Understanding Role of Gender and Social Media towards Social Impact: An Initial Review

Abstract

By understanding the concept of social impact, each individual's capability to influence and to comply with other people could be explained. Social impact often focuses on the individual’s persuasive skills, power or position in the society, not the personal characteristics such as gender, or even the environmental elements itself. With the rise of social media as a social environment that is not limited by time and space, it is possible that there is a difference between the relationships and connectivity of each individual in the community. Thus, this study aims to understand deeply the role of gender and social media towards social impact through previous research. The study design is qualitative research using literature review method based on two main databases namely Science direct and Wiley Open Library. Generally, journals that have been selected and reviewed are only open accessed, in psychology and social science field for the last 10 years. Results shown that, women have higher tendency to comply and influence their social environment compared to men, moreover social media could also enhance the effect of the social impact by providing broader connection. Advance research is still needed to measure the significance of role of gender and social media in real and online life settings, and discover other personal characteristic that could also contribute to social impact.