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SOCIAL MEDIA THROUGH THE EYES OF THE WORLD

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It's the people who use social media who create it, not the developers of platforms

England

The particular way that school pupils use Twitter for their quarrels is very different from the information sharing that most adults have come to assume as the function of this platform.

 

 

Rural China

Chinese social media users adopt local platforms (such as QQ and Wechat) in inventive ways, such as sharing content from which they can learn, as shown in this film.

 

 

Brazil

It was on the social media platform Orkut, rather than Facebook, that Brazilians first learned to meet and mingle online. Orkut became popular in Brazil but was quickly abandoned in favour of Facebook, and it is now only dimly remembered.

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The short-lived fame of Orkut

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India

Similarly, in India, people have shifted from Orkut to Facebook and then to WhatsApp, but for many people, what may matter more than the specific platform is how to practice Hinduism online and create good karma.

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The best way to start the day

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Turkey

When WhatsApp arrived on the scene, people had no issues about shifting from prior forms of messaging, since they could still control who would be able to see their messages.

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Intimacy

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Industrial China

People don't mind when friends move from QQ to WeChat; what matters is maintaining relationships by following them to the new platform, though it may take insistent encouragement to persuade them to try out a new platform.

Trinidad

In Trinidad, the genres of communication on social media tend to remain consistent. Here, young people's competitive taunting easily migrated from BBM (Blackberry Messenger) on Blackberry phones to Facebook.

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