Social Media Globalization And Glocalization

Introduction

Social media, globalization and glocalization are all remarkable phenomena in the 21th century, it brought significant changes, these changes can be seen in one’s everyday life to changes in the arena of world politics. This essay will argue that social media enforces globalization and glocalization and the impacts induced by it are mostly positive. The arguments presented in this essay will be supplemented and supported by various academic papers, journals, sources and the internship experience in STAKK Factory Limited. STAKK Factory is a media startup based in Hong Kong which runs a Facebook page and a website that aims to create ‘the social mobile news network bringing awe inspiring content that blends fun with meaning’. They

This video project is an example of glocalization in social media. Pickup videos in various forms are not a rare sight in social media of Western countries, and STAKK combined this trend (pick up videos) with local elements (lines in movies directed by Wong Ka Wai). There are also other similar examples of localized global contents, such as pranks, a video on international yoga day, try guy

Firstly, glocalization of social media enables more extensive cultural exchange. As discussed above, globalization allows organizations or individuals to gain international influence, this is also true for cultures. Glocalization of social media allows different cultures to gain international influence, when this happens, different cultures are more likely to interact with each other, and social media can act as a platform for such.

Some may argue that such cultural exchange will only occur among major cultures and minority cultures are likely to be left out, and this is not ‘extensive’ cultural exchange. Yet, this doesn’t seem to be the case. Social media can promote the use of endangered languages, which can be considered as minority cultures. This happens because communities that speak endangered languages are using social media services to promote their language and assist with language learning. Such trend is especially apparent among the youths, where using their heritage language is considered cool. This provides a new domain of use of endangered language, hence preserving the endangered language (Welcher, L. 2012). By using endangered languages on social media, it can increase the language’s exposure and it offers an opportunity for the endangered culture to exchange with other culture. Therefore, cultural exchange will not just happen among major