CULTURE AND SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE: ANALYSIS OF JAPANESE TWITTER USERS

Twitter, one of the most popular microblogging tools, has been used extensively all around the world. However, up to date, no study has addressed how culture influences the use of this communication platform. In order to close the literature gap and promote cross-cultural understandings, this paper content analyzed 4,000 tweets from 200 college students in Japan and the USA. The results showed that Japanese college students post more self-related messages and ask fewer questions compared to American college students. It was also found that tweets that refer to TV are more common in Japan, whereas sports and news tweets stand out in the USA. The evidence from this study suggests that there is a subtle and complicated relationship between culture and Twitter use.