Abstract

From Computer-Mediated Colonization to Culturally Aware ICT Usage and Design 197
• low uncertainty avoidance and
• gender emp owerment
are significant cultural factors promoting diffusion of IT (2001).
These findings, in turn, are at least consistent with those of Barnett and Sung
(2005) who, in their analysis of the hyperlink structure of the Web, determine
that both individualism and low uncertainty avoidance correlate with what
they identify as centrality (defined as “the mean number of links or the social
distance [the inverse of the frequency of communication] required to reach
all other countries in a network, such that the lower the value the more central
the nation”).
In turn, Lee and Choi (2005) helpfully complicate Hofstede’s individualism/
collectivism axis by drawing on Triandis’ distinctions between horizontal and
vertical individualists, and horizontal and vertical collectivists, and again find
correlations between these four types of cultural orientation and Web skills
and attitudes towards Web advertising.
Callahan (2005), by contrast, finds a much weaker correlation between
Hofstede’s axes and design elements from her extensive study of university
Web sites from around the world.
Finally, we can note that similar contrasts between Western (U.S./E.U./Scandinavian)
and Asian (Japan/Thailand/China) cultures manifest themselves
with regard to privacy expectations and data privacy protection laws: see Ess
(2005).
5 Dr. Wheeler also recommends Zakaria, Stanton, & Sarkar-Barney (2003), as
a useful resource.
6 The most important of these is the bibliography developed by Macfadyen,
Roche, & Doff (2004). But to my knowledge, no one has developed a comprehensive,
systematic, and theoretically well-grounded set of guidelines and best
practices for cross-cultural communication online along the lines, for example,
of the best practices in Web site design I attempt to summarize here.
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