Cross-Level Analysis of Social Media: Toward the Construction of an Ecological Framework

The media environment has undergone significant changes with the advent of the Internet. In the recent years, the prevalence and popularity of “social media” is re-shaping the ways in which people communicate and obtain information. This paper proposes a framework that conceptualizes a cross-level functionality of social media. We conceptualize social media as an information system functioning at micro-(interpersonal), meso-(group or organizational), and macro-(mass media) levels. Based on media system dependency theory, we present a cross-level functionality of social media ascribed by individual user characteristics, social environment and media system activities. We apply the cross-level framework to investigate how stories in social media are produced and consumed, and how the information paths are formed within social media as well as across different types of media