The Social Network and the Internet

The legal trials that plagued the beginnings of Facebook were depicted in The Social Network [1]. The movie depicted the internet in various ways. Firstly, it depicted the internet as a world for the main character Mark Zuckerburg to vent his frustrations. After he was dumped by Erica Albright, he felt torn and betrayed. His only medium to avenge being embarrassed was blogging over the internet. To him, his blogging site was his world in which nothing could go wrong, a world where he could never be embarrassed.

The internet was then viewed as a distraction. Mark had begun to write the code to launch FaceSmash, in an effort to take his mind off of Erica. FaceSmash was also his most prized work at the time, having crashed the Harvard servers. Later he began to distract himself even more with the programming of TheFacebook.

Mark created Facebook because he believed that a successful social networking site involved people that other people actually knew. Invitations and friend requests made TheFacebook selective, like a club. Here, he creates the link that connects internet social networking with real life social networking. The key ingredient was first the exclusiveness. Later the key ingredient became the realism of Facebook, with the addition of the Relationship Status, etc. The connection, realism, and exclusiveness are what make Facebook “cool”.

Moreover, much of Facebook's success lies in its ability to allow its users to update their "Status", which in effect allows them the opportunity to publish news. According to journalists Tony Harcup and Deirdre O'Neill, some important news values include "prominence, proximity, timeliness, and human interest", among others [2]. Facebook tends to especially accentuate the news values of proximity by connecting "friends" over the internet, and timeliness by sending users updated statuses from their "friends". These news values that come with each publish help users create their own news that is worthy of being read by their own friends and network. Another factor, accessibility, is unquestionable as users can access these updates with a click of a mouse.

Lastly, the internet is portrayed as being a part of history. Erica Albright acknowledges that the internet is “written in pen, not in pencil”, to state that anything written on the internet is permanent, and cannot be simply erased. Consequently, the effects that the internet has on real life that result from this cannot easily be forgiven.

[1] The Social Network (2010). Directed by David Fincher. Columbia Pictures.

[2] Harcup, T., O'Neill, D. (2001) What is News? Galtung and Ruge Revisited. Journalism Studies, Volume 2, Number 2, pp 266