Cultural differences in the use of instant messaging in Asia and North America

Reviewer: Vijay K Gurbani

In this short and interesting paper on the effect of culture on the use of instant messaging (IM), the authors have certain expectations about how modern tools like IM adapt to cultural norms etched out over centuries. These expectations are subjected to two analyses, the difference between the two being the sample size and the choice of the IM client. The outcome is to observe what effect cultural norms have on IM use, and whether cultural differences should be taken into consideration when designing tools for cross-cultural communication. This paper is most useful for those doing research in the general area of collaborative work; additionally, a secondary audience could be the graphical user interface designers of IM and presence tools. The authors first provide two dimensions toward cultural expectations: collectivism versus individualism, and low versus high context. Eastern cultures exhibit a high degree of collectivism and are characterized as high-context cultures (they require more contextual information, such as nonverbal behavior and relationships between the participants, for successful communication). Western cultures, by contrast, are more individualistic and low context (communication is primarily through verbal information). Personally, I found the low- and high-context dimension a bit misleading; certainly, with the advent of the "MTV Generation" and "PowerPoint Junkies," information in the Western hemisphere is far more visual than verbal. The dimension of collectivism and individualism, however, is accurate. The analysis is performed through two surveys, the results of which amply demonstrate that IM usage follows cultural norms. For instance, the authors hypothesize that collectivistic cultures will generally tend to use multiparty chat, and individualistic cultures will simply use single-party chat. This hypothesis is borne out by the results: North Americans reported significantly less multiparty chat use than Asians did (specifically, Indians and Singaporeans). Another interesting example concerns an IM video stream. The authors hypothesize that video IM would be of much more benefit to Eastern cultures, where facial expressions and lip movements help disambiguate speech. The results bear this out: North Americans rated video IM as being of the lowest utility, and Indians rated it the highest. The authors summarize that, indeed, cultural differences should be taken into consideration when designing tools for cross-cultural communication. I wish that they had devoted a bit more text to explaining exactly how they think this can be accomplished. They simply provide a single paragraph at the end of the paper, which is somewhat inadequate given the importance of the subject. Online Computing Reviews Service