This survey, which uses an analysis of over 100 million Facebook accounts across the world and provides country wise information about popular brands and user networks, hints to something that I have long held true: Megan Fox (and, to a lesser extent, Vin Diesel) have the power to unite people across cultures and biases.
The actress tops the list of ‘likes’ across cultures and continents, bridging even bitter rivalries such as that between India and Pakistan (her popularity amongst South American and African nations seems significantly lesser though, perhaps a hint of cultural preferences)
The graphic also elaborates on another interesting aspect: how Facebook users across the world are linked. Europe and North America show high degree of regional connections. This is also true with China, whose population seems to be connected to those of East Asian countries. On the other hand such connections seem to be absent amongst South Asian nations, who seem to be significantly more connected to the US and UK.
It also highlights how historic and diasporic links between nation are reinforced in people-to-people connections (except in the South Asian case). It also shows that the sun may have set on the British Empire, but the UK still seems to have the most globally-connected population.
Link via ChapatiMystery
25/02/2010 at 1:55 PM Permalink
Megan Fox (and, to a lesser extent, Vin Diesel) have the power to unite people across cultures and biases.
Well, I for one fail to see how celebrities are bringing us together merely by being popular. What it shows is that they are merely the talk of the day or that people across borders like them to more or less to a similar extent. Someone similarly popular will soon replace them but s/he too won’t be helping to “unite” different peoples unless they take a proactive role to bring about such “unity” through lobbying for a charitable cause, supporting a political organisation with such goals and so on. The fact that these days teens in both India and Pakistan are leering at Megan Fox’s tattoos doesn’t mean that she is uniting them. Shah Rukh Khan making a statement expressing regret that no Pakistani cricketer is selected for the next iteration of IPL is a much better example of making an effort of uniting people across the borders, don’t you think?
As for the map in the survey that you link to, it is also completely useless because it isn’t clear what all these connections mean. Does a line represent more than n-million connections, the top 6-7 most active connections for a country or what? In any case it is difficult to come to the conclusion that the UK has the most globally connected population from this map alone. I’m sure that this fact is true given Britain’s colonial past and their present day multicultural society but this fact hardly stands out in this map given that almost all countries have 6-7 lines emanating from them and Lebanon actually has more such lines connecting it to other nations than Britain; but then like I mentioned earlier, we don’t know what these lines mean.