How To Use Tested Theories For Informative Social Media Communication
By: Vanessa Shepherd
Tags: Social Media Marketing, Pinterest, Entrepreneurship, Social Media, Business Owner

How To Use Tested Theories For Informative Social Media Communication

Pinterest’s significance to society of being able to draw people together in a way that transcends barriers is enticing change. Vanessa Shepherd Jun 17·4 min read

In Communication, the Medium is the Message

In his book, Understanding Media, McLuhan (McLuhan, 1969) talks about “the medium is the message.” He considers media as being an extension of ourselves, that it is not so much the content of media, so much as the structural changes that it introduces to society over time. McLuhan’s argument is that the message is the change that a new invention or pattern that is introduced. The medium, on the other hand, is where change emerges.

If Pinterest is the medium, then the change it causes can be the ability to be electronically interdependent on each other to garner new ideas, and to find like-minded individuals with similar values and interests despite differences in geography, culture, or spoken/written language.

Pinterest’s significance to society of being able to draw people together in a way that transcends barriers is enticing change. More visual communication media and designs for digital media are emerging in the wake of discovering how Pinterest has been successful in connecting people, brands, and ideas through largely visual means with some written or verbal support provided through the descriptions of each pin and the link to larger content on another website or publication.

Pinterest’s ability to entice structural change in society to earn an acceptance of visual communication as being as significant as written or verbal communication has sparked a new pattern of behavior that will likely have an effect on other social media sites and the online behaviors of individuals and organizations alike.

Online Communication Creates a Global Village

“The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village”, stated by Marshall McLuhan identifies the formation of tribes, or a return to the formation of tribes in a modern time (McLuhan & Fiore, 1967). McLuhan’s global village identified the retribalization process, or the reconnection of people in, “a new state of multitudinous tribal existences” (Norden, 1969, 2004).

The invention of the world wide web allowed for the creation of a global village digitally, which has the ability to include offline activities as an extension of the use of the internet by individuals around the world. McLuhan spoke to the use of technology to help with the tribalization process, which extends everywhere, to the realm of personal space and the corporate world.

Pinterest is a Link Between Online and Offline Communication

Pinterest utilizes the internet to provide a link between online and offline activities. Individuals can collect ideas, thoughts, pictures, videos, and information digitally using Pinterest’s pinboards as a way to store it for future use in an offline activity, like planning a wedding or renovating a house, or for use in an online activity, such as opening a web-based business.

Pinterest embodies McLuhan’s state of multitudinous tribal existences by allowing people to enter into real-time communication constantly, and to organize tribes by various factors, such as around specific ideas, values, or interests. Using simple, visual layouts and descriptive guides to help individuals connect again and again to organize themselves into very specific tribes is significant because being able to share ideas despite communication barriers brings a sense of true global interconnectivity to create a global village where people are interconnected and part of a variety of smaller tribes, while still being part of a larger village.

Read the rest of the series here:

Part 1: How many people use Pinterest before they buy?

Part 2:What is Pinterest all about? Why should I care?

Part 3: This is the best place to find user-found content: Pinterest

Part 4: Did you know complexity theory is helpful for social media?

Part 5: How To Use Tested Theories For Informative Social Media Communication (current post)

Part 6: This is huge! Pinterest impacts society in a big way

References

McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. New York: McGraw-Hill

McLuhan, M., & Fiore, Q. (1967). The medium is the message: An inventory of effects. Berkeley, CA: Gingko Press.

Norden, E. (1969, 2004). The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan. Playboy Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.mcluhanmedia.com/m_mcl_inter_pb_01.html.