Functionalist Perspective Of Facebook

Submitted By shrunash
Words: 563
Pages: 3

STUDENT CAFÉ 1
By Avinash Reddy

Facebook a free public application, the top most social networking site today has more than 400 million users and still counting. However there are other social media sites with almost nearer to the number of Facebook users and one among them is twitter next comes LinkedIn which is a professional network. The main reason for facebook becoming more popular and language-friendly social media site is because of its availability in 70 different languages around the world(Denise Baptise. (2013). Facebook Facts You Ought To Know. Retrieved from http://www.boldsky.com).

According to my perspective Facebook can be viewed in functionalist perspective, conflict perspective, Interactions perspective and feminist perspective. Though it can be viewed in many different ways, according to the present trend these perspectives are vital.
Functionalist perspective can be defined as a system of interconnected parts that work together in harmony to maintain a state of balance and social equilibrium for the whole (Mooney, Knox, and Schacht, 2007. Understanding Social Problems, 5th edition). Earlier people from different educational institutions, small scale and large scale industries, government organizations and private firms used to advertise or publish using their websites, Google Ad Sense(program run by Google that allows publishers in the Google Network of content sites to serve automatic text, image, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to site content and audience(Google AdSense Retrieved from Wikipedia))until the Facebook was founded and introduced to the whole world. Since then almost every firms and organizations started including a Facebook link on their websites to encourage customers, friends to visit their account and suggest interested people to get into their business or institutions.

Conflict perspective views society as composed of different groups and interest competing for power and resources (Mooney, Knox, and Schacht, 2007. Understanding Social Problems, 5th edition). For example many education institutions create a group for international students where they post the course updates, co-curricular activities on campus, accommodation etc. This is a good idea since most students in schools, colleges and universities have Facebook accounts. Students also have an option to post their individual requests regarding their concerns.
Interaction perspective views human interaction as a process