What, Behind the World Cup Today?

Yesterday, an online news titled " the FIFA World Cup Final Breaks Facebook and Twitter Records" (ref.http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jul/14/world-cup-final-breaks-facebook-and-twitter-records)  caught my eyes. Here are the data quoted from the news:

• 618,725 tweets per minute during the Final game; and as for Twitter "selfie", that of Lukas Podolski of the German Team just after their victory gets 88,620 retweets with 78, 169 favourites. ( his "selfie" shows his teammate Bastian Schweinsteiger's kissing his cheek.)
• 8,8000,00 Facebook users over the world interacted with each other about the Final up to 280million times via posts, likes and comments on Facebook

The news stimulates me as a person of Chinese heritage to seek some similar records of Chinese leading social networks such as Sina Weibo and Tencent QQ WeChat . Here are some figures found via Google Search, but all are related to Sina Weibo. The latest news is titled "新浪微博的世界杯数据也出来了“（"The Sina Weibo's Record of the World Cup Events Also Released Now", which tells that:

• 1.96 billion interactions during the whole World Cup period within the Weibo community 
• 29.75 billion times of topic browsing about the World Cup games and news
• 38.15million Weibo messages about the top three games all involved with the Germany team 
•  370,000 Weibo per minute during the game between German and Spain slightly tops 
• no news of the Sina Weibo record during the Final yet by now

From another news titled "世界杯的社交网站数据大比拼" （" A Record Contest among Social Networks over the World Cup" in English ), some figures are as below:

• Near 1 billion Weibo texts about the World Cup-related topics contributed by14.5million Weibo users 
• During the group stages, 

• 90 topics hosted by CCTV Weibo Matrix  were browsed up to 4 billion times
• Over 1500 messages posted via CCTV-5 Sport Channel, of which each received up to 30,000 interactions
• up to 1.65 billion times of browsing over the news coded with "＃微5世界杯＃", a collaborated FIFA news source by CCTV 5 and Sina Weibo Team, which received 2 million interactions

• More than 9,000 users of public media backgrounds posted their Weibos about the World Cup
• Over 50 Weibos are originally from Wesley Sneijder, a Dutch footballer, shared with Chinese Weibo users
• Over 30,000 time re-posted by Weibo users of a message from Mesut Ozil, a German footballer, for Chinese supports to the German team via his self-sneering portrait as an ancient brown head from the Sanxindui archaeological site (ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanxingdui)

Interesting to me is that all the news concern more about the popularity and commercial success of those social networks implied by the records on the shared topic of the World Cup event. While the news from the influential Guardian pays zero attention to the records from Chinese social networks but highlights the record breaks from Facebook and Twitter, the news from Chinese sources likes to position Chinese leading social networks' records in a global landscape. Might the Western Outcome-oriented Culture and the Chinese Relation-oriented Culture play behind the different agenda for those records narrated in these news? I wonder.

It is also said that,  while there were up to 20,000 tweets for Andres Iniesta's scoring the final goal in the 2010 South-African World Cup Final, over 580,000 tweets voiced when the fifth goal was scored during the semi-final game between German and Brazil. What a big leap over 4 years only for the popularity of global social communication!  The power behind the leap is that it is possible for people of different cultures to foster their shared experience via special global events of education, culture and sport via online networks. The more they share, the more topics shared by them for their first interpersonal encounter there will be. Imagine that one day all the leading social networks would like to work together for constructing the shared positive experience among people all over the world, might people of different culture still feel so different and lack of topics to share with each other? Thus a question to think over - Could those leading social networks do something better for their users  for the sake of effective intercultural communication? And how then, if possible?

After Simon Anholt's TED Talk: "Good" or "Global Friendly"?

Last month, Simon Anholt gave his TED Talk "Which country does the most good for the world?", which raises my puzzle after watching his talk: as for his talk topic, might his "good" be better substituted by "global friendly" from an intercultural perspective?

Referencs. :
Simon Anholt's Talk
http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_anholt_which_country_does_the_most_good_for_the_world
Simon Anholt's Index
http://goodcountry.org/

Definitely, Anholt's talk is inspiring and worth a listening. However, some of his viewpoints upset me. In his talk, he gives 3 reasons explaining some countries' "not 'good', which sound not convincing enough to me at first. His 3 reasons are 1) national governments focus on their own countries insides because of the demands from their people, 2) effects of cultural psychopath, 3)incompatible between domestic and international agenda of a national government.Apparently, all his reasoning comes from the scope of his personal career as an independent policy adviser to promote his "nation branding" efforts, which could be even broader, namely from a view of cultural relativism or  an intercultural perspective. By the end of his talk, his data collection is something impressive to me, whereas his qualitative analysis seems to need further digging in depth and width. For example, he attributes those countries' "not good" to their leadership's fear of their agenda changing from domestic priority to a priority of domestic and international agendas together. He seems to skip over the necessity of a country's survival and territory safety first before its adaptation to its outside world. He also ignores not only the developmental gaps among countries but also the global economy landscape today still oriented by post-colonial capitalism and consumption-ism, which exist as a default settings for his Index when he emphasizes his notion of promoting a country 'good, good-er, good-est' , not conventionally 'good,better and best', for the world humanity with no moral judgement and no concern of national GDP and wealth, although the top 10 countries ranked in his Index are there speaking aloud such a settings behind his data. Although Kenya as the only one developing country ranked above 20 in his Index is used by him to soothe the embarrassment of his Index's implying the global inequality in distribution of economy and power, he seems to forget applying the Attribution Theory to his data analysis.

As for the choice of words, since he explains his 'Good' is "the opposite of selfish", not conventionally that of "bad" in the meaning and he claims his "Good" with no moral judgement', I wonder if he considers the word of "selfish" a moral term or not. If we accept his definition of his "Goodness" opposite to "selfishness", might his topic "Which country does the most good for the world" be interpreted as "Which country does the most good for the world is the most 'selfless' for the world"? Then, does he really mean his Index with NO moral judgement? Thus, his talk raises my puzzle with the suggestion of "global friendly". To certain extent, I think that his index from his data collection of those international sources is fairly meaningful for raising more people's attention to and interest in the importance of international and intercultural communication if people are not only impressed by "the nations leading his index that are 'good to be in', 'good to be from', as well as 'good to be around'...

Certainly, Anholt's talk bears its values for mental exchange, while I like to quote Einstein's lines that "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."to remind myself of how to deal with certain published Index for a proper understanding of self, other and the world.

AN INTERCULTURAL WAVE: Right Now

Thoughts After A Talk on AGEING, DEATH & EUTHANASIA

( inspired by RRU SCC & CBC Radio's Talk "Communication Matters"on June 30, 2014)

 

Floral View beyond Net

People from different cultures think different about aging, death and euthanasia.  While euthanasia has been a controversial topic in the West for its legality and legislation, aging and death are religiously, rather than legally, regarded natural and fated to everyone in the East, for example, with the influence of Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, etc.. It seems that the Oriental or non-Christian mentality oriented by the notion of natural call, transmigration, the after-world, or immortal spirituality leads one to think of life from birth to death more conditional, dependent or relational to her/his surrounding, less of her/his independent or personal choice. It is different from that of the West framed by the concept of "free-will" or "personal-autonomy" initiated by Immanuel Kant.However, it does not mean the differences cause no common ground for the West and the East to communicate for more learning and better understanding of each other, since we are "same in nature, but apart in practice" as Confucius says.

Under the Sunlight

Yes, following Confucius' saying, we as being alive with breathing came into this world with no choice of our own at all, while no one escapes death at the end. However, from birth to death, time allows one to grow in brain and body as well as be fostered by her/his living surrounding - of natural, cultural and social attributes.  Before her/his formation of her/his own perception about life, the given cultural surrounding has been framed and constructed through history, and because of the insignificant transportation and telecommunication for people to have efficient and effective access to other parts of the world beyond their own cultural pool, the cultures of different given groups have respectively been  enclosed and stable in a relative sense. Today's prevailing technology development in communication and transportation drives us toward a threshold where personal access to intercultural communication turns daily by a touch of her/his figure over the Internet. Such a change has been ongoing so fast and unexpectedly that not everyone is ready for it at all, which may cause intercultural conflicts much more obvious and often than before...

The Sunny Touch

Frankly, I am optimistic about our world in the future. I would like to say that the frequent intercultural conflicts today may signal the upcoming of intercultural wave to everyone on the earth. Such a wave is to bring new things and ideas to people and ignite personal curiosity about self, others and the world. Such a wave gives each existing culture/given group a chance to renew its preference of life for a better quality of life - perhaps one day our world will go beyond the stage of personal cultural adaptation to the stage of inter-group integration. When will it happen? As we know, everything takes time, so let time tell us.