Via Twitter, I stumbled across this blogpost, talking about Social Media and Intercultural Communication. Interesting, I thought, as I believe "culture" is an essential component of Social Media to start with. I was left with a sense of non-achieved to some extent, as I think this blogpost does not really reflect how cultural boundaries are pushed away thanks to online communication.
For one, I am missing hard facts. The blogpost starts with a bunch of statements that don't seem to be backed by any kind of research. I'd love to see numbers, or proofs. Only one example is given later in the post about how the same people follow the same people. And frankly, it does not really convince me in drawing conclusions that:
When it comes to communicating with others online, most of us tend to stick to people within our own cultural group. For those of us in Western societies, it’s easier to communicate and connect with others who experience the same culture and language.
Mind you, I don't really have hard facts either, just my experience.
Let's start with language. It makes sense that the use of one language over another does limit the scope of online communication. I mean, I follow people who tweet in Chinese and well, although it happens to me to click on their links, I just don't understand what they are talking about. This said, I am amazed at the number of allegedly-non-English-speakers who react to my Facebook statuses. Most of them French, and from whom I would never have expected that they even read my statuses in English. In that regard, I find that the use of one language is not as limiting as I thought it would be.
Then comes culture. And there, I just can't agree that social media is all about the same-same
. Social Media is a way to broadly share thoughts, ideas and information. And I think that this sharing occurs, to a certain extent, regardless of culture. For the sake of clarity, we'll assume that culture here is taken in its broadest sense, ie. something like 'Western culture", shaped mainly by loose national borders and linguistic boundaries.
My followers, and the people i follow on identi.ca and Twitter, for example, can roughly be put into two categories. The first one would be my friends (in the real life sense of the term, not in the Facebook sense of the term), who follow me or whom I follow just because I am me and they are them. They don't really care what I share, as long as it comes from me, and I don't really care what they share, as long as it comes from them. We have a predisposition to being interested in the same things. The second category are the people I don't know, but who share the same interests as me. May it be all-things-wikipedia, or parenting, or the love of words, or geeky things such as Linux and KDE. These can be anyone. They could be indians, or Chinese, French or Americans, Kenyans or South Americans. We speak the same language(s) or we don't, it doesn't matter. What matters is that we have at least one thing, one interest, in common. Our national cultures are different, our social cultures (social backgrounds) are different, we may vote right, left, or center, love cheese or hate it. As a matter of fact, we could meet in real life and find nothing to talk about at all, nothing that binds us except that one interest, and even then, find each other boring, uninteresting or even plain annoying. In that regard, I believe social media actually brings people together who can be culturally extremely far away from each other.
Of course one could argue that these "interests" are a culture in and of themselves, but that's the reason I restricted the definition of culture above, because that's how I understood it was defined in the blogpost I quoted. What I find is that social media, because it brings some kind of focus, actually allows people with very different cultural sensitivities to find a connection, and allows for conversations between people which would, without this one entry point, not take place at all.
2 reactions
1 From simsa0 - 20/09/2010, 00:29
A huge problem in such debates are the big words like 'culture', 'lnguage', etc., sometimes the identification of cultures with languages, sometimes the sheer misreading of phenomena at hand.
Setting the big words aside the phenomena reported in the post you've mentioned seem pretty clear: We tend to talk more to people with whom we share the same interests rather than none. We subscribe to people who are interesting to us due to a direct conversation, their statements on their profile, their interactions with others that we happened to witness. Often we find them only because they are in interaction with someone whom we've subscribed to. Besides the themes, interests, comments the tone, the timbre of their voice proves very important (at least for me). The timbre is a very important 'criterion'. Sometimes it is not what they say but the attitudes, the education, the style that shimmer through the statement that makes a tweet interesting. Timbre or attitude is so important (at least to me) that one even accepts boring content.
I guess neither you nor I have subscribed to someone whose main interest is with ice hockey or who is a convinced supporter of the KuKluxKlan (or the Nazis). So besides the heavy words the observation of the blog post you've cited and the observation you shared about the two groups of subscribers on identica and twitter seem rather in accordance: One stays same-same. The difference is, that same-same is not bijective. You and I share some interest, you and another person share something different, and insasmuch as this different interest does not collide with my main interests that I share with you, it may prove to be an enlargement of my horizon.
We might read to much into this problem. Somehow this is a widespread problem pertaining to all media, somehow it is peculiar to the 'social' media. E.g., one has to force oneself to read papers that do not accord with one's political outlook. One doesn't listen to music one doesn't like. One doesn't talk with people one finds offensive. Additional to these proclivities comes the form of the 'social' media. I guess there was never a case in which McLuhan's "The mdeia is massage" was more true than with regard to twitter and identica: 140 characters do force content and conversation. (I leave Facebook aside, firstly because one doesn't have the character-restriction there, and secondly I don't know Facebook that much as I don't have an account.) The restricting power of the 140 cs can easily be seen: It's enough to yell (positively and negativeley), but it doesn't allow for discussion. The urge for brevity leaves subtle shades out of the 'conversation', it all becomes fact-stating. So simply by design, identica and twitter are good for anouncing facts, sharing links, enlisting support, spreading the news (and for haikus too). The witty statement, the apercu is cherished, not the long-winding argument. It's not about conversatons, understanding, about detecting fine differences, shades, nuances.
But for a conversation to get going under the 140 cs-restriction, one has to fimd ways of disambiguation. Misunderstandings are prevalent even in the 'same' 'culture' or 'language'. To get going without always having to clear the semantic mess one has to navigate a field in which one shares the most with the people one talks to. Simply to know how to take one post or reply. And that means that people on 'socal' media 'have' to talk about the same themes and contents, because otherwise they would have to elaborate om all the context needed to make sense of the utterance.
I guess intercultural communication is not so much a problem on the level of bread, salt, and traffic lights. It's in the more abstract, more subtle, more complex, more - well: cultural levels that the differences arise or can be ssen. To talk about the differences between muscic from say the Senegal and France, or wherever, needs more time and space for elaboration than 140-cs-psot can provide. So again: It's about small facts, yelling, point scoring, or hinting to sources. But that is not understanding or a conversation.
So, yes, I agree with the blog you've cited: it's same-same. But always in different colours. And that's nice, isn't it?
2 From notafish - 16/10/2010, 15:23
To tell you the truth, I am not sure I haven't subscribed to someone whose main interest is hockey or the KKK. But what I am saying is that it's somewhat irrelevant. I agree with you, if you want to stay on the same-same, that this same-same is not bijective. You state: , and I see this as the point I am trying to make. You and I may have absolutely nothing in common except say, haikus. BUt because we have this one thing in common, we'll somehow "get together" and our horizon might be enlarged. The question being here, would I, in a real-life situation where I am meeting you, define myself as "loving haikus"? I am not sure. The lack of background is what I find interesting in the issue of social media and culture. I am getting to know people whom I probably would not have talked to in the first place.
As for the impossibility of conversation under 140 characters, I do not agree completely. If the exchange does not evolve in a real conversation within the restriction of 140 characters, the focus provided by social media interaction definitely gives a good basis for conversation, even if it then ends up to happen outside of the medium that started it.