Quartz (October 22)
“Among American adults, reliance on TikTok for news content has roughly tripled since 2020, rising from 3% to 10% in the past two years. More than a quarter of US adults under 30 now regularly use TikTok for news.” The overall trend is, however, morning the other way as fewer Americans rely “for news on social media, especially Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Snapchat” according to recent findings of the Pew Research Center.
Tags: Adults, Facebook, News, Reddit, Rely, Snapchat, Social media, TikTok, Trend, Twitter, U.S., Under 30
The Guardian (May 10)
“Tensions between Shanghai residents and China’s Covid enforcers are on the rise again, amid a new push to end infections outside quarantine zones to meet President Xi Jinping’s demand for achieving “dynamic zero-Covid.” To express their displeasure with what are increasingly being viewed as violations of human rights and the rule of law, residents are sharing incriminating videos on social media. “Censors have been taking down many of these videos, but determined residents have continued to post them.”
Tags: China, Covid, Displeasure, Enforcers, Human rights, Infections, Quarantine, Residents, Rule of law, Shanghai, Social media, Tensions, Videos, Violations, Xi
WARC (April 14)
Marketing spend is set to grow across all 15 major types of media. “Social media sees the largest net budget increase, at +53%, while print and AM/FM radio see the smallest net budget increase, but still at +13%.” Taken as a whole, “WARC Data forecasts global advertising spend to grow by 12.5% this year.”
Tags: Advertising, AM/FM, Budget, Data, Forecasts, Global, Increase, Marketing, Media, Print, Radio, Social media, Spend, WARC
Forbes (March 12)
“If the economics world handed out gold medals for unintended consequences, Japan’s Yoshiro Mori would be a shoo-in.” While “Japan has had more sexist-rant scandals,” none of those “occurred on the IOC’s watch—or during the social-media age.” The $25 billion being spent on the Olympics could, oddly, “be money well spent if the sexism scandal that felled Mori gets Japan to finally get serious about gender parity,” expanding the annual economy by the $750 billion that womenomics is expected to unleash.
Tags: Economics, Gender parity, Gold medals, IOC, Japan, Mori, Olympics, Scandals, Sexist, Social media, Unintended consequences, Womenomics
New York Times (December 21)
The Twenty-Teens have “been fundamentally shaped by the technological creations of the young, in the form of social media and mobile apps; by the mass migrations of the young, from Africa and the Middle East to Europe and from Latin America to the U.S.; by the diseases of the (mostly) young, notably addiction and mental illness; and by the moral convictions of the young, from the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements in the U.S. to mass demonstrations from Cairo to Hong Kong.”
Tags: #MeToo, Addiction, Africa, Apps, Black Lives Matter, Cairo, Demonstrations, Diseases, Europe, Hong Kong, Latin America, Mental illness, Middle East, Migrations, Moral convictions, Movements, Social media, Technology, U.S., Young
New Zealand Herald (March 18)
“In the wake of the Christchurch terror attack” we need to ensure “zero tolerance for casual racism.” No longer can you simply ignore or make excuses for these views. You need to “call them out, shut them down, report them, do whatever you need to do to ensure that this level of everyday racism is no longer accepted in New Zealand…. The Christchurch terrorist who livestreamed the massacre spent two years planning it, being fairly open about it all online, in forums and social media. Someone, at some point, could have stopped it. But they didn’t.” Now we know better. “You don’t get to ignore it anymore…. Spreading hate on social media can be criminal. See it? Report it.”
Tags: Casual racism, Christchurch, Criminal, Excuse, Hate, Ignore, Livestreamed, Massacre, Report, Social media, Terror attack, Zero tolerance
The New Yorker (January 28)
“In an era of social media and fake news, journalists who have survived the print plunge have new foes to face…. The more desperately the press chases readers, the more it resembles our politics.”
Tags: Desperate, Era, Fake news, Foe, Journalists, Politics, Print plunge, Readers, Social media
The Atlantic (September Issue)
Smartphones may be destroying the iGen (individuals born from 1995–2012). They’ve been “shaped by the smartphone and by the concomitant rise of social media.” Despite much worrying, “the impact of these devices has not been fully appreciated, and goes far beyond the usual concerns about curtailed attention spans. The arrival of the smartphone has radically changed every aspect of teenagers’ lives, from the nature of their social interactions to their mental health.” There are some positive aspects, but by and large “the results could not be clearer: Teens who spend more time than average on screen activities are more likely to be unhappy, and those who spend more time than average on nonscreen activities are more likely to be happy.”
Tags: iGen, Mental health, Smartphones, Social media, Teenagers, Unhappy
Institutional Investor (May 24)
Quants may be able to “fundamentally transform the ability of investors to find companies that embrace ESG principles.” Beyond crunching more widely available ESG data, some hope that unstructured data, ranging “from people’s comments on social media to data mined from online retailers,” can reveal “hard-to-measure issues like corporate culture or a commitment to the environment.”
Tags: Commitment, Corporate culture, Data mining, Environment, ESG, Hard-to-measure, Investors, Quants, Social media, Unstructured data
U.S News (October 25)
The Islamic State has proved remarkably hard to stamp out, partly due to its media agility. “The rise of the Islamic State group resembled a digital media start-up, using the same strategies that social media sites like Buzzfeed, Vox or Upworthy have employed…. Their content is relevant, acculturated, localized and focused: an audience-first approach that perfectly matches our 21st century media culture.” The Obama administration also “embraces digital technology,” but in stark contrast “finds itself in the role of a traditional company being disrupted by an agile digital media start-up.”
Tags: Buzzfeed, Digital, Focused, Islamic State, Localized, Relevant, Social media, Start-up, Upworthy, Vox
