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TOPIC: social media

Society

Pop And Propaganda — How Taiwan's Teens Are Lured By Chinese Social Media

As more young people in Taiwan use Chinese social media, drawn to the fun and glitzy elements of life on mainland China, they need to learn to distinguish real life from propaganda.

TAIPEI — Su is a high school student from Northern Taiwan, who spends hours every day watching short videos from Douyin, the Chinese-exclusive version of TikTok.

A recent trend on the platform is short sketches based on similar scripts, and he said he is addicted to watching these videos. "I had to set up a mainland China Apple ID to download Douyin, the videos there are funnier and trendier (than TikTok)."

Su is hardly the only Douyin fan in Taiwan. According to the DIGITAL Taiwan survey released by digital platform analytics firm We are social and KEPIOS in early 2022, there are approximately 4.16 million active Douyin users in Taiwan, with an average growth rate of 3.5% per quarter. Of these, the proportion of young users is 38%.

Taiwan's READr 2021 survey of social media usage among high school students found that while Facebook and Instagram are still the most popular social media platforms, Chinese apps such as Douyin are quickly catching up.

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Time To End The Western Witch Hunt Around Food

Social media hype and the "obsessive-compulsive" tendencies of younger generations are demonizing some basic foods, like bread, that have fed humanity for some 8,000 years.

-Essay-

BOGOTÁ — We largely owe our triumph as a species to gluten (a composite protein found in cereals like wheat). The domestication of the big, gluten-filled, cereals, paved the way for the rise of ancient civilizations, from Mesopotamia to Iran and the Mediterranean cultures of Egypt, Greece and Rome.

Wheat, barley and rye made large-scale agriculture possible, which fueled steady population growth through better nutrition. The rise of complex agricultural systems in turn led to the division of labor, consolidation of political systems and the state concept itself. So for more than 8,000 years, a great part of humanity has grown with the help of foods that contain gluten.

Yet today, these foods have become unspeakable villains to a growing number of 'foodies,' health enthusiasts and devotees of gastro-political and spiritual causes.

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Greta’s Andrew Tate Takedown Shines Light On Toxic American Males

Greta Thunberg dealt a knock-out blow online to self-proclaimed "misogynist" Andrew Tate. However, taming the spread of toxic masculinity online is not as simple.

-Analysis-

Two rounds, two knockouts in the all-out verbal dustup that saw Greta Thunberg win the year (or at least, the internet) in the final moments of 2022.

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Do It For The Money! What's Behind A Strange New Series Of Russian Propaganda Videos

A video series appeared then vanished this week from Russia’s only authorized social media platform. Its purpose seemed to be to recruit men (of all ages) to enlist in the war, as a way to make money. But who exactly is behind the campaign? What was the ultimate objective?

There was an episode this week on the Russian internet that was as bizarre as it was telling.

A series of five videos of dubious quality appeared Monday on Vkontakte, Russia’s most popular and currently only legally accessible social network. Shared on the I Mobilized public forum, the videos used soap opera-like scenarios to urge Russian men to enlist in the army. But rather than the usual calls to patriotism or neo-Nazi accusations against Ukraine, the odd recruitment videos were all focused on a singular motivation to sign up for the war: money.

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Yet after just three days, the videos disappeared from the social network, and all the content and comments were deleted. The day before they were scrubbed from the web, the Russian publication Vazhnyye Istorii wrote about the videos, and managed to get in touch with a few of the actors who took part.

Still, it remains unclear who was behind the project, who paid for it, and what the ultimate objective may have been.

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Ideas
Theodore J. Kury*

Information As Commodity: What If Twitter Was Regulated Like An Oil & Gas Company?

Theodore Kury, Director of Energy Studies at the University of Florida, sees value in thinking of social media as the pipeline that carries a new kind of utility: information. He makes the case for regulating companies like Twitter accordingly.

Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and his controversial statements and decisions as its owner, have fueled a new wave of calls for regulating social media companies. Elected officials and policy scholars have argued for years that companies like Twitter and Facebook – now Meta – have immense power over public discussions and can use that power to elevate some views and suppress others. Critics also accuse the companies of failing to protect users’ personal data and downplaying harmful impacts of using social media.

As an economist who studies the regulation of utilities such as electricity, gas and water, I wonder what that regulation would look like. There are many regulatory models in use around the world, but few seem to fit the realities of social media. However, observing how these models work can provide valuable insights.

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Ideas
Anna Akage

The "Good Russians" Debate Is Back — And My Rage Just Grows Deeper

A Ukrainian journalist considers the controversy over the shutting down of exiled, independent Russian television station TV Dozhd. Can Russians be opposed to Putin's war and yet support the troops?

-Essay-

What's been unfolding in Latvia this week is minor compared to the brutality that continues every day in Ukraine. Still, it is telling, and is forcing us to try to imagine what will happen in the future to Russia, and Russians, and the rest of us in the region.

What has been a largely respected and independent Russian television channel, TV Dozhd ("TV Rain") was forced off the air in Latvia — where it's been based since being forced into exile at the start of the war in Ukraine — after Alexei Korostelev, one the channel's main anchors, said on live TV that Dozhd viewers could help the Russian army soldiers and urged viewers to write about mobilization violations.

Korostelev was immediately fired, and the television's management reiterated its absolute opposition to the war and repeated calls for Moscow to immediately withdraw its troops.

Nevertheless, the next day Latvia — a fierce Ukraine ally — revoked the channel's license to broadcast

It is a rude return to the "good Russian" debate, which spread across independent newspapers and social media in the weeks after Moscow's invasion. What must we demand from Russians who are opposed to the war and to Vladimir Putin? Should we expect that they not only want an end to the fighting, but should also be pushing for the defeat of their own nation's military?

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eyes on the U.S.
Alex Hurst

Eyes On U.S. — No 'Vague Rouge,' No Final Results: How The World Makes Sense Of Midterms

While some breathed sighs of relief that the Republicans' predicted "red wave" sweep didn't happen, others chuckle at how long it takes to count the votes. And then there's Senõr Musk...

PARIS — Three full days later, and there's still no real clarity on the U.S. midterms — but the world has gotten used to American elections dragging out for days or even weeks, for both political and technical reasons.

One French journalist wondered if there’s a simpler way.

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Geopolitics
Laura Scofield and Matheus Santino

New Probe Finds Pro-Bolsonaro Fake News Dominated Social Media Through Campaign

Ahead of Brazil's national elections Sunday, the most interacted-with posts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Telegram and WhatsApp contradict trustworthy information about the public’s voting intentions.

SÂO PAULO — If you only got your news from social media, you might be mistaken for thinking that Jair Bolsonaro is leading the polls for Brazil’s upcoming presidential elections, which will take place this Sunday. Such a view flies in the face of what most of the polling institutes registered with the Superior Electoral Court indicate.

An exclusive investigation by the Brazilian investigative journalism agency Agência Pública has revealed how the most interacted-with and shared posts in Brazil on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Telegram and WhatsApp share data and polls that suggest victory is certain for the incumbent Bolsonaro, as well as propagating conspiracy theories based on false allegations that research institutes carrying out polling have been bribed by Bolsonaro’s main rival, former president Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, or by his party, the Workers’ Party.

Agência Pública’s reporters analyzed the most-shared posts containing the phrase “pesquisa eleitoral” [electoral polls] in the period between the official start of the campaigning period, on August 16, to September 6. The analysis revealed that the most interacted-with and shared posts on social media spread false information or predicted victory for Jair Bolsonaro.

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Dottoré!
Mariateresa Fichele

Social Media Envy Is More Than Just Your Imagination

Our Naples psychiatrist's view on unrealistic social media standards, feeling inadequate, and the price of happiness.

Some of my female patients are struggling with the way life is exposed on social media. It is becoming extremely problematic not only in relation to the beauty standards exhibited online, but also the family models that are exposed.

Some women — who struggle with their role as working women and mothers or housewives — have difficulty in understanding that behind a bright young entrepreneur who constantly shows herself on social media as a loving mother and wife, immersed in an opulent and perfect reality, there is a hidden world of waiters, nannies, makeup artists, hairdressers, drivers, airplane pilots and photographers, who certainly do not appear in videos and Instagram stories.

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In The News
Anna Akage, Bertrand Hauger and Emma Albright

Zelensky Reveals Why He Didn’t Warn Ukrainians About Russian Invasion

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed in an interview with the Washington Post on Tuesday that although he knew about the likelihood of a Russian invasion, the Ukrainian government did not make the news public to avoid causing panic. “We knew about the war, but we could not warn the Ukrainians about it, otherwise, we would have lost immediately.”

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CIA Director William Burns had visited Zelensky in mid-January to warn of a planned Russian attack. But Zelensky stated that informing the Ukrainian public would have made a Russian victory more likely:

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Society
Dan Wu

Lipstick And Tiananmen: China Dives Into Livestreaming Censorship

It may have taken a little while, but the Chinese Communist Party woke up to the risks of losing control of information flows on livestream platforms.

Austin Li Jiaqi, China’s “lipstick King” and most famous beauty influencer, has been missing since last month from social media and livestreams.

Most trace his absence to a livestream on June 3 when Li was presented with a tank-shaped cake — it was the night before the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

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Geopolitics
Artur Weigandt

The Russian Soldier Turned Social Media Star — Revealing More Than Putin Might Like

Anatoly Dremov shares his experiences of the war in Ukraine on the Russian Telegram network – and reveals details that don't always line up with the Kremlin narrative.

“That damn Ukrainian 'dill' shot up our tank,” a young soldier says into his cell phone camera. Dill is Russian slang for “Ukrainian Nazis.” The soldier squats in a car. The camera pans to the street. Destroyed apartment buildings roll by, destroyed tanks and civilian vehicles too.

Then a change of scene: several soldiers, all wearing the Russian Z on their sleeves. “It doesn’t matter at all who we meet on the way to victory: young Ukrainians, old Ukrainians. They’ll all get it.”

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What sounds like a cheap Russian action movie is reality. The reality of soldier Anatoly Dremov, sometimes Artyom Dremov, also known by the pseudonym Snami Bog – “God with us.” Dremov is 25 years old and from St. Petersburg. Sometimes he claims to be the owner of a restaurant. Sometimes it’s a tobacco store. Maybe both are true. Maybe both are not true.

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