Aliens, hobbies, and strikes: social media manifestation as social influence

This post will be about media, new media, social media. Of course we know or believe these have immense persuasive (and pervasive) effects on people. There is a vast amount of advertising linked to these media, for instance. Remember: the services are free and if something is for free, than you are actually the product and not the genuine consumer. Viewed from another, social psychological, perspective, I will describe in this blogpost how these media are also persuasive katalysts that do not have an offline equivalent. The core of the argument will be that social media nowadays (such as facebook and twitter) actually give some insight about the prevalence of previously covert behaviors or opinions and this insight will lead to higher proliferation of these behaviors and opinions.