The film, The Social Network, captivated audiences around the globe in it’s telling of the story of how Facebook, a website, got created and became a huge success. Facebook is that is one of the most fundamental facets of today’s society that reflects and acts extension of our humanity. It reflects our daily lives as humans and making the information available to anyone one of it’s users around the globe. In today’s technologically advanced society, the rate at which information is sent and received is faster than ever.
Because of this rapid communication, narratives can be relayed to not one, but many receivers. When the role of a large audience acts as receivers of a narrative, this is called mass media. As a society, the introduction to mass media—more specifically, the Internet—has shifted the way we interact with one another and share information.
Folklorist, Gregory Hansen elaborates on how society has adapted to the internet as a new medium for narratives, “the internet itself—as a new medium—is a novel way of conveying information about social interaction and a shifting sense of what it means to be part of and audience for public-folklore programming” (Blank 196)[1] . In other words, the Internet in itself creates a virtual public medium for narratives, such as folklore, for a mass audience.
As a result, Facebook, as a social interactive website that enables one to relay his or her own narratives, is a direct adaptation to the establishment of new media in our culture. This is why Facebook became a huge success. The story behind it’s creation portrayed in the movie, is so captivating because the people behind the story were young college kids that were responsible for the creation of this novel success. Also, the story was portrayed in an artistically in that it’s aesthetic appeal was geared towards audiences that understood the importance of Facebook.
[1] Blank, Trevor J. Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2009.
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