1 / 12

Traveling Without Moving

Traveling Without Moving. Foreign news and boundary-crossing in Cyberspace Jeremy Edwards University of Texas at Austin. The Online World. It’s now easier than ever to find foreign media/cultural products on the Internet

bian
Download Presentation

Traveling Without Moving

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Traveling Without Moving Foreign news and boundary-crossing in Cyberspace Jeremy Edwards University of Texas at Austin

  2. The Online World • It’s now easier than ever to find foreign media/cultural products on the Internet • The online world has its own “geography” of cultures and nations--just like the “real” world • What happens when people “travel” virtually over the Internet? How can we think about this phenomenon?

  3. Diaspora in Cyberspace • Anderson (1991): Nations as “imagined communities” thru print media • Thompson (2002): Visual vs. print • Mitra (1997): Web sites exclude some people and welcome others • Boczkowski (1999): expats overtly express cultural ideas taken for granted at home

  4. Boundary Crossing • Halavais (2000): National boundaries re-created on the Internet • Need a concept that covers both virtual and real-world “boundaries” • (Though really, all boundaries are virtual) • Information or cultural product is traveling, even if a person isn’t

  5. Acculturation, real and virtual • Acculturation/socialization related to long-term, regular, non-threatening interpersonal communication • Melkote & Liu (2000): Chinese grad students “going home” over the Internet • Increased behavioral acculturation • Decreased value acculturation

  6. Online Survey, November 2003 • 790 American college students: are they boundary-crossers? • 92% have traveled abroad • 49% use the Internet to communicate internationally • 20% read foreign news websites • Three different groups, or just one?

  7. Boundary-crossers are travelers • Foreign news readers are people who have already been abroad • Traveling to more countries--> more likely to read foreign news • Same relationship, but weaker, for travel --> international communication

  8. Travelers OOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOO OOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO O O O OO OOO OOO Foreign News Readers O O * Communicators O O O O

  9. Liberalization? • Travelers, communicators, foreign-news readers are all more liberal than non-boundary-crossers… • …but only if they are 25-and-under • Alwin & Krosnick (1991): 25-and-under’s most likely to change political identity

  10. A map for boundary crossing • Travel abroad • Acculturation takes place • Return home • Media used to reinforce/revisit/expand travel experience • In “impressionable years,” liberalization takes place too

  11. Issues/Problems/Questions • 92% Travelers: representative sample? • Liberal/Conservative maybe an oversimplification of acculturation--but something is going on • Are online travelers “traveling” to new places, or “going home” to places they’ve already been? • Other types of boundary crossing?

  12. Questions and, perhaps, answers

More Related