Navigating Different Cultures Across Social Media
Social media, for better and certainly for worse, has changed the world. The world’s economy now has a big stake in online “influencers,” as well as targeted ads gleaned by gathering data about you as you innocently click through your accounts.
Social media has also changed the way we share information – again, for better, and certainly, for worse. Information can be accessed at any point from anywhere in the world, as long as you have internet access and a social media account. The issue here is that the entire world does not think like you do, and may not be able to follow your presence if it is not well managed.
LOOKING AT THE UNITED STATES
The social media environment in the United States has been explosive, to say the least, following the rise of Donald Trump, the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the impact of Russian bots and troll farms on online discourse since the 2016 presidential election, and, most recently, COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.
Why so volatile?
The answer is simple: research suggests that American users click disproportionately on headlines that inspire anger, rage, and other negative emotions even though most users choose to only post positive things on their respective pages.
Why is this?
“Users seemed to be most influenced by others’ posts when those posts contained feelings that violated their cultural values,” says Jeanne L. Tsai, the director of the Stanford Culture and Emotion Lab. “So for the US, users are most influenced by others’ high arousal negative content like anger and disgust.”
In Japan, comparitively, Tsai and her research team found that users were most influenced by “others’ high arousal positive states like excitement.”
DEALING WITH CULTURES OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES
A model for the theory of intercultural adaptation and expatriation suggests the process of adaptation comes in four phases: honeymoon, crisis, adjustment, and eventually, biculturalism. The honeymoon phase is characterized by initial euphoria, followed by the “culture shock” or crisis moment. All too often, information gets caught in the culture shock phase and never moves forward.
Information that disrupts or causes this “crisis” response is doing something called “affective hijacking,” in which exposure to content that violates users’ cultural values temporarily redirects their own content. Thus the cycle begins anew: honeymoon, crisis, repeat. However, since disruptive content can be measured – that is, seen and adjusted to – that is where adjustment can begin.
ADJUSTING
Structure and voice are essential to your work as a journalist, but the truth is, you will most likely need to abandon your sense of these things for a little while. Listening to how other news outlets (specifically ones in the home culture you are targeting) are reporting on something is essential. Not only will the greater tone of the piece become clearer, but other things possibly missed could come into view (such as idiosyncrasies, speech patterns, important structural differences or information presentation).
Knowing which platform reaches which cultural group is also vital. For example, Facebook is banned in China, so writing an article meant to be shared on Mark Zuckerberg’s Western darling will immediately kill the possibility of your intended audience reading it. Instead, China has Sina Weibo–and it serves a far different purpose than Facebook, often criticized for censoring its users and for serving as a propaganda arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) state apparatus. This means the social media network plays a different role in the day to day lives of Chinese citizens. Being aware of that difference is tantamount.
Making sure your work is being received and critiqued by people within that culture is also extremely important. Crossing cultural lines is difficult and can result in some really ugly situations. Messing up is to be expected, but ego cannot be a part of your journey if you are learning a different culture from scratch. Cultivating this awareness and pushing your ego to the side will enable you to reach out for help if you need it and own up to your mistakes when you (inevitably) make them. It will also broaden your chances of connecting with, and keeping an audience with, people in that culture.
It’s a full cognitive restructuring to cross into another culture or another language. It cannot happen overnight nor should it – to become a part of a culture is to become a part of a community, and journalists are almost always advocates on the parts of their communities. The rewards of cultural shifts in our work are great, but almost always on the other side of a painful adjustment period. Don’t let this stop you: Do it anyway.
