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To some, Facebook, Twitter and similar social-media platforms are the highest level of communication—better,even, than face-to-face conversations, since more people can be involved. Others think of them more as something that leads to self-appreciation, threatens privacy and reduces intelligent conversations to the exchange of rude memes (搞笑图片) . They might even, these kinds of arguments go, be creating a generation of electronic addicts who are incapable of reflective, individual, original thought.
Atopic ripe for anthropological (人类学的) study, then. And such a study, the “Why We Post (发帖)”project, has just been published by nine anthropologists, led by Daniel Miller of University College, London.The participants in “Why We Post”worked independently for 15months at locations in Brazil, Britain, Chile, China (one rural and one industrial site), India, Italy, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turkey. They buried themselves with in families and their surrounding communities. That , the team believes, let them form a subtle view of the roles of social media in their study sites which could not be gained by analyzing participants’ public postings. These by- standers’ viewpoints deny much received wisdom. One of the biggest doubts is the “selfie”—which is often blamed for causing self-regard and too much focus on attractiveness. “Why We Post”, however, reveals that the selfie itself has many faces. In Brazil many selfies posted by men were taken at the gym. But at the British site, Dr.Miller found, school children posted five times as many “groupies” (images of the picture-taker with friends)as they did selfies. Britons have also created a category called “uglies” (曝丑照), of which the purpose is to take as ugly a self-image as possible.
The often-humorous, marked-up images known as memes have also come in for criticism. They lower down traditional forms of public debate, spreading far and wide with little context. But memes serve different purposes in different cultures. In India they tend to focus on serious and religious issues; Trinidadian memes are more often send-ups of politicians. Yet in all cases Dr Miller sees meme-passing not as limiting what social media users think and say, but as enabling conversations. Many users happily forward memes with strong political or economic messages about which they would not dare to comment individually.
Critics also of ten view the online characters people create for their social-media postings as false images designed for the medium at hand. Trinidadians, however, disagree. They see online profiles as more representative of a person’s true self even than what is seen in real life. Also, young boys and girls in Turkey see things differently. Social media permit them to be inconstant contact with one another, in full view of their parents, but to keep their conversations and photos to themselves.
In rural China and Turkey social media were viewed as a distraction from education. But in industrial China and Brazil they were seen to be an educational resource. Such a divide was evident in India, too. There, high-income families regarded them with suspicion but low-income families advocated them as a supplementary source of schooling. In Britain, meanwhile, they were valued not directly as a means of education, but as away for pupils, parents and teachers to communicate.
The skeptics’ reaction to new technology seems equally deep-rooted. New means of communication from railways and the telegraph onwards have always attracted critics. Therefore, sooner or later, the doubters either convert, or die.
32. What can we learn from Paragraph 1?
A.Face-to-face conversations are better than social media.
B.Social-media platforms bring more problems than benefits.
C.Opinions are divided on the influences of social media.
D.More people will be addicted to electronic products.
33. Which of the following statements is Daniel Miller likely to support?
A.Selfies make people focus too much on attractiveness.
B. Memes lower down traditional forms of public debate.
C.Online images created for social-media are false.
D.Not all received wisdom is true on social media.
34. The underlined word “that” inParagraph3 refers to______.
A. The way the team carried out their project
B. The way the team analyzed public postings
C. the way the families lived in the communities
D. the way the participants buried themselves
35. The writer’s attitude towards social media is______.
A. ambiguous B.positive C. unknown D.negative
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