Global Social Media: Case Study China
Within my previous post, ‘Digital citizenship 3: Trolling and social media conflict’: I stated that governments should not be able to get ‘permission’ to intercede within digital communities for the purpose of ‘anti cyber-bulling’ monitoring, because they would then legally and ethically control our ‘freedom of speech’ within protests of the current affairs of our governments. However, the western countries should consider themselves lucky as ‘The Great Firewall of China’ prohibits Asian citizens to use western social media networks and has created their own exactly for this purpose; the increasing size of the government censors, site monitors and pro-government users make sure the government is cast in a positive light.
The Western assumption that Chinese citizens are missing out of the social media revolution as a consequence is untrue. 90% of Chinese youth are online and 75% of these youth are under the age of 30. The country takes on the ‘copycat’ notion because they’re not focusing on ‘radically new’ innovations, there taking the best from western social media (Facebook, Google) and improves and puts together designs for better versions. As a result, their youth are not ‘desperately’ waiting for a chance to use western social media platforms. China’s current generation is the first generation of non-Chinese obedient consumers, they’re concerned with their identity ‘who am I?’ that the western youth take for granted. There interested in social media that will help them explore the identity concept and because of the censorship, have developed their own visual and personal language to communicate that the government doesn’t understand.
Image source: http://trinitynews.ie/the-great-firewall-of-china/