Social media has the function of spreading information to modern society. For example, the People's Daily publishes the article "Coming, Morning News Shuttle" on the official account of WeChat every morning at around 6: 00 to provide news for the audience. Mcluhan believes that the media is information. In other words, it is easy to understand that it is possible for human beings to communicate and other social activities with the help of some media. Therefore, from the long process of the development of human society, the truly meaningful and valuable "news" is not the content of communication in each era, but the nature of the communication tools used in this era, the possibilities it creates and the social changes it brings. For example, there is a factory that originally made clothes by hand. The factory is getting bigger and bigger, and several machines are put in to produce. In addition, this factory also produces shoes, watches, necklaces and so on. If you want to buy clothes, you only need to know that this factory sells clothes, and you don't need to know that it also produces shoes, watches, necklaces and so on. So media is technology, technology is information, and media is information.
Social media has the function of supervising society in modern society. Network anti-corruption, Weibo abduction and human flesh search are all manifestations of network supervision of society. For example, we can usually supervise something and someone on the Internet through social media such as Weibo, for example, a company donates money to a mountain area, and the public can follow up and supervise it through social media such as Weibo. This is like McLuhan's "Media is an extension of human beings". He believes that any media is nothing more than the expansion or extension of people's senses: for example, when using social media Weibo, when searching for a news, there will be all kinds of news with words and pictures, which is the extension of your senses and senses.
Social media has the function of providing entertainment for modern society. We usually watch TV, read books, chat and broadcast. Both belong to entertainment. McLuhan put forward two famous concepts of "hot media" and "cold media" in the classification of media. For these two classification standards, McLuhan himself has not clearly defined them, and people speculate according to his narrative: the information transmitted by "hot media" is clear and clear, and the receiver can understand it without mobilizing more sensory and associative activities; On the other hand, the information transmitted by "cold medium" is few and vague, and it is necessary to mobilize the cooperation of multiple senses and rich imagination in understanding. For example, Xiao Ming is reading a book, which belongs to "hot media" and has low audience participation. Xiao Ming doesn't need to interact with others or listen. He just needs to sit quietly at his desk and read it. The book is informative and clear. Television, as a "cold medium", is different. Xiaohong is watching a soap opera. She can eat while talking to the people next to her, and then look back at the TV series and think about what happened a few minutes ago, because Refrigerant needs to mobilize the audience's participation, but its information is very small. Therefore, different media act on people in different ways and produce different psychological and behavioral reactions.
With the maturity of social media, its influence on modern society is constantly playing a positive role.