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Online Content Across
Cultures
by Dr. Sylvia van de Bunt-Kokhuis
FLUID on TOUR Workshop
15 September 2005
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Contents
Introduction
 Filter cases
 Digital/media literacy
 Outlook

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Filter levels
A-B-C
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INDIVIDUAL:
* our senses
(Filter level A)
‘Perception Filters’
* our thinking
(Filter level B)
‘Knowledge and value
filters’
INFORMATION:
* Not available on the
internet
(Filter level C) ‘Pre-internet filters’
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Chinese business schools
MBA programs: faculty `borrows’ from
western partner schools
 Holistic approach disappeared
 Rationalistic mental map
 obsessed with strategy, leadership


(AOM 2005, Liang and Lin)
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Filter levels
D-E-F
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(Filter level D)
‘Search and sorting-out
filters’
iii. Copyright, language
(Filter level E)
‘Legal and language
filters’
iv. Privacy: covertly
controlled
(Filter level F)
‘Surveillance filters’
INTERNET INFORMATION
i. Volume: quantity
ii. Valid: quality
To use information:
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Filtering cases (D)
Search engines
 Educational portals
 Software, bandwidth

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PEW Internet
Search Engine Users

http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Se
archengine_users.pdf
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Web watch
15 top search engines test
(www.consumerwebwatch.org):
 improvement disclosure clarity needed
 Paid inclusion clarity needed
 Disclosure statements unclear (light
gray, many clicks deep, frustrating)

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Case Ethiopia
Rural and multilingual society
 Low internet penetration and high tariffs
 Local Ge’ez script since 100 BC
 Today 40 encoding systems and key
board layouts
 Incompatible solutions
 Lack of international standards

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Korean case
US culture and language influences the
Korean internet environment (Taik-Sup Auh, 1998)
 Information in other languages reaims
unexplored
 Software for machine translation
English > Korean still unsatisfactory

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Filtering cases (E)

IPR
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Filtering cases (E)
Language
 - hybrid languages
 - loss of punctuation
 - Sami language

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Online communication
Missing elements such as:
 context perception
 Direct eye contact
 Gestural information
 Side talk
 Dynamic real-time repair mechanisms

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Japanese online
Prof. Yasushi Haga (Tokyo Institute of
Technology) explains why Japanese
lack behind in online communication:
 shy, group-oriented, harmony
 choosing submission over attack and
harmony over conflict

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Japanese online
Stomach talk (Wallace, 2005)
 Nonverbal communication needed to
create trust in business relatiuon
 `it is difficult` might mean `no’ was her
experience in electronic negotiations

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South Koreans online
According to Ken Takeuchi: South
Koreans tend to speak out frankly
 Open source becomes success
 Ohmy News is media revolution
 Success: readers can comment directly
and online
 www.ohmynews.com

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Filtering cases (E)
Ethics
 content filters
 family filters
 monitoring students

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Digital and media literacy
Integrity of information
 Image making
 Mental maps

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WWW and cultural heritage
Central and Eastern Europe
 Concentration of worldwide media
 Developing countries

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OUTLOOK
Crucial skills for 21 century
 Cultural integrity
 Role of the teacher
 Awareness training
 Architecture of the web
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Cultural sensitivity online


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success of a business depends on cultural
nuances
Colour white is purity (USA) or death (Japan)
Colour red is happiness (USA) or danger
(China)
Make features that make users `feel at home’
e.g. CNN uses national flags to localize
customers
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Social sphere initiatives
Weblogs
 Cyber Playground
 UNESCO B@bel
 Unicode standard for West African
language N’ko

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More about the FILTER project
www.filternetwork.org
or contact
sbunt@hhs.nl