The Impact of Sociocultural Factors in Multicultural Communication Environments

Changes in the availability and quality of communication technology have revolutionized, and fundamentally altered, learning environments. As citizens of the “Information Age,” the breadth and impact of global communication are triggering unprecedented transformation of social structures and institutions. This chapter explores the impact of commodification on education when institutions of higher education sell knowledge as a commercial good. The contemporary phenomenon of distance education is increasingly offered and purchased by an international market which experiences heightened pressure for standardization from the global citizens it serves. It is argued here that technological changes necessitate reevaluation of communication processes, discursive practices, and organizational policies. To stay competitive and produce quality products for increasingly international audiences, institutions must create well-articulated policies. By providing insight on the impact multiple socio-cultural and communicative norms have on virtual communication, this research uses qualitative discursive analysis of case examples to examine how variance in the structure and delivery of virtual communication environments at a leading distance education university in Australia affects student satisfaction, perception, and learning outcomes. Whereas previous research fails to include a theoretical or conceptual framework, this work draws upon interdisciplinary work from the fields of sociology, education, and science and technology studies. How “cyberspace” changes interaction rituals, masks cultural norms, and alters entrenched social expectations by creating new sensitivities is discussed, along with the ramifications of variation in technological availability, competence, and expectations in global classrooms. In sum, ideas for informing change in policy, administration, and the delivery of distance education and virtual communication in global environments are discussed to equip leaders and participants with skills to foster effective communicative and interaction strategies.

Global Internet Usage, Web Site Design, and Cultural Communication Preferences

Though the Internet continuously gains much popularity on a global scale, marketing research reveals enormous national differences and disparities in the numbers of Internet users worldwide. To date, most users still live in North America, in the Asia Pacific Basin, and in Western Europe. In response, an increasing body of research on global Internet usage, interface design, and Web site usability has been undertaken by human-computer-interaction (HCI) and localization specialists during the past few years. Similarly, questions of global standardization vs. local adaptation are also central to international marketing, research on consumer behavior, and marketing communications. Since the Internet, including its most popular usage platform, the World Wide Web (WWW), is part of the media, its culture-specific potential and conditions for global usage—and respectively its culturally appropriate design for worldwide consumption—can be described in general by contributions from cross-cultural marketing and advertising research. This chapter presents a foundational examination of this situation and its implications for professional practices related to marketing and online consumers.

Intercultural Computer-Mediated Communication Between Chinese and U.S. College Students

This study incorporates the effects of culture and computer-mediated communication (CMC) in the investigation of Chinese college students’ use of English in communication with U. S. college students. Ethnography of communication was used as the method to uncover four language patterns in Chinese college students’ use of English: others-oriented talk, mentor-mentee talk with limited relationship development, adoption of others’ talk, and icebreaker talk. Chinese cultural values showed a strong effect on Chinese college students’ use of English in CMC. Chinese cultural values included Chinese significance of personal relationships, Chinese collectivism, Chinese understanding of authority, and Chinese use of CMC. The characteristics of CMC showed minimal effect as either a constraint or a way of encouragement in the four language patterns.

Machine Translation as the Future of International Online Communication

American “ownership” of the World Wide Web is on the decline. In fact, two-thirds to three-fourths of Internet users are not native speakers of English. It thus does not require a leap of logic to imagine how many more non-U.S. users would buy from American e-commerce sites or even purchase American-manufactured products if they had access to translations of these e-commerce pages and technical documents in their native languages. The most oftcited reason for not providing content in other languages, however, is the sheer cost involved of first hiring a translator to translate the original content and then keeping material updated. This chapter examines uses of machine translation as a mechanism for addressing these linguistic needs.

Cyberspace and Online Education

Friedman (2005) argues that the rapid growth of Internet technology is fundamentally changing human life in modern societies. This Internet revolution is also having an impact on higher education in the United States. More than half of all institutions of higher education in the U.S. now offer entirely online or blended courses. The issue becomes more complex when the learners are international students who come from extremely different cultural backgrounds. This chapter explores the nature of cyberculture, and describes how cyberculture affects the online learning experiences of international students. Through the exploration of cyberculture and online education, this chapter reveals what increased global online access is beginning to mean for participants in online education.

A Frame Analysis of Privacy Regulation in an International Arena

The conceptualization of privacy has been the subject of much debate for more than a century in scholar-ship ranging from social philosophy and sociology to law, finance, and medicine. Legal issues concerning the right to privacy, moreover, are part of a complex web of state and national laws. This chapter examines the international legal issues resulting from the European Union’s 1998 Data Protection and Privacy Directive and its effects on online interactions in a global context. The authors believe this focus will help individuals interacting in international cyberspace understand and adapt to varying cultural and national perspectives of privacy in such contexts.

Global Governance and the Local Internet

The Internet is often thought of as a unified technology that transcends traditional geopolitical boundaries. For this reason, early discussions of the Internet often advocated the idea that nation states would have either limited or no control over this exclusively electronic domain. The subsequent need for protocols and standardization of the Internet, however, led to the development of formal institutions such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). It also led more nations to adopt policies designed to promote, control, and mold the Internet culturally and politically within their jurisdictional boundaries. The trajectory of the Internet’s history and global governance nevertheless reveals the increasing encroachment of the nation-states in shaping the Internet as a local entity. This chapter outlines the characteristics and intrinsic qualities of the Internet which make it a global entity and how it has been deemed ungovernable in the conventional terms.

Cultural Cognitive Style and the Web

Several technological developments have altered our world in the last half-century. Among these were the new information processing and distribution platforms supported by computer-mediated communication (CMC). In 2005, Forrester Research found that 50% of Internet users were non-English speakers, and this number would increase to 66% by 2006. For many designers and Web usability researchers, addressing this situation seem limited to translating Web interfaces or content. Although early studies in usability testing have identified considerable cultural differences among users (D’Andrade, 1984; Evers & Day, 1997), a need exists for a more rigorous investigation from a cross-cultural perspective into how Web sites are designed. The authors hold that the cultural cognitive styles of Web designers ultimately affect the performance and preferences of online users. As a result, specific attention should be paid to the impact of the Web designers’ culturally shaped cognitive style on the design and development of online information.

Internet Multilinguality

In the hay-days of the Internet boom, most software packages used on the Internet were in English, as were most Web sites and search engines. Since 2000, however, there have been more non-English-speaking users than English-speaking users on the Internet. Besides this language issue, there are other important issues involved in multilinguality on the Internet: cultural, technological, political, and legal issues. This chapter examines three challenges of Internet multilinguality: language barriers, cultural differences, and technological difficulties. This chapter also provides three recommendations for over-coming barriers created by language, culture, and technology.

Teaching, Learning, Negotiating

New technologies and computer-mediated communication (CMC) in general seem inherently suited to result in constructive cross-cultural communication. Yet researchers note that students and teachers, both of whom are instructional planners, lack the skills necessary to function in environments where they are “collaborative designers, rather than transmitters of knowledge” (Campbell, 2004b). As a result, the new possibilities for cross-cultural teaching and learning through dialogue and negotiation in the online environment compel us to reconceptualize the traditional role of the instructor and to ask, what does it mean to teach collaboratively, interactively, open-endedly? This chapter examines several central questions related to this situation as well as provides an overview of the dialogue-enabling properties of the Internet environment and its potential to support multiple learning styles.