General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: My doctor asked me if I was on social media [View all]ancianita
(35,933 posts)DU is like most Internet forums. who call themselves by that name, and don't call themselves social media -- reddit, something awful, etc. DU's entire "Main" categories call themselves forums, and other sections call themselves "Groups."
Social media don't contain either discussion boards or forums. They contain mostly pages, Opening Post threads, with groups as a minor population; and no forums.
By analogy, both have social genes and media genes, but the animals those genes make are different species.
DU?
narrowly, technically social;
narrowly, technically media,
broadly, media as in news aggregator;
broadly social as in pleasant.
But DU is also a self-selected one-party political community; it welcomes Democrats; it does not welcome anyone from other political arenas; its participants also participate in social media, and its content is in furthering the interests of the Democratic Party as a model for governance.
DU can in the broadest sense, do what social media do, -- it can have real time message pace, world reach and broader topic range -- and in the sense that one species can do some of the things another species does. But DU cannot sustain what other social media do, such as being fast-paced 24 hours a day; it's much more analytical, informative, wide ranging in discussion. Because it is a self identified forum.
All animals are species, not all species are animal.
You can insist on the narrow rightness of defining DU as social media, but it's not.