International Media Trends
Rhett Gentry
Professor Reppert
Trends in Modern Media
March 3, 2019
Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook are the most used and most relevant social media of today. These social media were developed within the United States but play major roles in other countries as well. In Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro (the "president" of the country) tweets on not just a daily, but almost hourly basis. He tweets about the state of the country, his plans for festivals, and how he is indeed the true president of his country.
While Twitter may be US made, 79% of its users originate outside the United States. The presidents of Brazil, France, Canada, and many others use Twitter as a platform for both their political campaigns and to give assurance to the people they serve. This may seem similar to the United States President, Donald Trump, however, many presidents across the world use Twitter as a platform like celebrities and regular citizens do.
Away from social media comes the first data-free messaging app that was developed in Africa: Moya Messenger. Set up by the Australian biNu company, they established themselves in South Africa and have come up with an app to face WhatsApp. The basic concept for Moya Messenger is that it will have ads to pay for your messaging use. Send a few messages - you have an ad to watch. If you can't pay for messaging data, you can simply use this app and will only have a few ads to watch to be able to start sending messages.
Moya Messenger combats the despairing economic issues in Africa by allowing messages to be sent without having to pay for the data. You may be able to buy a phone, but if you can't pay for the data it is useless then. This messaging app would be a great use for citizens of any country so that they won't have to be forced to spend money on data packages just to send messages out to others.
Tik Tok, formally known as Musical.ly, was launched in 2014 by Chinese entrepreneurs Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang. It was purchased by ByteDance, a Beijing based media company. Tik Tok was used throughout China, pretty much as their form of Vine. However, this company went beyond what Vine did and created larger functionality and gadgets for the users to implement into their videos. You can change the color of your hair, lip sync to songs, and there is so much more they are continuing to add.
This international social media has made its way to the United States and is a prime example of what can come for lifestyle changes in the United States and abroad. It has made an impact in the US, with many users and memes being made from it. It has also developed itself to have limited competition - it isn't like any of the other social media. It has its own theme and functionalities that make it different than anything else.
On the aspect of YouTube is the "War Against T-Series". T-Series is an India Based media company that started off with video piracy of American Films. They then moved to making their own Bollywood films and soundtracks. It is a strange channel on YouTube that composes a large volume of music videos.
Swedish YouTuber, PewDiePie, is the most subscribed to YouTuber and has a huge fan following in the United States. The whole War Against T-Series is between PewDiePie and T-Series. The biggest issue is that T-Series has subscriber bots - specifically, computers that autogenerate subscribers for the channel. The two channels are incredibly close in subscriber numbers, hence why there is a whole war between the two.
Back to PewDiePie, he revolutionized YouTube with his videogame based content. Without his videos, the algorithm for YouTube wouldn't be so heavily videogame based. For a once unknown man in Sweden, children across the United States know the name PewDiePie and have relished in his content, which as most YouTubers are, isn't quite kid friendly.
Censorship of media has been an issue in many countries, but Germany made a change late last year as they have lifted the ban on all Nazi imagery in videogames. Games like Wolfenstein and Call of Duty have Nazi antagonists that the character must fight against. These games were sold in Germany, but every single Nazi image had to be censored or changed. Even Hitler's mustache in Wolfenstein 2 was shaved off as to not label him as being Hitler.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was one of the biggest games to cause controversy as your character had to go through an airport and kill civilians to infiltrate a terrorist cell. This mission was skippable, yet the resulting scenes caused for multiple countries to disallow any copies of the game to be sold within their countries.
Professor Reppert
Trends in Modern Media
March 3, 2019
Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook are the most used and most relevant social media of today. These social media were developed within the United States but play major roles in other countries as well. In Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro (the "president" of the country) tweets on not just a daily, but almost hourly basis. He tweets about the state of the country, his plans for festivals, and how he is indeed the true president of his country.
While Twitter may be US made, 79% of its users originate outside the United States. The presidents of Brazil, France, Canada, and many others use Twitter as a platform for both their political campaigns and to give assurance to the people they serve. This may seem similar to the United States President, Donald Trump, however, many presidents across the world use Twitter as a platform like celebrities and regular citizens do.
Away from social media comes the first data-free messaging app that was developed in Africa: Moya Messenger. Set up by the Australian biNu company, they established themselves in South Africa and have come up with an app to face WhatsApp. The basic concept for Moya Messenger is that it will have ads to pay for your messaging use. Send a few messages - you have an ad to watch. If you can't pay for messaging data, you can simply use this app and will only have a few ads to watch to be able to start sending messages.
Moya Messenger combats the despairing economic issues in Africa by allowing messages to be sent without having to pay for the data. You may be able to buy a phone, but if you can't pay for the data it is useless then. This messaging app would be a great use for citizens of any country so that they won't have to be forced to spend money on data packages just to send messages out to others.
Tik Tok, formally known as Musical.ly, was launched in 2014 by Chinese entrepreneurs Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang. It was purchased by ByteDance, a Beijing based media company. Tik Tok was used throughout China, pretty much as their form of Vine. However, this company went beyond what Vine did and created larger functionality and gadgets for the users to implement into their videos. You can change the color of your hair, lip sync to songs, and there is so much more they are continuing to add.
This international social media has made its way to the United States and is a prime example of what can come for lifestyle changes in the United States and abroad. It has made an impact in the US, with many users and memes being made from it. It has also developed itself to have limited competition - it isn't like any of the other social media. It has its own theme and functionalities that make it different than anything else.
On the aspect of YouTube is the "War Against T-Series". T-Series is an India Based media company that started off with video piracy of American Films. They then moved to making their own Bollywood films and soundtracks. It is a strange channel on YouTube that composes a large volume of music videos.
Swedish YouTuber, PewDiePie, is the most subscribed to YouTuber and has a huge fan following in the United States. The whole War Against T-Series is between PewDiePie and T-Series. The biggest issue is that T-Series has subscriber bots - specifically, computers that autogenerate subscribers for the channel. The two channels are incredibly close in subscriber numbers, hence why there is a whole war between the two.
Back to PewDiePie, he revolutionized YouTube with his videogame based content. Without his videos, the algorithm for YouTube wouldn't be so heavily videogame based. For a once unknown man in Sweden, children across the United States know the name PewDiePie and have relished in his content, which as most YouTubers are, isn't quite kid friendly.
Censorship of media has been an issue in many countries, but Germany made a change late last year as they have lifted the ban on all Nazi imagery in videogames. Games like Wolfenstein and Call of Duty have Nazi antagonists that the character must fight against. These games were sold in Germany, but every single Nazi image had to be censored or changed. Even Hitler's mustache in Wolfenstein 2 was shaved off as to not label him as being Hitler.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was one of the biggest games to cause controversy as your character had to go through an airport and kill civilians to infiltrate a terrorist cell. This mission was skippable, yet the resulting scenes caused for multiple countries to disallow any copies of the game to be sold within their countries.
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