Always on and Connected: young people and their mobile social media use in Japan, the US, and the UK @Japan Foundation London

Posted on December 26, 2014 by Toshie Takahashi

Speaker: Professor Toshie Takahashi

Discussant: Dr. Chris Davies

abstract

How similar are young people in different parts of the world in the way they use digital media? What do they share cross-culturally – and what not? Do cultural differences really matter when the technology is the same? The technology in question, the smartphone, has seen a meteoric rise in the past few years. It is now hard for most of us, and especially young people living in cosmopolitan urban centres, to imagine a world without the smartphone – and, for that matter, without their apps like social media such as Twitter, Facebook and LINE. The latter was only launched in 2011 by NHN Japan and has since become popular, not only in Japan, but also in Asia and Spanish-speaking countries. Precisely because the reach of such digital media is global, there is a need to understand how mobile social media are taken up and used in different places. As an initial step, this talk will present findings from a comparative study of digital media use amongst youth in Japan, US and the UK, focusing on their practices of connectivity, that is, connecting with both intimate and distant others through mobile social media.

Always on and Connected (PDF) 

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About Toshie Takahashi

Toshie Takahashi is Professor in the School of Culture, Media and Society, as well as the Institute for Al and Robotics,Waseda University, Tokyo. She was the former faculty Associate at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. She has held visiting appointments at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge as well as Columbia University. She conducts cross-cultural and trans-disciplinary research on the social impact of robots as well as the potential of AI for Social Good. 【早稲田大学文学学術院教授。元ハーバード大学バークマンクライン研究所ファカルティ・アソシエイト。現在、人工知能の社会的インパクトやロボットの利活用などについて、ハーバード大学やケンブリッジ大学と国際共同研究を行っている。東京オリンピック・パラリンピック競技大会組織委員会テクノロジー諮問委員会委員。】
This entry was posted in Culture and Communication, Facebook, High and Low Context Cultures, Intercultural Communication, Kuuki, Line, Mobile Media, Social Media, Twitter, Uchi, Youth and Media. Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to Always on and Connected: young people and their mobile social media use in Japan, the US, and the UK @Japan Foundation London

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