Social Science Homework Help

I am struggling trying to come up with a rough draft for my course project. My topic is cultural effects of social

media and below are some of the sources that I have found.

Dennen, V. & Bong, J. Cross-Cultural Dialogues in an Open Online Course: Navigating National and Organizational Cultural Differences. (2018)

Dennen and Bong use the study of an online course rooted in professional development of social media in an educational environment. In this professional development course, Chinese students were the targeted population in comparison to students in the United States. In contrast to Tuzel and Hobbs, Dennen and Bong are examining language and political climate. As a result, this professional development course allowed learners from different cultural backgrounds to feel confident in cross-cultural discussions.

I am going to use the journal to compare and contrast the themes between two cross-cultural social media studies. The themes differ between pop culture, language, and political climate. These themes are important to showcase what different age demographics value over others. For example, the Turkish seventh graders value pop culture whereas Chinese educators narrow in on language and political climate.

Gill, R. Media, Empowerment and the ‘Sexualization of Culture’ Debates. (2012)

Gill uses this article as an opportunity to expand on the sexualization of culture by drawing on research from the United Kingdom and New Zealand. This article narrows in on the influence of media to emphasize sexualization and the impact it has on young people. While the research takes place outside the United States, it is easy to make connections about media-based sexualization of cross-cultures.

 The connection of sexualization of cross-cultures is made easy through music videos, commercials, and magazines in the United States. This article will be used to show the harmful outcomes instead of the educational practices discussed in my previous sources. The connection can also be drawn that sexualization of women doesn’t only occur in the United States.

Kia-Keating, M., Santacrose, D., & Liu, S. Photography and Social Media Use in Community-Based Participatory Research with Youth: Ethical Considerations. (2017)

Kia-Keating et al. conducted research examining ethical dilemmas for photography and social media use. These dilemmas include use and risk of images, coercion, and confidentiality among Latina/o youth. While some social media-based research produces benefits, this study examines the risk factors as well. Kia-Keating et al.explain “high accessibility and low privacy” and the ways in which it affects social media accounts among youth. This research is helpful for awareness of harmful social media outcomes within vulnerable youth populations.

I will be using this article to demonstrate the recreational use of social media, opposed to educational use of social media. This article illustrates the harmful and ethical consequences of “high accessibility and low privacy” platforms that are easily accessible to youth from all cultures.

Perloff, R. M. Social Media Effects on Young Women’s Body Image Concerns: Theoretical Perspectives and an Agenda for Research. (2014)

Perloff elaborates on body image concerns of women in the United States. and how their bodies are represented in social media. This article raises positive influence as well as disturbance of body image through the presence of peers and photos. While this article was written in 2014, times have changed. Now, in 2019, there is a large acceptance and representation of various body types and images for women.

The work presented by Perloff will be helpful while comparing trends in 2014 and 2019. This article can also illustrate how expectations and social media trends can change within one country instead of across countries. This connection will assist in how social media can be both helpful and harmful at the same time.

Tuzel, S. & Hobbs, R. The use of Social Media and Popular Culture to Advance Cross-Cultural Understanding. (2018)

Tuzel and Hobbs discussed ways in which two countries use social media to create a cross-culture understanding. Examples of social media used include, digital voices or online writing, posting of images, and hyperlinks. The findings of this study mentioned that popular culture across countries is one-sided. The Turkish students, knowledge of U.S. culture was more developed than the United States students’ knowledge about Turkish culture. From this research, Tuzel and Hobbs concluded that common ground knowledge among other countries is typically centered around the United States.

I plan to use this journal for my part of the paper to explain how social media can be helpful instead of harmful. This journal provides useful information through its primary use of students educating other students, instead of relying on a search engine. Tuzel and Hobbs’ article opens a new conversation about how social media can bring awareness across countries.