Social Media as the Cosmo-Neighborhood

The world has been transformed through the internet into a "global village", and apparently the social media platforms transformed the world into a larger neighborhood covering many regions of the planet. Social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter came into our lives through the Internet, growing daily at a large rate, and it has been proven that they are very popular. The idea on the book is to examine links between different phenomena through social media platforms. It is discussed cohesiveness, desire to belong, sense of community, beliefs and opinions about different forms of these phenomena in popular virtual platforms in correlation with trust in social media, criticism of information that is spread by these virtual platforms, and if people are influenced in consumer decision making. A questionnaire has been distributed to a convenient sample of 159 international and Swedish students in Sweden in October-November 2012 in both English and Swedish versions. The participants show tendencies of mistrusting the platforms and the received information, beliefs such that social media are "controlled", but also a desire to belong.