What advantages and disadvantages does social media present to the modern writer?
In this essay I intend to cover the main advantages and disadvantages social media could present to the modern-day writer. Advantages such as easily promoting writers’ work, and leading to publishing opportunities. Disadvantages such as internet hate spread over many platforms, and plagiarism. I chose these pros and cons because they are the most common for writers and there can be a lot to say for each.
The media has been evolving over the years and continues to do so today. Florian Coulmas states, “It is only to be expected that e-mail, e-forum posting, blogs, text messages, tweets, and other electronic forms of writing give rise to new registers and stylistic variation”[1] Writing online in particular has become a new trend for young writers with sites such as ‘Wattpad’ and ‘Oolipo’, and as Beth Reeks says, “These platforms particularly suit young people who want to write, where they can develop their writing skills.”[2] Promoting writers work on social media is an advantage because it can possibly lead their work to becoming viral- a loop where one person shares something on the internet and then the next shares it and so on. This can really boost the writer’s self-esteem and gain a lot of feedback from most people on the internet. There is an option to share a story on social media which can prompt people who follow you to read it as well, therefore promoting the author’s work further. Although this is an easy way to get your work seen, there’s a chance it will not be seen by everyone. When writing online you must consider your audience. If it’s for an older audience then there’s a possibility that the intended audience will not see it because they may not have social media. Writing online tends to be aimed at a younger audience because most stories on websites like ‘Wattpad’ are written by young people themselves. It is a quick way to spread work across the internet but perhaps not the most effective. Furthermore, R.W. Burniske states, “they should be aware of the temptation of incessant role playing, which distances them from their own thoughts, feelings, and identity.”[3] He suggests that people who read as well as write online tend to fall into the loop of reading/writing as the character in the story and therefore forgets their own opinions and personality. This is another downside to spreading work on social media sites.
Although the internet can be a positive place, there can be a lot of negativity as well. People known as ‘haters’ or ‘trolls’ roam the internet, purposely spreading hate and causing controversy just to provoke action and for ‘fun’. Beth Reeks states, “Writing platform such as these [‘WattPad’] mean that amateur writers can post their work for people to read for free and get responses from readers.”[4] This can be a disadvantage for the modern writer because writing tends to be a target for the haters, as it can be an easy way to make the writer feel paranoid that they are not a good writer, which is what the haters aim for. In other cases, people may just disagree with an opinion but feel the need to comment something negative rather than constructive. Geert Lovink states, “It doesn’t matter whether anyone actually supports the outrageous point of view- it can be said with zero effort just for jokes or kicks, for hits or attention”[5] suggesting that people who spread some negativity don’t necessarily mean anything by it but can nonetheless affect an aspiring modern-day writer. Even though there is a fair amount of hate out there, not everyone is out to tear online writing down. In a sense, the hate with the constructive criticism can offer a balanced argument; some might like the piece of writing, some may not, and some may hate no matter what. But it can inform the writer on what they could do to improve it. It is up to the modern writer whether they are prepared for the hate that comes from some of their readers before publishing online.
Publishing online can work in a writer’s favour for the future. Another advantage of writing online is publishing opportunities such as novels, TV and films. Developers or publishers could see a writer’s standard of work and offer them to work on a project together. This happened for a teenager, Beth Reeks, after she had written a story on ‘WattPad’. Netflix got in touch with her and they turned her fiction into a movie; The Kissing Booth. She says, “it’s not such a big step for writers to go from posting their work for free online to looking into self-publishing books.”[6] This advantage for the modern writer makes things easier for them when they look into progressing their career into something more professional. Although publishing online could lead to jobs in the television industry or publishing own books, the beauty about sites like ‘WattPad’ is if writing is good enough, jobs are available to write online for a living. Ads support and help pay the writers. This is an advantage for modern day writers because even if you start writing online, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to stop. The option to blog full-time is an advantage as well because writers get to write about things they’re passionate about, and share opinions. As Lovink suggests, “blogs are expressions of free speech”[7] However, writing full-time online takes a lot of time, commitment and consistency so it may not be for every modern writer if they do not have as much time as others. Beth Reeks also says, “One thing to remember is that you need to promote your work and engage with your readers to keep your fans and followers interested.”[8] This suggests that by keeping to a consistent schedule and using social media to promote work, it can allow more people to acknowledge a piece of writing and therefore may possibly lead to publishing houses being able to see a modern writer’s work.
The biggest disadvantage of social media is plagiarism. Whether you have written a flash fiction in under two hundred characters on Twitter or if you have written a blog post on Tumblr, it is so easy for people to copy and paste a piece of work and claim it as their own and/or believe a piece of writing is good and not bother to give credit to the original author. Emilia Sukhova states, “Regardless of expertise, if someone is worth quoting, then they are worth citing.”[9] The author deserves the credit. There is an advantage of using sites like ‘WattPad’ however. A copyright section in the details of your work can be set to ‘all rights reserved’ if everything that is written is your own work. In fact it doesn’t even allow you to copy and paste a piece from ‘WattPad’ into a Word document which shows that plagiarism is being recognised and dealt with. However, social media sites like Twitter don’t have a system like that. “In general, when content is stolen in social media, there is little accountability.”[10] As Sukhova suggests, this causes an incline of social media plagiarism: “Fareed Zakaria was found plagiarising the work of Jill Lepore. Zakaria is a writer for several well-known publications and has academic connections to Yale, should have known better.”[11] Although plagiarism is big deal, there are some people who would happily give full credit and ask permission from the author first. It’s up to the author to trust them and/or be at the risk of their work being plagiarised once they publish online.
In conclusion there are many advantages and disadvantages of social media. The internet can help the modern writer in so many ways but the main function of using social media is to promote work and gets others from across the world to see it (using hashtags usually helps with this too). It can help get writers’ work recognised and maybe lead to a bigger writing job in the future. However, plagiarism is a nasty issue for social media and many writers do not get the recognition they deserve. As well as the internet ‘haters’ beating writers down for no reason. Social media is a balanced source for writing; you will have to be prepared for the disadvantages that comes with it.
· Burniske, R.W (2008). Literacy in the Digital Age. (2nd ed.) California, United States of America: Corwin Press.
· Coulmas, F (2013). Writing and Society. (1st ed.) New York, United States of America: Cambridge University Press.
· Lovink, G (2011). Networks Without a Cause: A Critique of Social Media. (1st ed.) Cambridge, United Kingdom: Polity Press.
· Reeks, B. (2013). How publishing fiction online launched the career of this young writer. Retrieved from The Guardian’s website: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/09/writing-fiction-online-indie-publishing-beth-reeks
· Sukhova, E. (n.d). Is social media creating a plagiarism problem? (+ Infographic) Retrieved from: https://www.convinceandconvert.com/content-marketing/is-social-media-creating-a-plagiarism-problem-infographic/
[1] Coulmas, F (2013)- p129.
[3] Burniske, R.W (2008)- p61.
[5] Lovink, G (2011)- p97.
[7] Lovink, G. (2011)- p97.
