social and emotional experiences on Snapchat, a type of ephemeral social media. The opening excerpt from the article provides an overview of the challenges that arise when using persistent media and discusses the rise of ephemerality and ephemeral social media and

Bayer et al. utilize consistent expository writing in their article to suitably introduce persistent and ephemeral social media and to create a stable structure for the opening passage. This stylistic device is evident with the presence of multiply facts, and, most importantly, of both positive and negative impacts of persistent social media on users as the authors discuss how it can “shape the uses and perceptions of a given medium” and can help “organize, document, and remember personally meaningful experiences”, while also making “self-presentational concerns more salient,” inducing “context collapse,” and easily putting the legitimacy of content at risk. This method, in addition to allowing the writers to both fully educate scholars by presenting all the facts, also structures the passage. Beginning with the overall effect of persistent media, the authors deviate from positive to negative impacts, then allowing the introduction of ephemeral social media which accommodates for the negative impacts. Overall, Joseph B. Bayer et al. use of expository writing serves as both an organizational tool, shaping the opening passage, and as a legitimacy tool, requiring full information and multiple facts, aiding the authors introduce persistent media and shift into the importance of

Most of the key information presented in the article relies on various external sources: the definition and impact of persistence, the value of archiving capacity, the negative impacts of persistent media, and the background and positive impacts of ephemeral media. All these key concepts and ideas stem from previous research and are all effectively employed to develop the audience’s understanding of the topic. In addition to the active citing of sources, quotations are effectively used to further develop ideas. For example, the concept of time in social media is introduced by quoting a source: “…media technologies are ‘in a profound way about organizing and creating a sense of time’ (p. 1156) in societies.” In extension, Joseph B. Bayer et al. also applied previous research to shape their own study as they adopted “an ecological approach” to assess the range of experiences from Snapchat “in line with recent research on social media and mood in daily life.” As a whole, the various uses of sources contribute greatly to the detailed background on and understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of persistent media and the rise and importance of