Cultural Values and Cross-cultural Video Consumption on YouTube

Video-sharing social media like YouTube provide access to diverse cultural products from all over the world, making it possible to test theories that the Web facilitates global cultural convergence. Drawing on a daily listing of YouTube's most popular videos across 58 countries, we investigate the consumption of popular videos in countries that differ in cultural values, language, gross domestic product, and Internet penetration rate. Although online social media facilitate global access to cultural products, we find this technological capability does not result in universal cultural convergence. Instead, consumption of popular videos in culturally different countries appears to be constrained by cultural values. Cross-cultural convergence is more advanced in cosmopolitan countries with cultural values that favor individualism and power inequality

The Implications of Viral Media & Advocacy: Kony 2012

This research paper analyzes the video “Kony 2012” as an example of advocacy film making and viral media. By analyzing critical sources, I draw conclusions as to why this video became the most viral video of all time and how other advocacy groups can use this phenomenon to learn about viral advocacy media. Using data from LexisNexis Academic, I track the popularity of “Kony 2012” via different forms of media (blogs, news articles, etc.) and compare my data to prior research conducted on social media sites. Ultimately, I will find that several key characteristics can be pinpointed as the primary cause for the film’s viral ability; including a pre-existing network of followers and the film’s ability to spread through social and traditional media. Additionally, I will conclude that the film’s inconsistent facts and the organizations behaviors played a role in the film’s demise

Dancing to the Partisan Beat: A First Analysis of Political Communication on TikTok

TikTok is a video-sharing social networking service, whose popularity is increasing rapidly. It was the world's second-most downloaded app in 2019. Although the platform is known for having users posting videos of themselves dancing, lip-syncing, or showcasing other talents, user-videos expressing political views have seen a recent spurt. This study aims to perform a primary evaluation of political communication on TikTok. We collect a set of US partisan Republican and Democratic videos to investigate how users communicated with each other about political issues. With the help of computer vision, natural language processing, and statistical tools, we illustrate that political communication on TikTok is much more interactive in comparison to other social media platforms, with users combining multiple information channels to spread their messages. We show that political communication takes place in the form of communication trees since users generate branches of responses to existing content. In terms of user demographics, we find that users belonging to both the US parties are young and behave similarly on the platform. However, Republican users generated more political content and their videos received more responses; on the other hand, Democratic users engaged significantly more in cross-partisan discussions.Comment: Accepted as a full paper at the 12th International ACM Web Science Conference (WebSci 2020). Please cite the WebSci version; Second version includes corrected typo

Asian Government Usage of Web 2.0 Social Media

The rise of Web 2.0 social sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube has brought significant changes and opportunities for both online consumers and governments. These tools have changed the ways Internet users communicate with each other and their governments, and allow for greater social participation. The number of worldwide users is growing significantly and their expectations for more services are rising. However, this has not translated into Asian governments totally encompassing the implementation functions and services using these tools. This research investigates the level of government participation of 50 Asian governments of three social media sites. The results show that a minority of Asian governments (approximately 30 percent) are using Web 2.0 tools for communication and information dissemination. The study found that if social sites were utilised, most governments used them for a) information dissemination on official government channels, b) education and c) tourism. The implications are that governments are missing opportunities to better server their citizens and reach the growing number of Internet users. Instead of avoiding these new technologies, governments should develop an overall strategic plan for all agency levels to participate in social networks, and develop a coordinated effort to develop and implement the tools