Dr. V spoke to our international public relations class on November 17. She was unable to be present for the presentation but we were able to interact with her via Skype. Dr. V is from Romania and is an assistant professor in the college of technology at Perdue. She said that although she is trained in communication she has turned her hobby into a job.
Dr. V spoke to the twenty-five students in Mrs. Andrew’s class about the use of social media around the world. She had a PowerPoint presentation to demonstrate the percentages of users in graph form. Some of the statistics given were:
- Asia has the most internet users – 42.6%
- Europe has the second most users – 24%
- North America comes in third with 14.6% of the population using the internet
She then discussed what social media is and gave a few examples. Those examples include: Twitter, Facebook, PR Open Mic, You Tube, Flicker, MySpace, etc.
She talked about social media and its uses worldwide. Facebook, blogs, and watching video clips are all common across the world.
The top two networking sites are 1. Facebook and 2. Myspace
Social networking is most popular in the Philippines. Only 43% of the U.S. is involved in social networking (I found this number relatively low).
Another random but interesting fact talked about during the presentation is that South Korea is the country that reads blogs more than any other country in the world while Brazil watches more videos than any other country.
She ended with a very interesting point. She stated that it is often thought that the United States “owns” social media. With the numbers that Dr. V presented it is evident that this statement is false. I was surprised by this; I assumed that the United States would top the charts in every category. I guess this proves that I am a bit ethnocentric.
Overall Dr. V’s presentation was informative and interesting. She was very kind to take time out of her schedule to teach us some of the information she has gathered and for that I am thankful.
She did have some interesting facts. I believe she is working on some research regarding social media usage worldwide. It will be interesting to see the results.