How Cultural Background Affects

The Use of Social NetworksFocused on Korea and North Amer-

ica’s SNS sites

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A. IntroductionI. What Is SNS?II. The Purpose of This Research

B. Theoretical FrameworksIII. The Procedure of this research IV. Individualism vs CollectivismV. Face Culture & Self-presentation Theory

C. Statistics about the Number of Users in SNSVI. FacebookVII. TwitterVIII.Cyworld

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D. Distinctive Features of Each SNS

I. User InterfaceII. A virtual market for decorating a web

pageIII. Showing trace of communication

E. Applying the Theories to the Features of Each SNS & Users’ Behaviour in Using SNS

I. CyworldII. Facebook & TwitterIII. Limitation of applying theories

F. Conclusion

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IntroductionI. What Is SNS?II. The Purpose of This Research

More than 200 SNS sites on the Internet

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Communicating with people from off-line so-cial network

Sharing informa-tion

with people

What is SNS?

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Theoretical FrameworksI. The procedure of this research II. Individualism vs CollectivismIII. Face Culture & Self-presentation Theory

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The procedure of this research

Theories about

Cultural differ-ences

All dis-tinctive features & Users’ behav-iours

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Individualism vs Collec-tivism

Loosely associated individuals Giving priority to their personal goals

?

Closely associated individuals Giving priority to the goals of their groups

(Hofstede, 2001)

Face Culture & Self-presentation Theory

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AMERICAN An image of success

and ability to

achieve their jobs

Independence

FACE An ideal or desired image

of a person wants to be seen

by others(Ting-Toomey, 1988)

KOREAN An image of observ-ing norms,

or signifying their

social status

Interdependence

(Kil-Ho Kang , 2004)

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Face Culture & Self-presentation Theory(Hofstede, 2001)

What do other people think about me?

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Statistics about the Number of Users in SNS

I. FacebookII. TwitterIII. Cyworld

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Face

book

Twitt

er

Cywor

ld0%

40%

80%

The Number of Users in Each SNS

OthersKoreaN.America

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Distinctive Features of Each SNSI. User InterfaceII. A virtual market for decorating a web pageIII. Showing trace of communication

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Facebook & Twitter

All information is shown

on the main page

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Cyworld• A web page of a pop-up form• There is no section for gathering all in-formation

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A virtual market for decorat-ing a web page

Facebook Closed

Twitter Free of Charge

Users can buy images or songs

from a virtual market

Cyworld 80% of the total company’s

revenue

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Showing trace of communication

Showing trace of com-munication

Users don’t know how many people

have seen their profile pages

Facebook & Twit-ter Not showing trace of

communication

Showing how many vis-itors

a user has got per day or as a total

Cy-world

Applying the Theories to the Features of Each

SNS & Users’ Behav-iour in Using SNSI. CyworldII. Facebook & TwitterIII. Limitation of applying

theories

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CollectivismFace Culture

Self-Presentation

A virtual market

Showing the number of visi-tors

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A virtual marketIndividualismFace Culture

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SNS = Collectivism ?

Each SNS represents each cultural background?

Theoretical Frameworks are broaden enough

to explain phenomenon in society ?

Limitation of applying theo-ries

Conclusion

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Questions

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