THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL NETWORK SITES ON
INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION
Detta Rahmawan – Newcastle, 2013
Abstract In today’s contemporary society internet connection has spread around the world and many forms of mediated-communication are now driven by technologies (online forums, blogs, micro-blogs, social networks sites, etc.) Particularly, the use of Social Network Sites (SNS) within people’s daily life becomes more and more evident. SNS are being used by many people as a way to have other people know about themselves. This paper discusses the way in which “Self Presentation” can be seen to promote people’s cultural backgrounds and how eventually some forms of “cultural background” that usually did not appear on face-to-face communication can be seen through people’s SNS account on their public profiles, or streambased updates.
Key words social network sites, intercultural communication, online self presentation
Advancements in internet communication technology result in many choices available for computer mediated communication. Internet connection has spread around the world and the number of Internet users and the forms of online interaction, driven by technologies (online forums, blogs, micro-blogs, social networks sites, etc.) are constantly increasing. Study suggests that right now there are approximately 2,405,510,175 internet users worldwide , and it has growth 566.4% since 2000 . Recent survey from Global Attitudes Project has found that most people, whether they are in big and established countries or from lower-income nations, tend to make social networking account as soon as they have access to the Internet . With the popularity of social network sites, the chances of people present themselves and expose their culture into their online networks are greater than ever. This paper will focus on the way in which social network sites have impact on intercultural communication and some of its consequences.
Social Networking Sites (SNSs), such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest are designed to allow users to communicate through computer-mediated communication (CMC), while at the same time enable them to expressing themselves through the creation their personalized homepages. CMC can be broadly defined as “communication that takes place between human beings via the instrumentality of computers” . Computer Mediated Communication has become a great influence in the social lives of many individuals, and in recent years, it advances far beyond the simple exchange of purely text-based information . Today, internet allows people to communicate with each other through various methods such as e-mails, instant messaging (e. g. Blackberry Messengers, Whatsapp, etc) and the latest popular trend which is the focus of this paper is by the use of social networking sites.
This paper will be divided into four parts. The first part will describe some brief explanation about computer mediated communication and the historical concept about social network sites, the illustration about how popular it is around the world, and also provides some examples of scholarly researches about it. The Second part will explain about the impact of SNS on intercultural communication, drawing from the concept of online self-presentation. Then the third part will provide some of the consequences of this online self-presentation. Finally, the last part will conclude all the discussions and suggesting how future research can be done.
Computer Mediated Communication and Social Networking Sites
Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) is a “communication that takes place between human beings via the instrumentality of computers” . While at first CMC was commonly referred only to text messages , today it is advancing far beyond that. Some previous CMC study suggested its impact in negative way, saying that with people changing the way they interact with each other from rich face-to-face scenes into text-based media, the communication environment would be impoverished and CMC will result in various misunderstandings, flaming, and antisocial behavior However, some scholars said that this mediated communication can turn out to be familiar and being adapted by its users at some extent the progress of CMC along with rapid development in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) eventually become important part in our everyday life .
Recent survey from Global Attitudes Project suggests that most people tend to make social networking account as soon as they have access to the Internet For better understanding of social network sites, this part of the paper will provided the conceptual and historical background of it, from the article which have been written by danah m. boyd & Nicole B. Ellison entitled “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship”. On this article, social network sites was defined as “web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system” .
The first social network site, “SixDegrees.com” launched in 1997 which allowed users to create profiles, list their Friends and later in 1998 users are able to browse their Friends lists. Then starting in 2001 the early booming of SNS has begun. From “Business Network”-oriented website such as “Ryze” and LinkedIn, website which combined Blogging services and SNS features “LiveJournal”, media sharing websites include Flickr (photo), Last.FM (music), and YouTube (video) which eventually implement SNS features, “MySpace” which well known for its Musician or Band users, and then in recent years various SNS such as Friendster, Multiply, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and so on appeared. The popularity of social network sites also become “localized” and some countries have their own local or regional SNS such as “Mixi” in Japan, “Orkut” in Brazil, and “Grono” in Poland (ibid).
Today however, some of the websites which mentioned above was collapsed and forgotten while some of them became much more sophisticated and very popular. Until October 2012, a range of surveys suggest that Facebook and Twitter is the most popular Social Network Sites around the world (see Gannes, 2012; Wasserman, 2012; Taylor, 2012). Social network sites are especially popular among the young and well educated. Millenials generations, or those in college from the early 2000s to late 2010s are seen as the generation which have the most interest on Social Network Sites . Even so, SNS is popular among adults and even popular for older adults (users ages 65 and older) . The advent of smartphones is one important factor that increases the growing usage of SNS. While people are using them in a variety of ways such as texting, browsing the web and taking pictures, they also regularly visit their social network sites. Survey from Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project (2012) found that approximately half in Britain, the U.S., and Japan have one smartphone .
Various studies about social networking sites had been done within the context of academic research. A few examples are study about how the uses of SNS have connection to people’s trust, personal relationships, and also to their civic and political involvement how networked technologies and SNS restructured the term “publics” , identity construction analysis of Facebook profile photographs, Millenial narcissism among SNS user , Social Capital of SNS etc. Given the fact that Social Network Sites still changing and growing rapidly, it is very likely that SNS will remain popular in academic context.
Social Network Sites and Self-Presentation Online
The definition of self-presentation is ‘‘the process of controlling how one is perceived by other people’’ Erving Goffman study (1959, cited in Rui & Stefanone, 2013, p. 111) said that the goal of self-presentation is “to make others accept the images individuals claim for themselves”. In order to achieve that, individuals must shows their positively evaluated images and make sure that it is perfectly fit into their social roles. Hence, they need to emphasize the attractive aspects of themselves and construct desirable images to audience expectations (ibid). Social network sites provide new opportunities for self-presentation for its users, where they are able to “strategically create custom profile pages” . In these websites, all of its users can provide a range of information about themselves into their networks via a “variety of different modes of communication, ranging from using plain text to report personal information, update status, and write comments on friend’s profile pages, to sharing a prolific amount of images” (ibid). They also can present themselves primarily by indicating membership of certain groups (race, gender, age, etc.) and by providing information about their particular interest (music, movies, etc.).
SNS features which particularly related to self-presentation is “public profile”, and “stream based updates”. Which both can characterize the users as individual and “serve as the locus of interaction” . Hence, this paper will argue that with people’s self-presentation online they are deliberately or not, present their “culture” as well. To support this argument, I will first briefly explain the conceptualization of “culture”.
There are basically two perspectives which can contrast the definition of “culture”. One perspective typically defines culture which relates “culture” to “national culture”. Hofstede' works are the example of this concept. He developed the cultural dimensions which distinguish certain national cultures. These dimensions are; Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Individualism versus Collectivism, Masculinity versus Femininity, and Long-term versus short-term orientation . Another example is Edward Hall’s theory of “high context” and “low context culture”. Japan, China and Korea are the example of nations which have high context culture, while people in “western” countries such as the United States represent low context cultures.
The above conceptualization of cultures (or national cultures) is commonly used for comparing culture from different countries, theory generalisation and testing hypotheses. One example of the research which used these concepts is Jian Rui & Michael A Stefanone study about strategic self-presentation online in social networks. They used hofstede’s dimensions and found the relationship between cultural identity and self presentation. They conceptualized this cultural identity as “national identity” and “gender identity” and examined how these variables affecting people’s self presentation. Their study revealed that SNS members from individualistic culture tend to disclose themselves more at a different communication level and engaged in more attention seeking self-presentation. While people from collectivistic culture tend to do the opposite. They also noted the difference between males and females in terms of self-disclosure in SNS, with females are more likely to disclose themselves than males .
Another way to conceptualized “culture” is to relate it into “individual culture” which means that it is not only related to national culture but rather a complex interaction within multiple layers of cultures. Scollon & Scollon (2001) define “culture” in anthropological concept as “customs, worldview, language… and any aspects of ideas, communications, or behaviours of a group of people which gives to them a distinctive identity and which is used to organize their internal sense of cohesion and memberships” . Instead of relating culture to nationality, they suggest that an individual, regardless of their nationality will always have multiple layers of cultures (e.g gender, religion, level of education, etc.) This brief explanation can be used to support the argument that people consciously or not, present these multiple layers of “culture” as part of the self-presentation online.
Facebook (FB) as the most popular Social Network Sites around the world (see Gannes, 2012; Wasserman, 2012; Taylor, 2012) can be chosen for example. FB enabled users to show their “Basic Info” into their profiles. This basic info can includes things such as name, location, age, gender, and also specific information such as language you speak, sexual orientation, religious views, and political views. This feature in itself is important because people can present their multiple layers of cultures and choose which one we will show into their network. While in face to face communication, the decision to reveal these layers usually depends on the how close we are with the other person, In FB, if these information are set as “public”, it can be easily accessed by another users. However, FB currently has privacy settings and not everyone willing to put private information on their profile. It is also exaggerating to say that FB users are able to know more about each other solely from the information which has been put at their profile.
This is where the second feature; “streambased updates” (on FB this streambased updates are called “News Feed”) become important to investigate. Streambased updates, have been describes as a feature which “allow individuals to contribute content, which is then broadcast to Friends primarily via a stream of updates from all of their Friends” . This is important because it allows people to present themselves with direct or indirect ways. For example, if a user want to present themselves as a “good catholic”, he/she does not have to directly said “I am a good catholic” in their status updates, but instead he/she can show a picture of his/her activity in churches along with the geo-tagged location1, or post a quotation from Bible, “likes2” some religious-themed pages on facebook, join some virtual religious-themed, and so on and so forth.
The Consequences of Self-Presentation Online
It should be remembered that not all of the information that people put on their social networking sites is real, and it can result in problematic consequences. One of this is about deception behavior. Carmen C. Lewis & Joey F. George study about cross-cultural deception in social networking sites and face to face communication found that national culture, specific cultural identity, and the media which being used to communicate has effect in people’s deceptive behavior. Their study suggested that;
“..individuals with more masculine values, associated with either culture, have a tendency to be more deceptive than individuals with more feminine values. This is probably because of the need for success that is often associated with masculinity... deceptive behavior varies according to the national culture and specific cultural values of individuals”
However, Lewis & George study also found that deceptive behavior was greater for Face To Face communication than for CMC. It is also difficult to generalize their findings because the sampling they used for their study was inadequate.
This deception behavior also can be explained in terms of “Micro Celebrity” practices. Gunawardena et al (2009) observed that online communities such as social networking sites can lead to the “development of culture in its own right, often blurring the boundaries between the real and virtual worlds. Very often those who communicate online identify with multiple frames of reference and often subscribe to “third” or hybrid identities that are themselves fostered by the cultural flows facilitated by the Internet” . The above explanations suggest that SNS itself can lead to the development of culture (as a set of practices) in its own right which can affect how people communicate and interact on it. One of this is what Marwick & boyd said as “Micro Celebrity” practices. This practice means “a mindset and set of practices in which audience is viewed as a fan base; popularity is maintained through ongoing fan management; and self-presentation is carefully constructed to be consumed by others . Micro celebrity practices move people further from self-presentation to self-branding which emphasize “the construction of identity as a product to be consumed by others”. The examples of this phenomena are; online interactions of camgirls (Senft, 2008), use of Twitter by technology entrepreneurs (Marwick, 2010, cited in Page, 2012, p. 183), and celebrity practitioners (Marwick and boyd, 2011), and also study about performers on YouTube .
The goal of self-presentation is “to make others accept the images individuals claim for themselves” and to achieve this sometimes people carefully selected information that they want people to see, and hide other information, even if it is untruthful. If these presentations are not well-managed, it also can raise misinterpretation from other people. For example, someone who show their support of a particular group on Facebook actually do not always have to be part of that group, and someone who claim that they “likes” something on Facebook can in reality know nothing about it. In SNS, people can pretend about almost anything only because they think it make other people look at him/her in a positive ways, hence it can increase their “value”.
Conclusion
This purpose of this paper is to analyze the way in which social network sites has impact on intercultural communication and some of its consequences have been. With SNS, people tend to use it as a way to have other people know about themselves. Hence, this paper has discussed the way in which “Self Presentation” can be seen to promote people’s cultural backgrounds. As a result, some “culture” that usually did not appear on face-to-face communication can be seen through people’s SNS account on their public profiles, or streambased updates.
Our daily life is always consists of intercultural communication. Social networks sites as part of the advancement on computer mediated communication has opened up a new way for us to understand about other people “cultures”. However, not all the information that people put on the internet is true. As one form of technology, SNS can “configured by and configuring, affected by and affecting” people . In SNS, people can sometimes become untruthful and provides false information which caused by people’s deceptive behavior and micro celebrity practices. While deceptive behavior sometimes can be explained as a way to protect their private information, micro celebrity practices can be seen as the opposite, with people carefully constructed their images to be consumed by others, and build some sort of “fan base” in order to feel famous.
This paper has illustrated the dynamics between people, culture, and communication technology. For future research, it is necessary to conduct empirical research on other types of social network sites such as Path, Pinterest, Google +, and so on, since the majority of researches tend to use Facebook, MySpace or Twitter. It is also recommended to investigate how people in developing countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, or Philippines use SNS, since there are lacks of studies within these countries and it can be valuable input for researches on this context.