The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus, default to keep. Neil ╦ 09:37, 3 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Social media (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Appears to be a marketing buzzword of limited currency. Current sources are not reliable and appear to be marketing fluff. Violates WP:NEO, WP:WINAD, WP:NOR, WP:V, WP:RS. Pdelongchamp 02:15, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Statements by editors previously involved in dispute

• 'Social Media' appears to be a marketing buzzword of limited currency. WP:NEO provides: 'To support the use of (or an article about) a particular term we must cite reliable secondary sources such as books and papers about the term — not books and papers that use the term.' The current references of this article contain nothing that qualifies as a reliable source (WP:RS), and in fact they all appear to be marketing fluff. Does anyone else agree that this article should be nominated for deletion? EdJohnston 21:57, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
• The term seems to be getting widespread outside of marketing and investor types, and is not much different than "Web 2.0" and other similar fuzzy terms. The danger is that it's defined so broadly that it can cover just about anything on the web. I'm not attached to the article in its current state, and would be happy to see a more critical discussion — in the meantime, I've added a link to Robert Scoble's discussion of the term. David 23:47, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
• See my comment above at #'Social Media': A marketing buzzword and a neologism (WP:NEO). Social media seems to be a term used by marketers to promote certain kinds of advertising. It is not clear it has any neutral descriptive meaning for which there is general agreement. After all the time that has passed, this article still has no reliable sources. A line from Scoble and a web site created by Dion Hinchcliffe that claims the name 'Social Computing Magazine' is not enough to go on. Note this quote from policy: 'To support the use of (or an article about) a particular term we must cite reliable secondary sources such as books and papers about the term — not books and papers that use the term.' Can anyone explain why we should retain this article and allow new non-referenced material to be added to it? Isn't deletion a logical option? EdJohnston 01:27, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Comments

• Comment mmm, what is this? I'm perplexed as to why such an article would be written by social computing magazine. Are they trying to give notability to this term by talking about and expanding on it? Corpx 05:27, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep The term certainly goes beyond "limited currency" -- see current Google News results (1000+), and Google News Archive (3000+). One can take the skeptical position that it's a buzzword with no universally-agreed definition but I think it's pretty clear that it's the intersection of social networking with user-generated content at base, that is, media that is created by or presented by peers (rather than marketers), and recommendation networks that replace search engines. Of course people want to make money off of this but it's a valid business term that describes an emerging sector and as such is somewhat in flux and has many instances of co-optation. I don't see why we can't get a decent definition, though. Irony: Wikipedia is social media, but hasn't a clue what social media is. --Dhartung | Talk 12:33, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also further research for rewriters: BusinessWeek (100+ uses), CNET, CNN, SFGate, and of course academic imprimatur through the Center for Social Media at American University in Washington. --Dhartung | Talk 12:41, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. I have no doubt that buzzwords like this can achieve a great deal of published circulation. That still doesn't mean that, in Gertrude Stein's words, there's any there there. This one seems about as vacuous as they come: about the only thing that World of Warcraft, Wikipedia, and YouTube share is that they are online, and people interact with them.

  This does suggest ways to improve Wikipedia. I think we should have a PvP arena. And, an epic flying mount. There should be some kind of reward for grinding rep here. - Smerdis of Tlön 14:10, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per Dhartung. Bearian 16:09, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Since Pdelongchamp was so astute as to reproduce my comments from Talk:Social media and include them as part of the argument for deletion, I need to weigh in now, and say that I do agree with those comments! Please be sympathetic to those of us who are keeping this article on their watchlists, and having to rush in each time a new and even more zany contribution to this article occurs. I trust that the other participants in this AfD have heard of spam magnets? Since the whole thing is a marketing buzzword, there is no substantive content that could be added. If you disagree, please give us a clue where we can find the true references that would explain and justify Social media as a field of study. Even better, give us a clue how you would rewrite the article, so it was defensible. Be aware that if WP:V were enforced, almost the entire article would disappear, because there are no reliable sources. EdJohnston 22:22, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Much of the talk about social media is taking place in the marketing and communications spheres because those groups are immediately impacted by changes that are occurring as a result of social media trends. While some are looking at social media as a new venue for advertising, that is a very limited view of the field. Much of the current discussion focuses on how social media affect public relations, customer service and other roles, because the new environment either challenges old ways or enables interesting new ways. The definition is unsettled, with an "I know it when I see it" quality, but most knowledgeable observers would likely agree on the basic list of examples. The Center for Social Media at American University, however, is not relevant to this topic. - N Gilliatt 02:48, 1 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sources: See the academic/research conference International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media and the papers presented at the first conference last year (posted to the conference blog but also published in the proceedings). The New Influencers: A Marketer's Guide to the New Social Media (Paul Gillin, Quill Driver Books, 2007). A Google Scholar search on "social media" turns up a few relevant papers (and a lot of noise, for some reason). "A Contact Recommender System for a Mediated Social Media" (Vignollet, Marty, Plu, and Franco, ICEIS 2004: Software Agents and Internet Computing); "A Framework for Modeling Influence, Opinions and Structure in Social Media" (Akshay Java, Univ of Maryland, Baltimore County, 2007). - N Gilliatt 02:48, 1 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the concrete suggestions of how to source the article. Two questions: (1) Can you find a definition of social media in the conference program? (2) Do you think there is anything in common among the definitions of social media used by the different presenters? EdJohnston 14:00, 1 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(1) Not in the ICWSM program, which takes social media as a given as it goes a step farther by focusing on social media analysis (a topic for another day). I did, however, find a bit of definition in the description of a spring 2008 symposium of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, Social Information Processing (also here). I also see that Akshay Java's "Framework" poster was presented at AAAI-2007 about a week ago.
(2) ICWSM presenters would have skipped over defining social media, since an understanding of its meaning is implicit in their topics. I do think that the definition is stabilizing, but I don't know that any one attempt to define it has reached consensus. The basic outline is pretty well accepted (and the AAAI symposium description captures the major elements). - N Gilliatt 15:31, 1 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. Thanks to N Gilliatt for the new info. It seems that we have marketers to thank for the term 'social media.' In fact, on his user page N Gilliatt identifies himself as a consultant who follows social media services. The problem I still have is that the marketers have chosen to use this term so vaguely that it's hard to see how to build a reasonable article. For instance the first link he provides above gives this definition:

The label ’social media' has been attached to a quickly growing number of Web sites, such as blogs, wikis, Flickr, and Del.icio.us, whose content is primarily user-driven.

As one of the characters states in Through the Looking Glass, you can use words to mean anything you want. But we need to have an actionable definition to write an encyclopedia article, and the definitions from the above marketing-oriented sources are not usable, in my opinion. So I'm still voting Delete. EdJohnston 04:14, 3 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.