Online culture and intercultural communication

What means by culture? For me, that should be bound with my nationality, profession, circle of community, educational background...But the way we act online, is another story from the real world!

For example, the “like” button in Facebook, kind of playing magic to connect and pull two separate people together and closer. For me, in real life, I seldom pick up my phone and call someone who is a bit far from me named “superficial” friends. Our friendship cannot maintain or improve. The “Like” button make good use to maintain this kind of relationship and at least show some concern towards each other.

For example, if my friend maybe typed “I love my lecturer who gives me an “A” for my assignment.” on his/her status, I will simply press “Like” to show I am happy to hear that and share his/her happiness. Actually people on FB who published something would care about are there anybody to comment or like, at least to get some responses. The “like” button is a popular culture or mediation tool on the Internet, no need to contribute a lot but can maintain a desired and positive relationship with each other.

What’s more? People tempted to create another self on the Internet, fake identities are quite popular too. In real life, Chinese would not be expressive and sometimes quite speechless to someone who is  important to you although you got thousand and thousand to talk.

I read a Xanga blog post last week, a boy wrote a poem to a girl who already got a boyfriend, he is so upset and expresses his disappointment through words and with condition of anonymity. Although the girl won’t be able to figure out the truth, the boy aims at expressing his love and sadness at once. He would like to receive comfort of other members at the Xanga community, that’s the culture online, to share and gain attention from the others. Comments, opinions and suggestions are usually critical and direct, a perceived truth since the nature of online culture – identity is top secret made people eager to express.

Moreover, I found an interesting finding from Andrea Graf,

    

"computer-mediated negotiations although accompanied by reduced personal and social cues – are significantly influenced  by the culture the negotiator comes from....individualist culture (North America) followed a direct, self-interest oriented mode of behavior; Asian preferred an integrative strategic orientation and minimized actions to claim value helps to avoid conflicts before their occurrence."

In today's world, people do business around the globe and internationally, intercultural communication really matter and who can master it well, the higher possibility to success. Like what Andrea Gradf said, understand the culture will help facilitate intercompany's relationship with the dominated computer-mediated negotiation.

The Attention Economy

In the past, it would not be a good idea to open my computer while I am doing my homework or projects. If I wanted to ask my classmates about the homework or get in touch with friends, I would simply make a phone call; if I wanted to listen to music, I would turn on the radio or listen to my MP3; if we want to do projects, the best way will be to gather at the library or school. But now, I will totally do in another way round.      

iTunes, Facebook and MSN would be three important aspects while I am doing my assignment and projects. What’s the reason behind? Apart from the requirement of the assignment, the desire of social attention would weight more.

Since I opened my computer, I won’t bother to take out my MP3 or iPod to listen to music. It would be convenience to process my job with only one digital devices - computer. The setting of iTunes help managing my songs according to the categorization like: 90’s music, classical music, my top rated, newly updated…customize my playlist easily.

Facebook is a platform to give and attract attention. If I typed “Hope that I could finish my assignment before 12 yet 300/1000 achieved by now =( ” on my Facebook status, I would like to gain attention of my friends and receive encouragement from them. On the other hand, I would like to keep track the progress on others who got the same assignment with me.

I may write “Add oil together, mate!” on his/her wall if I found that he/she felt depressed and stressed with the assignment. Once we updated Facebook, our intention is to gain attention from the others.   

MSN messenger would be a great tool to exchange information and communicate with my groupmates effectively, “group chat” function help managing conversations simultaneously with different people within the same group. I would type “Busy with my assignment” inside the status box of my MSN, adjust my online ‘status’ to busy mode in order to get rid of causal talk with the others while I am rushing for my projects and assignment.

But a question you would like to ask, why I have to log-in MSN or Facebook while I am busy with my assignment and projects? I think the belief of connection and relationship building constructed deeply in my daily life. For me, I can manage and distribute my attention effectively. Multi-tasking is efficient and even made me feel relax other than stressful. With the companionship of friends and groupmates when interacting with the Internet, I found myself motivated. If I found myself fell behind of my friends, I would speed up my progress and become more concentrated. =) 

Lastly, here's a video for you. It would be a good idea to share your favourite song on Facebook, to express your feeling, relief your pressure, or even ask for love by a particular song dedicated to your dream boy/girl!!! Grab the attention from now on!

Games, learning and literacy

New form of literacies such as video games, blogs, chat rooms, Instant Messages, film creations like machinima created a trend and encouraged writing outside school for students and suggested interaction with non-linear, intertextual and multi-layered text. Moreover, how can a little child master an online video game without much understanding and knowledge of complicated text – commands, instructions, goals within the video game context? The answer will be sound effect and image interpretation, these cues would definitely assist the way that they act and interact with.

Here, I would like to introduce a game or series named Diner Dash launched by PlayFirst. Your job in this game is to help Flo, the main character to run the restaurant, accumulate score to furnish your restaurant, the idea is to train working under pressure and good management of time.  

Although this game didn’t facilitate multiple players around the globe to interact in real time and work together, it connected with social networking sites, and eventually created some kind of new literacies, including blogs, online forums, and wikipedia page.

For example, it created a Page in Facebook, which enabled fans of this game to give comment and interact. I think the attractiveness of this game is: it enabled your design and layout of your own restaurant and the Avator (Flo, the waitress, main character in the game), fans would upload their masterpiece on the page and pull for comments or vote. Fans from this game can exchange their tips, raise questions throughout these sites.

Other than computer-based literacy, this game shooted for iPhone and iPad too, as a result, the APPs circulation enabled a great multimodal text, for example, other than the official video launched on Youtube, Fans from this game also recorded his/her own experience and posted on Youtube. Sometimes, the video game review would ge a great illustration on how to play/master the game successfully. At last, would teachers encourage students to do their book review on this basis too? An interesting way of storytelling. I suggested. =) 

Finally, I think that playing online games would be a good way to practise English too, since Fans should communicate with a common code to learn the tips or complete the goal of their favourite games. English would definitely the best choice although some games embedded the language choice, but if you want to gather walkthroughs about that particular game, you can't stay away from the utilization of English with others on the Net. They pick up new terms, sophisticated vocabularies throughout the process of text-based brainstorming with strategies in the game, communicate with Fans all over the globe!!!!!!!

Working together on the Web

Web 2.0 influenced us in our ability to communicate and permeability to share and interact; furthermore, our learning progress would be benefitted too. 

 A web 2.0 site allows us to edit the content of the website and enables everyone to share their masterpiece without anybody’s permission, like Wikipedia, a comprehensive learning platform, consisted of contributions around the world users and have been found that professionally as Encyclopedia Brittanica (Giles, 2005) although teachers won't treat Wiki source credited.

Indeed, as a student, I found that Wikipedia facilitated professional collaboration and multicultural learning.  For example, the Discussion Page enabled users to chat and give comments on a particular topic, this action suggested cultural diffusion like abbreviations, terms that every users utilize; people with different cultural background like political preferences, religion, environmental protectors would for or against particular topic. We can definitely learn global understanding apart from entire knowledge in printed Encyclopedia. 

In favor to our academic learning, Google documents created a great hit and welcomed by professionals, teachers and students around the world. But why?

First, free of geographical and temporal constraints (Kanselaar, G. Erkens, Prangsma, & Jaspers, 2002);

Second, Google Documents’ toolkit enables only one version of the collaborators’ document at all times and highlighted changes by users, this feature is incredible fantastic since we won’t feel annoying about which version is the most updated while sending files back and forth with E-mail or MSN;

Third, Google Documents enable collaborators to see changes of the document in the real time, this feature facilitated the delay of messages or communication barriers with amendment towards the document;

Forth, collaborators’ names are found in a small, colored boxes at the bottom of the document, to identify who are working on the document with you at the same time;

Fifth, Google Documents’ commenting tool provided chatbox/dialogue square for collaborators to exchange ideas, like Instant Messages as MSN.

In short, Google Documents demonstrated a great example of collaborative writing with a great complexity and comprehensive mixture of technologies. Social presence and precise amendment, contributions with a maximum 10 talents at one time, the result is a great piece of work – to match the intelligence of collaborative writing. I agree with the following quote!

Computers and computing offer profound opportunities to learn new things, old things in new ways and construct knowledge in ways that would be inaccessible without access to technology. Constructionism particularly applies to learning with digital technology. (Stager, 2005)

However, things cannot be perfectly designed. The nature of your job will determinate or constraint the usage of Google Documents.

For example,  if you work in a bank, personal information from clients should be handle  delicately and carefully. As a result, email system rooted in the Intranets will be a suggestive way to communicate and facilitate group working, other than tools designed and managed by a public website/server.

Speak with picture

A famous campaign launched by Diesel called BE STUPID, the aim of this campaign is to suggest people to act stupid - those who claimed SMART are actually coward because they don't even try to work things out but STUPID isn't afraid to fail. Below is my favourite advertisement from this collection.

This one demonstrates well of image text interaction. The text" STUPID MIGHT FAIL. SMART DOESN'T EVEN TRY." served to frame the image, the boy who tried to push himself into the rubbish bin was a stupid guy or even crazy. It spoke in the consistent way with the text, he tried but he failed as the picture shown. Although the picture is hilarious and exaggerated, it appealed to our emotion. While we were growing up, we always told "Don't be stupid." But why? If we all follow the way and path that the others do, our life cannot be improved, agree? Scientists are the one who got stupid thoughts, that's why so many fantastic inventions are invented. They are brave but not stupid.

Picture speaks louder than words, we can "feel" how brave we should be! 

From page to screen

Inspired from Christoph and Rodney's lecture, I tried to analyze two web-pages to see whether the theory "meaning potential of textual regions in an image" can applied on webpage layout or not.

Example 1: Lady Gaga official website

There is a clear left-right division on this screen, with a white line straight from the top to the bottom, divided clearly into two separate sections. On the left of the screen (from top to bottom), we see a big LADYGAGA, few navigation buttons created beneath the name. Followed by the latest updates in Twitter@Ladygaga, lyrics and MV of Ladygaga, to conclude, latest news from Ladygaga. These information should be regarded as the cultural knowledge towards Ladygaga - her music, personal information, events like concerts...(GIVEN CONTEXT)

On the right of the screen, there is log-in form of different popular social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter; search engine bar, featured sites of Ladygaga. Firstly, the linkage with different social networking websites allowed us to explore new information - a gateway to share the news from the Ladygaga website; featured sites of Ladygaga: new information other than the official website of Ladygaga that provided. (NEW CONTEXT)

Example 2: Rihanna Official Website

This website also consisted of left-right division.  

Left-Right: The portion under the picture of Rihanna should be regarded as the left part of the screen, which included the news of Rihanna (MV, lyrics, TV commericials), similar to the Lady Gaga's website.

On the right hand-side of the screen, there is a sign-up form for Rihanna's newsletter, icons link to different social networking websites, music bar and links to features websites. Sign-up form for Rihanna's newsletter enabled further communication and connections with fans, new information will then attached.

These two examples voiced out the usual layout and pattern of a singer's website, fans would like to get the latest news about the singer, as a result the dominant element would be NEWS of the webpage.

One more interesting point I would like to add is: we are now hardly to find a commercial website without linkage to social networking websites. These tools are great to serve as advertising purpose and reach potential partners if a person found interesting of the news that shared by his friend in Facebook! Business is now everywhere, who knows?

Canon, suggested the public to record with every part in our life, create with inspiration, an idea creeps into my mind - "Digital Storytelling". Most of us love to take pictures but seldom of us would link our memory together to form a unique story of our own life, technological problems? For me, absolutely YES!

According to Rule, Lesley (2010)
                   
            " Digital storytelling is the modern expression of the ancient art of     storytelling. Digital stories derive their power by weaving images, music, narrative and voice together, thereby giving deep dimension and vivid color to characters, situations, experiences, and insights."

Digital storytelling is much more interesting than bibliography, narrative entry, written diary of a person. More realistic and appealing....with different visual effect like sound effect, sound track, shocked image.

St. Valentine's Day is coming, try to create a digital story between you and your beloved, no matter your lover, family or friends. A nice present to recall precious moment. Here's a great commercial from Canon, a love story for you, ENJOY!

My Digital Life

In our daily life, we have a connection with any kinds of digital media, no doubt!! Let's talk about me.

I can live without computer a day, but not a month, ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!

I can't live a day without my mobile phone cause I spend a lot of time to text my buddies!

I love to take a snapshot of my day, to record my life down with color instead of black and white in my diary; so a digital camera is always my must-have item in my BAG!

When I turn on my computer, I will first jump to log in my MSN, then, obviously, go to Facebook, lastly, to check my Email! My routine, and I think I won't change this pattern shortly unless something really COOL being invented!!

MSN - a great invention, I love to chit-chat and share interesting news with my friends through this FREE but FABULOUS communication tool, especially friends in Australia, Canada, U.S.A...

Facebook - to re-connect friends of different stages, like kindergarten, Believe it or not?! I DO! I love to comment on other's photos, status.  I bet they care the number of comments and "LIKE" towards their posts, to evaluate how much theur friends care about him/her!

Other than communicate with my friends on the internet, I love to do E-shopping!

forever21, topshop,  although some stuff from topshop are found in laneCrawford, anyway, I feel heart-breaking till now and would like to shout for WHY no stores being set up in Hong Kong yet. You know, huge amount of shipping fee really scared me! SIGH. But, shopping catalogue shown on the website really helpful, I save time in searching my Favourites and squeezing myself into crowd when stock are on sale.

Moreover, fashion studio at H&M allowed me to try out my "Fashion Sense", drag clothes on the model to see how adorable or awful of the Mix and Match! NICE!

That's why I spent so much time on the Internet, and fallin' in love with digital media gadgets!

Last but not least, I installed H&M Apps on my iPhone. Take a look!

 

I can take a look of the latest stuff in H&M on my iPhone! GOOD!

Frankly speaking, not only the younger generation, the security guard of my residential building are using iPhone, by the way, he showed his iPhone 4 to me and those APPS that installed in his iPhone, I am shocked. I haven't think of the magic of Apple is so great! You will hardly find somebody without the product from Apple, like MacBook, iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad...That's the reason I enrolled this course, to learn how people can live in an easy way with the advancement of digital media, how digital media devices create social norms and culture with cross generation, maybe Grandfather and the grandson while interacting with iPhone Apps...