Cross-Cultural Issues in Social Networking Sites: Review of Research

People worldwide increasingly use social networking sites. There are vast cultural differences between users from different countries not to speak about different regions. These differences affect the way people use social networking sites and purposes they use it for in different countries. Therefore, the research question addressed in this paper is: what are trends of research performed to date regarding cross-cultural issues in social networking sites? The paper also aims to identify gaps in the said research and to define areas and directions for future research in this area. A systematic and critical literature review is undertaken into research carried out in the area of cross-cultural issues in social networking sites. Most of the studies analyze only a few social networking sites and/or in respect of few countries. Cultural differences in motivation to use social networking sites, issues of privacy and security, social capital and self-expression of users are the most widely researched aspects. Larger scale research is needed to reach significant results in the area of evaluating cross-cultural issues in social networking sites across the world.