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.