Is It Dominant?

 

    

        Cultural Practices 

    Cultural practices are a little bit different when it comes to social media because it can be broken up into four different sections. According to Jenkins in "spreadable media" the four sections are emergent, dominant, residual, and archaic. I believe that items or entertainment in todays world can be put into these sections easier than before with the use of social media. Before social media it was hard to track what the trend was or what everybody liked unless you had many interactions with people to understand what was classified as trendy. Nowadays, if someone wanted to understand what was in trend they can use social media and just scroll around and find common trends and determine what is up to date. 

        Emergent 

    Emergent is when something in the category is becoming more and more popular and might be the next big thing. On social media this begins to happen as more people are beginning to view it and share it or even starting to try it themselves. For example, in sports disc golf is becoming more popular and starting gain professionals in the sport. It is easy to spot this is an emergent for sports because it is not quite as big as other sports are but I start seeing it appear frequently on my social media pages. Before social media it was harder to notice emergent ideas because you really only heard or know about it from others talking about it compared to the social media now where you can just see it on your phone pop up more and more. 

        Dominant 

    Dominant is when the object or whatever the category is, is the most popular. This can be a sport or top music artist in that genre of music or the best brand for running shoes. This has not changed much from before social media because obviously its the most popular item in the market. One big difference in pointing out what is dominant in todays world is that everybody knows about it even if they do not enjoy it. Now that phones are a thing and can listen to any music or see what people listen to the most on social media it makes it significantly easier to tell what is the best in that market. Before social media and the advance technology, the best way to know what was dominant music artist was how often they appeared on the radio. One example of a dominant piece is football. Football has easily become the biggest sport in the United States and is easily noticeable because of commercials, social media posts, and what people do on weekends during the season. Even if you are not a fan of football it is hard to go on social media and not see any form of football because of all the biggest pages posting about it. 

        Residual 

    Residual is pretty much a fancy word for classics, so this means something that is old but people still know about when they see it or hear they still enjoy it and get nostalgic feelings from it. People enjoy residual things because they can remember what it was like when it was new and everybody liked it. In todays world it is harder for something to become residual because it can be brought up whenever someone wants because of new technology and social media but still happens. The best example for something that is residual is forms of music within there genres. For example, in music and the genre of pop music that has grown overtime the best residual music would be Michael Jackson. Everybody knows who he is but do not listen to him as much anymore but when they hear some of his famous songs they can not help but sing or enjoy the music and reminisce about when he was a dominant artist. This cultural practice is easier to find and the feeling of finding it happens more often because of the ability to pull up a video that was famous 10 years ago while before social media was a more rare feeling since it was harder to find the video again.  

        Archaic 

    Archaic is described by Jenkins as something that no one knows anymore or something that very little people know about. This is almost impossible in todays world of social media because when something is posted on the internet it is very hard to be taken down. Yes posts and certain things can be taken down but is it truly gone? Before social media people were able to forget who they were and have few people know what they were like before they had met. One example of archaic is the first form of music. Very little people know about it and how it began or what it even sounded like. 

        Conclusion 

    Social Media brings in new cultural practices such as these and change how certain things are categorized. This makes it easier to put everything into categories because of how much they pop up when scrolling through all the different types of social media platforms. If it keeps popping up then it is more than likely dominant or the app has lots of downloads where everybody uses the platform. Before social media it made it hard to put everything into these categories considering it was harder to tell how popular or outdated everything was without the ability to pull out your phone and check.