An Introduction to Intercultural Communication. Fred E. Jandt
for example, texts transmitted unaltered from francophone keyboards appear as garbage on English-favoring keyboards; Netscape and Java are in English; search engines were developed in and for English. At its origin, the language of the Internet was English. But as Figure 1.3 shows, the Internet is now truly worldwide. That suggests two questions:
Will the Internet encourage the worldwide dominance of English? Will the Internet, then, become a major force blending the world’s population together?
Will Internet users favor native languages, and over time will the dominance of English diminish? Will the divisions of language groups force the Internet to use other languages, perpetuating divisions based on existing language use lines?
We can’t fully answer these questions by examining the language abilities of Internet users. There are more Internet users worldwide who can speak and read English than there are Internet users in predominantly English-speaking countries. While these multilingual users might be able to use English, they might also prefer to use their first language. Figure 1.4 shows the percentages of websites using various content languages as of early 2020.
Figure 1.4 Language of Internet Content, 2020
Source: Q-Success (2020).
Note: Percentages are current as of February 20, 2020.
Perhaps the answer to the questions above is yes: At least in the immediate future, English may continue to be the dominant language on the Internet, but at the same time, technology is supporting the use of local languages worldwide. Additionally, translation technology will make it possible for everyone to use any preferred language and be understood by anyone. Google Translate provides text translations for over 100 languages, including Chinese characters. Translations also are built into the Chrome web browser.
Design Elements.
As you can see in the model of communication presented earlier, communication symbols can be verbal and nonverbal. While translation technology may deal to some extent with the verbal symbols, there remain the nonverbal. Research has demonstrated that culture is reflected in the nonverbal aspects of the Internet. Singh, Zhao, and Hu (2003) assert that “the web is not a culturally neutral medium,” because websites contain unique design elements that give “country-specific websites a look and feel unique to the local culture” (p. 63). Design elements include different icons, colors, and site structures (Barber & Badre, 1998). Schmid-Isler (2000) compared Western and Chinese Internet news sites and found that their layout is different. She contended that this difference is related to culturally influenced perceptions of information storage and display. For example, Google has clean lines and uncluttered “negative space.” Chinese web users are accustomed to pop-ups and floating banner ads. Chinese webpages are “packed with information and multimedia graphics, requir[ing] many scroll-downs to see the whole page” (Clark, 2016, p. 166). In contrast, Google seems static and dull to Chinese web users.
Social Media
The term social media is used to describe a variety of Internet-based platforms, applications, and technologies, such as Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter, that enable people to socially interact with one another online (see Figure 1.3 for Facebook use worldwide). While Facebook has over 2 billion users, it is not alone (see Figure 1.5 for leading social networks).
Mobile phone use on Japanese public transport
Alex Robertson/Moment/Getty images
Figure 1.5 Leading Social Networks Worldwide, January 2020
Source: Data from Clement (2020).
Social media use does not necessarily correlate with Internet and smartphone use. Social media use is in the Middle East at 68% and in Latin America at 59%, which compares to 55% in 10 developed European countries. Germany has only 40% social media use; Japan has only 39% (Poushter, Bishop, & Chwe, 2018).
Facebook offers its free Internet service for mobile users in half the countries in Africa with a combined population of 635 million. As Facebook’s service does not provide full access to all of the Internet, some have labeled it “digital colonialism.” African companies are launching local social media platforms (Essoungou, 2010; Kalan, 2013; Pew Research Center, 2015b).
Many countries limit or censor the Internet and social media. Freedom House regularly surveys countries for Internet freedom defined as Internet access, freedom of expression, and privacy. Of 65 countries representing 87% of the world’s Internet users in 2019, 15 were labeled as free, 29 as partly free, and the remaining 21 as not free. The report identified the greatest abuser as China followed by Iran, Syria, Cuba, and Vietnam. The countries with the greatest Internet freedom were Iceland, Estonia, Canada, Germany, and Australia (Shahbaz & Funk, 2019).
Earlier you read that culture cannot be known without a study of communication, and communication can only be understood with an understanding of the culture it supports. Today’s Internet and social media use demonstrates the continuing truth of that statement. Cultures communicate with the Internet and with social media in ways that reflect the values of that culture. You’ll see this idea developed more in future chapters.
Summary
Our culture provides regulation for life and provides individual identities. Six forms of regulators of human life and identity are religion, nation, class, gender, race, and civilization. Today, national identity has become synonymous with cultural identity. The term culture refers to the totality of a large group’s thoughts, behaviors, and values that are socially transmitted as well as to members who consciously identify with the group.
Twentieth-century scientists have found no single race-defining gene. The sociohistorical concept of defining race explains that racial categories have varied over time and between cultures. Worldwide, skin color alone does not define race. Scholars from a variety of disciplines have argued that White people in countries such as the United States and South Africa are observed by other groups to be distinct, superior, and unapproachable, whereas Whites themselves are relatively unaware of their racial identity compared to people of color.
The term subculture refers to a group that exists within a culture, usually based on social class, ethnicity, or geographic region. As the prefix sub can mean “less than,” some scholars prefer the term co-culture to indicate that no one culture is inherently superior to other coexisting cultures. Finally, the term subgroup refers to a group that provides members with a relatively complete set of values and patterns of behavior and in many ways poses similar communication problems as cultures. To avoid negative connotations with these words, the terms microculture and community are becoming more commonly used. Recognizing the effect labeling can have on individuals’ identities, this text recommends and uses only the terms culture and community.
A Confucian perspective on communication would define it as an infinite interpretive process in which all parties are searching to develop and maintain a social relationship. A Western perspective would define it as a process involving a speaker, the speech act, an audience, and a purpose. Components of communication can include source, encoding, message, channel, noise, receiver, decoding, receiver response, feedback, and context.
One component of the communication process is the channel or media by which the encoded message is transmitted. Today’s new media use reflects significant aspects