1. Introduction
1.2. Research Background
1989, it was considered to belong to the Socialist block of Europe. Between 1949 and 1989 the country was called the Hungarian People’s Republic, operating in a one-party socialist system, governed by the Hungarian Communist Party. And although the party had its own Hungarian leaders such as Mátyás Rákosi or János Kádár, they had to report back to the Soviet leadership and had to adhere to the rules and regulations that the USSR set for the members of the Socialism block. This meant restrictions of travel that allowed Hungarians to travel only to other Socialist countries, restrictions of Western European and American products, including cultural products and a strict censorship. Therefore the cultural products of ‘the West’ as well as the technological advancements reached Hungary later than most countries, once it gained back its national independence. Meanwhile Taiwan also had several challenges on its road to national and cultural independence. It was first ruled by the Qing dynasty of China, who then lost control over the territory in the first Sino-Japanese War, ceding Taiwan to the Japanese Empire. Taiwan was then under the Japanese colonial rule for 50 years, from 1895 to 1945. Being under the Japanese rule and then having the martial law established created a similar situation in Taiwan as in Hungary, restricting its development and the flow of Western European and American cultural products into the country. Hungary became a democracy in 1989, while the martial law was lifted in Taiwan in 1987, which means that the two countries achieved true democratic freedom and therefore the chance to receive global cultural influences almost at the same time.
This makes the two cases worth exploring individually and comparing afterwards to gain a much deeper understanding of the notions and processes of cultural globalization and how it might shape countries differently considering other influencing factors.
1.2. Research Background
In the last few years, social media has had a growing impact on people’s lives all around the world. A decade ago it was still mostly the mass media –television and magazines- that shaped the opinions of people and formed the emotional and mental development of children and teenagers. However, by now social media has become an even stronger force, especially for the generation of digital natives who “spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers and tools of the digital age” (Prensky, 2001). Additionally, since the popularity of print magazines and television is decreasing, teenagers and young adults, especially females tend to look for idols to look up to, follow and imitate, to get motivated and inspired by on
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social media sites, such as Instagram. On Instagram the emphasis is on the visual content – even though users bare the opportunity to add captions to their pictures, most viewers tend to focus on the visual images and videos themselves. Therefore the visual characteristics of the platform make is easier for users to skim through the content, getting an overall impression without having to deal with the additional content such as text and links on Facebook, which might be superfluous and useless for this specific purpose.
According to Smart Insights, Instagram is currently the 7th most popular social media platform in the world, having reached 600 million users in the beginning of 2017, also dominating the ‘interactions per 1000 followers’ stats amongst all socials (Chaffey, 2017), while 95 million photos and pictures are being shared on this platform every single day (Lister, 2017). In 2016 there were already more than 500,000 advertisers placing paid advertisements or spending on sponsored content on others’ accounts and the development of the platform was constantly strengthening the user experience with features such as the highly popular Instagram Stories, extending the possible video length and allowing the previously commonly missed and requested zooming function (“Mi történt az Instagramon 2016-ban?”, 2017). This all underlines the growth of the platform that seems to be getting more and more popular around the world – while it’s probably biggest competitor, Facebook (which actually owns Instagram) has started stagnating in some countries in terms of growth in users, in Hungary for example (Lévai, 2017).
In 2016 the Pew Research Center has completed a research on Instagram usage amongst Americans, a national survey with 1,520 adult participants and found that more than half of the users visit Instagram daily, 35% of them even several times a day. They also discovered that Instagram is the most popular amongst young adults, namely the Y-generation: 59% of Americans aged 18-29 years are Instagram users, while this ratio is only 33% for the next age group, 30-49. Furthermore, it is interesting to note as well, that women tend to use Instagram more than man: the ratio of female users is 38% compared to 26% for men (Pew Research Center, 2016). Overall, amongst US users Instagram has the second biggest penetration rate of 32% - following Facebook which actually owns this platform- reaching more than 60% of Americans aged 18-34 (Chaffey, 2017).
According to the platform’s own data and a survey completed by MediaQ in Hungary, working with a representative national sample employing a multichannel hybrid survey
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in Hungary in the beginning of 2017 – which is a significant number, considering that Hungary’s current population is around 9.8 million only (“Population total”, 2016). Just as in the United States, where these platforms originate from, the only social media platform with a higher reach than Instagram in Hungary is Facebook – with 5.4 million users. They have found that the typical Hungarian Instagram user is below 30 years of age and in a good financial situation. In the same survey they discovered that the Y generation (aged 20-35) in Hungary spends around 243 minutes a day online, 12% of which is spent looking at Instagram. (33% on Facebook, 13% on YouTube, 12% chatting and the remaining 18% on the web) (Lévai, 2017).
Another survey by Crane, with 3,400 respondents found that every second respondent posts at least weekly and that they mostly follow their friends and foreign celebrities. There is a growth in the tendency to follow local, Hungarian celebrities: in 2016 only about half of the respondents followed famous Hungarians – but that already represents a 20% growth from the previous year. (HVG, 2016) An interesting trend Crane has also found regarding the most popular Hungarian accounts based on the number of followers –excluding brands and organizations- is that they are of mostly women. International model Barbara Palvin is at the top with 6.8 million followers (as of 26th September, 2017) followed by Adrienn Lévai and Regina Dukai. In the Top 11 Hungarians with most followers in 2016, there were only 2 men.
("Nőuralom az Instán – Vol 2.", 2016)
Meanwhile the social media landscape in Taiwan is slightly different with these American platforms having competition over the market with their Asian counterparts.
According to Statista, based on their survey conducted amongst Taiwanese internet users aged 16-64 years, the market penetration of Instagram was 37% in 2016, while Facebook reached 82% and Line 69%. (We Are Social, 2017) According to a survey with 1,500 respondents completed by Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC) in October, 2016, 26% of Taiwanese use Instagram (Fulco, 2017). However, if we further categorize these platforms, we can say that while Line and the Facebook Messenger are leaders when it comes to messaging, for ‘traditional’ content sharing platforms Facebook and Instagram (as well as YouTube) seem to be dominating the Taiwanese market, similarly to the Hungarian one.
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