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The growth, popularity and speed of the Internet are unprecedented. The Internet provides almost instantaneous and near-universal access to various online sources. Since the turn of the new millennium, worldwide usage of the Internet has grown by more than 550% and it is now regularly used by more than a third of the world's population, although, as one would expect, the majority of users reside in the more developed regions of Asia, Europe, North America and Oceania (Internet World Stats, 2014). Popular usage varies from sending simple emails, information searches, watching movies, social networking, and news reading to shopping, booking holidays and listening to music. Indeed, we spend an increasing amount of our a daily lives accessing online applications – almost half our waking day (OFCOM, 2010) – via TVs, smart phones, laptops and other communication devices. Accessing social media sites is one of the more popular reasons for going online, with Facebook topping the bill with more than 2.9 billion regular users (Internet World Stats, 2014). However, status updates on Facebook and Twitter aren't the only forms of social media. Social media also extends to live news feeds and imaging, online articles, blogs, Wikis, video and music pages, electronic newspaper and magazine response posts, discussion forums, chatrooms and many more.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137404749_6

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