Cultural Factors Shaping the Experience of ICTs: An ...

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Cultural Factors Shaping the Experience of ICTs: An Exploratory Review

Frank Thomas Leslie Haddon Rosemarie Gilligan Peter Heinzmann Chantal de Gournay

In Haddon, (Ed.) (2005) International Collaborative Research. Cross-cultural Differences and Cultures of Research, COST, Brussels

Contents 1. 2.

Summary ..............................................................................................................3 Introduction..........................................................................................................4 2.1 The meanings of culture ...................................................................................5 2.1.1 Some Issues................................................................................................5 2.1.2 A working definition of culture .................................................................6 2.1.3 Culture and spatial communities................................................................6 2.2 Researching Culture .........................................................................................8 2.3 Technology and culture ....................................................................................8 2.3.1 Wider debates on the relationship between technology and culture..........8 2.3.2 The supply and regulation of ICTs ............................................................9 3. Cultural factors and ICTs...................................................................................11 3.1 Social structure ...............................................................................................12 3.1.1 Social homogeneity..................................................................................12 3.1.2 Egalitarian structures ...............................................................................13 3.1.2 International .............................................................................................14 3.1.3 Communication........................................................................................14 3.1.4 Gender......................................................................................................15 3.1.5 Ethnicity...................................................................................................15 3.1.6 Generational cultures ...............................................................................16 3.1.7 Religion....................................................................................................17 3.1.8 Education and literacy..............................................................................18 3.1.9 Language..................................................................................................18 3.2 Temporal structures ........................................................................................19 3.2.1 The subjective experience of time ...........................................................19 3.2.2 The time use structures and expectations.................................................20 3.3 Values .............................................................................................................21 3.3.1 Openness to technological innovation .....................................................21 3.3.2 Individualism ...........................................................................................22 3.3.3 Other cultural values ................................................................................24 3.4 Communication ..............................................................................................24 3.4.1 Communication forms, patterns and expectations...................................25 3.4.2 Low context vs. high context cultures .....................................................25 3.5 Material culture...............................................................................................26 3.5.1 Spatial layout of the settlement system....................................................26 3.5.2 Housing ....................................................................................................27 3.5.3 Artefacts and cultural tastes .....................................................................28 3.6 National but not ‘cultural’: An exploration ....................................................29 4. Conclusions........................................................................................................30 4.1 Overview ........................................................................................................30 4.2 Overview of cultural factors ...........................................................................32 4.3 What ‘cultural’ factors can influence .............................................................34 4.4 The uses of the report .....................................................................................35 5. Bibliography ......................................................................................................36

1. Summary The following paper explores and charts the diverse ways in which researchers have examined the effects of culture on the experience of information and communication technologies. This is not meant to be a theoretical statement but a practical guide. By illustrating this range of claims through contemporary and historical research examples the paper aims to sensitise those involved in researching, using, designing or developing policy related to ICTs to the range, breadth and depth of potential cultural influences and cultural differences The paper first indicates what might count as ‘cultural’ influences, how there can be different views as to what counts as cultural, and proposes a pragmatic, working definition which tries to be inclusive in order to make substantive points useful for the intended audience. Although the focus is on charting cultural factors, putting them into some order and showing how they work, the introduction also briefly locates the relation of culture to technology in wider debates. The cultural influences that have been noted in past research on ICTs are been organised under the following headings. Social structures deals with culture are the societal level ad includes such factors as the degree to which societies are homogenous and egalitarian includes, the degree of communication with outside world (influenced especially by migration), the experience of gender and ethnicity in different societies, the cultures of different generations, religion, education and literacy and language. Temporal issues include both how people subjectively experience time in different societies, and the time structures of those societies along with expectations about time. Values, again at a societal level, include openness to innovation and the degree of individualism (e.g. as opposed to family orientation), as well as some other values noted in previous research. Material culture includes how the settlement pattern, especially urban centres within a country are organised, the nature of housing and artefacts and tastes. The report shows how cultural factors can help our attempts to understand differences between national patterns of diffusion as well as uneven patterns adoption and use within countries. It reminds us that we have to ask about the specificity or generalisability of research on ICTs conducted within a particular country as well as how one would be able to replicate the success of some ICTs innovations in other countries. Finally, the report sensitises us to some problems and issues around defining culture, some of the limits of 'cultural analysis and areas where we might need to develop our thinking further.

2. Introduction This whole area of the influence of cultural factors on the experience of ICTs, as well as cultural differences, is made salient in the light of any assumptions that in an increasingly global world with the availability of the same technologies everywhere the influence of culture must be becoming less important. But we would argue, and this paper aims to document how cultural factors remain important. These can be underplayed in analyses of ICTs that concentrate solely on economic influences. And in a world that is becoming more globalised the continuing effect of local culture is often overlooked by marketing researchers and therefore global commercialising campaigns do not result in the expected returns. In fact, the authors have been involved in a number of cross-cultural studies and recognise that it is difficult to know how to make sense of national differences, how to conceive of what is happening when, for example, we compare national statistics on ICT use. Are the differences mainly a result of economic considerations: does the take-up of certain ICTs reflect the fact that they are less expensive in one country and more expensive in another? Do differences exist because the technology was introduced in one country earlier than in another? Do they reflect some national policy initiative or regulation policies - which may in part come from the political stance of particular Governments (e.g. those of Margaret Thatcher vs. Tony Blair in the UK)? Does differential take-up reflect something about the nature of the country: the physical geography, the climate etc. Or is something else at work here, loosely referred to as ‘culture’. But then again, what counts as cultural? Do we count longstanding policies, e.g. as regards education, as reflecting cultural values? What about particular historical events – how are they linked, if at all, to culture? Clearly this is a minefield, especially as there are so many understandings of culture. In fact, the authors of this report do not know of any research (in our field of ICTs) where all these considerations were taken into account at the same time. And yet we usually feel obliged to make some comment on the patterns revealed in comparative statistics or differences that emerge in qualitative studies. Indeed, there is an interest in such comparative research both from on the part of companies and policy makers, as well an academic critiques of the limitations of single-nation studies (Livingstone, 1993 1 ) In the light of these pressures and dilemmas, we have decided to put into this text many of our recollections of where writers have attempted to address this issue of culture or where we think it is worthwhile raising the issue of whether to count some potential influence as cultural or not. This is just the type of exercise that is possible within a Cost framework, a chance to stand back and systematically order our thoughts, not so much to reach a definite final conclusion but to open the way for future discussion Hence, this review is not meant to be a theoretical statement but a practical guide. It addresses and aspires to be relevant to social scientists working in the field of ICTs, 1

For example, we in reporting a national study to an increasingly international research community we need to be sensitive to the fact that its findings may not be generalisable.

engineers and marketing people within companies developing these technologies and services and those involved in the field of policy pertaining to ICTs. A sensitivity to cultural factors is important for both when looking to learn lessons from the experience of ICTs in other countries or regions and when planning policies that cover more than one country or region.

2.1 The meanings of culture 2.1.1 Some Issues The first question is what to count as culture, for example, in order to conceptualise what counts as ‘cultural’ differences between groups as opposed to some other differences. This is not a straightforward task, and our different backgrounds also make sensitive different claims about what counts as cultural. The issue is discussed more fully in sections 2.1.2 and 2.1.3, which aim to provide a fairly inclusive working understanding of ‘cultural’ for the purposes of this paper. Hall, the founding father of intercultural communication studies, even posits: “Culture is communication and communication is culture.” (Hall, 1959: 186). But even at this stage some very general principles can be noted: 1. To look at country differences is not identical to looking at cultural differences. National differences between countries may be due to a range of factors, such as economic situations, demographics etc that one may not always want to conceptualise as cultural process. We return to explore this in a little more depth in section 3.6. 2. Within countries there are non-spatially based ‘cultures’: the cultures of generations, of classes, or professions, sub-cultures related to lifestyle - these are ways of looking at culture within countries. 3. Sometimes cultural is associated with issues of shared symbols but, one can argue, culture covers more than symbols and there are degrees to which there is a symbolic dimension to cultural aspects (e.g. the time and spatial structures that people operate within can also be considered ‘cultural’ as we shall explore in sections 3.2 and 3.5. 4. Even using a working definition the boundaries of what counts as a cultural influence are at times somewhat open to debate – there can be arguments both ways. For example, at one level decisions that shape institutions reflect the political or economic culture of a country. At another level, we would argue that the institutions are not ‘cultural’ - e.g. phone tariff settings, Government administrative regulations. This is illustrated in the examples of 2.3.2. 5. Culture can be considered at different levels such as macro, meso and micro, for example depending whether we are talking about the level of the nation or of particular social groups. 6. There are still grey areas – for example, how one thinks about some habits, customs and routine ways of doing things, implicitly assumed and taken-forgranted e.g. the custom in some countries or amongst some groups of not paying by credit card. Should examples such as this be considered cultural?

One final point: there are many issues discussed in relation to culture but to be practical, in this paper we will only look at ones where we see some link with ICTs. 2.1.2 A working definition of culture What do we understand by the term of ‘culture’? There are different definitions in sociology, cultural anthropology, cultural studies, media studies and social psychology. Given the purposes of and audience for this paper it would be inappropriate to dwell upon what are sometimes complex theoretical debates, ones where ultimately there may be no definitive boundary. Therefore, for the sake of this paper we need a working definition, one that we can use to explore in more detail the range of elements that can be considered ‘cultural’ without ruling out the possibility that some people could argue for an even more inclusive definition that would count yet more things as cultural. In this paper we shall understand by ‘culture’ some kind of commonly shared symbols, values, beliefs, and attitudes, and their translation into everyday social perceptions, behaviour and material artefacts. Culture thus: • encompasses a broad range of meanings and representations of the world; • covers behaviour patterns as embodied over time in habits and customs; • includes the way this is expressed in material objects such as the styles and organisation of dwelling places, the types of item to be found in them and clothing fashions. Culture exists independently of the individual. The literature referring to culture indicates that it can exist at various levels, in various forms. In principle, it could stretch from what have been identified by some as lifestyle subcultures (e.g. Hippies) through the virtual group culture of an Internet community group (e.g. Internet Relay Chat or ‘IRC’) and the business culture of a corporation to local, regional and national cultures. 2.1.3 Culture and spatial communities Let us examine in more detail this last example or level of culture, relating to geography. Due to the long history of nation-states in Western Europe the effects of culture can be confounded with those of a country. And yet, even in long-established nation-states different cultures have evolved side by side 2 . For example, in multi-faith countries, such as in Belgium, Switzerland or Germany, there are important cultural differences within the state. Meanwhile, language can also establish cultural communities that may be smaller than a country – e.g. the Basque language in Spain or the German, French or Italian speaking people in Switzerland. Such communities may be smaller still if consider communities using different dialect (e.g. dialects in the German speaking areas of Switzerland). 2

Sometimes due in part to substantial topological barriers like lakes, rivers or mountains within one country.

Alternatively, cultural communities can be larger than specific countries: such as French-, English-, German-, Dutch- and Swedish-speaking communities, to name but a few. Finally, culture has also to be distinguished from ethnic origin since even in countries with a strong tradition of assimilating immigrants, such as France, several cultures coexist even if officially this is only grudgingly acknowledged. In short, culture should be treated as something different from the aforementioned influences of country, religion and language. Of course, when there is a long-standing geographical coincidence of the nation-state with a community of religion, language and ethnic background such a national culture will be quite homogenous, will create a shared national identity and thus, will become particularly influential.

An example of cultural analysis and ICTs: The socio-cultural milieu approach In general, there are different research approaches to considering different cultures within countries. One might be sub-cultural analysis, as in the case of some user studies. Another might be studies focusing on ethnic minority ‘cultures’. Here, we briefly consider one further approach because it has specifically been used by companies in the analysis of ICTs. The social-cultural milieu analysis tries to capture the lebenswelt of a group of persons, their common traits, perceptions and actions. A milieu integrates characteristics from the individual’s and the household’s social position, its value orientation, attitudes towards work, leisure, and family, and purchase and use of media and consumer goods and organises these into types, integrating cultural characteristics with other sociological to produce ones into a typology. Widely used examples of milieu analysis include the GfK Euro-Socio styles Sinus (Cathelat, 1993) and the Sinus milieus (SevenOneMedia, 2001). When utilised in social and market research on ICT adoption and use, the milieu approach shows its real usefulness. In 1999, for instance, in West Germany the milieu of modern salaried persons covered only 8% of the population, although it covered 19% of all Internet users. The contrary was true for the petit bourgeoisie: this group represented 14% of all West Germans, but only 0.2% of its Internet users. To illustrate how this type of analysis has been used, it has been pointed out that having a low social status and a conservative value orientation bars entry into the online world (Mediagruppe, 1999). This example also shows that in market research the multitude of socio-cultural milieus often becomes reduced to a bi-dimensional typology composed of a vertical axis of socio-economic status and a horizontal axis of conservatism vs. modernity. Those from ‘social lead’ milieus, positioned in the middle and upper middle classes and showing a post-modern value set, use ICTs the most and in very specific ways. Meanwhile, those from a conservative-technocratic milieu demonstrates are quite instrumental users of the Internet, oriented towards transactions and information retrieval. Finally, those from a post-modern milieu, consisting mostly of young pupils and students, are heavy users of information retrieval and Internet communication (chats, communities, newsgroups) (Mediagruppe, 1999).

2.2 Researching Culture It is not possible to observe ‘a culture’, directly. This can only be achieved indirectly by studying the aforementioned behaviour, customs, material culture (artefacts, tools, technology), language, etc. which then reveal the underlying traits of the culture being studied. Indeed, while this study is primarily addressing the question of how cultural factors can influence the adoption, the use, the very experience of ICTs, those very differences in the way people deal with ICTs has the potential to help us better understand cultural differences themselves. In addition, it is not possible to say that culture causes ICT use so much as it provides a context that favours or mitigates against ICT adoption or use. For example, when conducting quantitative survey research with individuals or households as the basic sampling unit, you will find that the influence of the country of residence or of social values is confounded with that of many other variables, especially socio-demographic, economic or behavioural influences. Therefore, explanations including cultural influences will always be more cumbersome to understand than those based on more conventional variables. Also, the most striking cultural differences and their resulting effects on communication and technology use are probably to be found when comparing ‘modern’ (Western) cultures and those in less technologically advanced cultures. By and large, such contrasts remain outside the scope of this paper. Having charted various meanings and levels at which we can talk about culture, in practice this paper defines a number of boundaries for itself 1) We will focus more upon the cultures initially grounded in geography, despite the above observations noting the complexity of this relationship. In other words, many of our examples will be what people have claimed about cultural influences in nation states. 2) While we may occasionally comment on some claims, on the whole we not try to evaluate the truth claims of the research cited – they are cited more as illustrations of how a more general point has been applied in particular studies. 3) This is not a methodological guide in the sense of how showing how, in the research process, to go about interpreting cultural differences. This is a tricky process, discussed elsewhere (e.g. Livingstone, 2003). The aim is more to raise ideas about what cultural factors could be candidates for analysis. 4) Last, we consider culture in so much as it relates to the private use of ICTs at home and in public places rather than any effects of culture in the workplace.

2.3 Technology and culture The last step before embarking on the review is to locate the narrower focus of this paper in some broader contexts, even if those contexts will not themselves be explored further. 2.3.1 Wider debates on the relationship between technology and culture

If the previous sections have aimed to clarify what we refer to be culture, it is important to add a note also on the more general relationship between technology and culture in to locate our narrow focus within a broader picture. Certainly there have been traditions of analysing the link between technology and society, with some writers referring to the influence of culture. For example, there is the strand with the sociology of technology looking at how the appearance of innovations and the very designs of technology are shaped by the decisions of social actors and wider social forces – for example in the social construction of technology, or SCOT, approach (Bijker, Hughes and Pinch, 1987; Bijker and Law 1992 and Latour, 1987). Historical accounts specifically of communications technologies of interest in this paper point out how social, political, economic and cultural factors are central determinants of technological change (Flichy, 1991;Winston, 1998). Meanwhile, and getting a little closer to our interest in the consumption of ICTs, some historical accounts argue how the take-up of some innovations has been influenced by the social conditions of that era 3 (Williams, 1974). On the other hand, we have those who stress the influence of technology on society – the opposite of the causal link we are interested in exploring. The Cultural Lag hypothesis of William Ogburn (1922) argues that a society and its system of norms and values only change slowly, far more slowly than technology. Thus, social and cultural change will always lag behind technological change. More recently one of the most influential sociological theorists of today, Castells, argues that new ICTs will even create a new culture: “… through the powerful influence of the new communication system, mediated by social interests, government policies, and business strategies, a new culture is emerging: the culture of real virtuality, ….” (Castells 2000, 358) 4 . The important point to note from all this is that although we have a narrow focus on the effects of culture on communication technology adoption and use, this takes place against a backdrop of wider historical debates about the embeddedness of technology within culture and the mutual influence of technology and society upon each other. 2.3.2 The supply and regulation of ICTs

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Raymond Williams argued that the spread of certain ICTs in the UK at the start of the 20th Century (e.g. photography, gramophones, cinema) as well as the growth in popularity of media such as newspapers reflected the greater geographical mobility that was occurring at that time as people moved to live and work in different locations This led people to take more of an interest in these new ICTs (as they were then) that preserved memories and helped those who had moved to keep in touch with what was happening in the places where they had come from. 4

There is the question of empirical proof as to whether the changes go as far as Castells thinks and whether actual changes are due more to technological change or more to concomitant changes in business, political and societal structures that have antecedents starting long before the Internet was invented. It is important to note, however, that a causal link is posited by Castells.

Finally, before working through the dimensions of culture, we have a few words to say about how culture itself influences the supply side of ICTs. Culture shapes technology in that more broadly it shapes industries and regulatory practices. • For example, whether the telecoms industry was historically seen as private or public arena of activity (e.g. the US vs. many European countries) relates to different ‘economic cultures’ at different historical periods in different countries. • This in turn has a bearing on such matters as infrastructure e.g. how the electricity infrastructure developed differently in different national systems (Hughes 1983). • That broader political and economic culture also has a bearing on administrative procedures: e.g. the ‘culture of the operator’. For example, the engineer culture in European telecoms led to a stress on the regularity of procedures, on legalism and on the security of the communication. This is different from (historically) US commercial carriers, regulated by the FCC which thus entailed a mixture of engineering and commercial culture. And this is different again from the former communist countries ‘control culture’ where everyone was monitored and what was important is political control of the technological system. • Turning to regulation, if we take the historical example of amateur radio operators, in the UK the state allowed such operators, in Germany it did not. To take a more recent example, we might consider the extent to which the state attempts to regulate Internet use in China in comparison to many other countries. • Then there are such state decisions as whether to subsidise an infrastructure or not, to regulate by semi-independent quangos or the centralised state structure and whether the state intervenes in a wide range or things or restricts its domain and leaves the rest to the market. • Finally then there are cultural issues about the appearance of different spaces that have shaped the form and location of ICTs. For example, the first appearance of aerials for telecommunications led to a backlash to defend the look of the urban landscape, to protect the historical look of the city (Thomas, 1995). This led to the push to deliver telephony by cable. There are related rules today e.g. Swiss regulations state that satellite dishes are not supposed to be visible, while Danish social housing operators are obliged to use a single antenna in their blocks of flats.

3. Cultural factors and ICTs The first step in this charting exercise is to ascertain what types of factors that various writers have identified as ‘cultural’ have been cited in studies of the experience of ICTs, both in contemporary quantitative and qualitative research as well as in historical studies and when cultural factors are cited as part of explanation of ICT adoption and use in single country studies as well as cross-cultural comparative studies. Sometimes in single country studies different writers make what can be seen as contradictory claims about what cultural factors are at work in their society and how they work. In this paper the purpose is not so much to judge between them and choose the ‘correct’ accounts between, and indeed in some cases it would be difficult for us to do so. Instead the emphasis is on drawing attention to what is being claimed about culture effects – at what level they operate and how the work out in practice. There are some initial limits on this work that we would like to signal. First, in the discussion above it was noted that cultural factors may influence the design of ICTs. But it may also influence their marketing and advertising, how ICTs are represented. And, in principle, when analysing how consumption might be influenced by cultural factors, one might want to take into account the nature of such marketing. That may be appropriate for in-depth studies of single ICTs but it is beyond the scope of what can be achieved in this paper. Second, some ICTs, such as broadcasting and the Internet, have associated ‘content’ – TV and radio programmes, content on web-sites. Much of this is locally influenced, and this may once again be analysed in terms of the influence of cultural factors. In the following sections content may be noted when relevant to understanding the adoption and use of ICTs, as in the content accessed by migrants. But ICT-related content per se will not be the object of analysis in this paper. The intention, at this stage, is to be inclusive and fairly open-minded about ways in which we could see factors as being somehow ‘cultural’ in nature. No charting exercise would claim to be absolutely comprehensive, and indeed this is probably impossible goal given different researchers use slightly different definitions of what counts as cultural. We acknowledge that boundaries around different aspects of culture are not fixed: the same examples conceptualised under one heading could, from a slightly different viewpoint, also fit under another (e.g. as happens with examples in the sections on ‘individualism’ and ‘communications patterns’ in the following sections). However, our ability to draw upon our collective knowledge of a variety of literature and research enable us to make a reasonable start in drawing up a checklist of factors that might be considered under the heading of culture and indicate the range of different ways in which they can have a bearing upon our experience of ICTs. This very exercise, of course, asks us to go beyond the general understandings of culture outlined above and ask in particular cases on what basis some phenomenon might count as cultural or not. In this sense the report potentially raises questions and provides a baseline for future work to clarify further some of these issues about the nature of culture.

3.1 Social structure This section covers a variety of elements. These include the social diversity within nations, the degree to which they are organised in terms of hierarchical relationships and the amount and forms of contact with the outside world. Turning to more familiar socio-demographical elements, the section discusses how in different cultures gender is experienced, the role of ethnicity and race and the organisation and influence of religion. Finally it considers education, literacy and language. 3.1.1 Social homogeneity One possible factor to consider is the degree to which there is strong diversity within a society or alternatively whether there are common and shared backgrounds, understandings and values. For example, this could be in terms of the language and religious communities mentioned earlier, ethnicity but also whether there are strong differences between those who are liberal or conservative, for instance. To give a related point, diffusion studies have amply demonstrated that an innovation spreads more rapidly in a homogenous than in a heterogeneous social networks – provided the dominant social values of this social environment favours that specific innovation (Rogers, 1995). For example, the existing social connections in certain rural areas in the US favoured the diffusion of telephony after the end of the Bell patents.

A worked example of reflecting on a single country: Iceland It could be argued that the rapid diffusion of ICTs in Iceland may in part be due to strong social homogeneity since Iceland is a good example of a highly integrated society and what is called a Nordic book society. Despite its relatively late independence from Denmark in 1944, it is a country with a common, historically founded, national identity, a common ethnic background, a common language, a state church covering more than 90% of the inhabitants, high literacy levels that existed for a long time and long-standing, unchanged national boundaries. But while social homogeneity may play a part, we would have to note other factors that may shape the use of ICTs. For example, the fact that Icelanders are finishing their university study abroad (Denmark, UK, Sweden, US) together with the mentality of islanders (strong identity and family relations) may result in a higher degree of using ICTs. In addition, the degree of contact with other countries, the generally high level of education and knowledge of other languages, especially English, high income in general, a strong consciousness about being modern and not behind, limited public opportunities for entertainment in dark wintertime, etc. are examples of factors which may lead to higher levels of ICT use. Meanwhile, a country’s historical approach to dealing with migrants may also have a bearing upon social homogeneity, through the way in which ethnic and religious minorities were integrated into Western society by the original colonisers. In this respect, the two dominant and contrasting European models were those of the UK and France. The Anglo-Saxon model allowed cultural minorities to reproduce their

cultural differences independently of dominant norms. This can be viewed critically as promoting cultural ghettos or celebrated in terms of multiculturalism. In contrast, the French, essentially republican and secular, model encouraged integration to create a uniform culture, which meant proposing a ‘universal’ culture whose norms and laws applied to all and were above cultural and religious specificities. This becomes relevant for the experience of ICTs in, for example, the different histories of media, such as TV and radio programming and stations, for minorities. 3.1.2 Egalitarian structures Next we have the degree to which countries are egalitarian or hierarchical in their social stratification, their social communication or their value structure (e.g. it is sometimes claimed that Nordic culture is more egalitarian than some others). There are a number of forms of hierarchy that could be considered such as the degree to which countries are centralised or decentralised (e.g. the amount of regionalism or local power). And there are number of measures of how hierarchy might be experienced, such as the degree to which people accept authority.

i-Mode in Japan In fact, different studies claim different effects in this realm. One study of i-Mode noted that Japan is in some respects 5 a very homogeneous society compared to many European nations with a paternalistic culture dictating how people should behave – e.g. Japanese organisations require their workers to obey orders and not to be too independent (Heres et al, 2002). In such a culture the study argued that imitating others is easy and this has been cited as a factor conducive to the popularity of iMode. On the other hand, if we look to historical studies there has been documentation of how the hierarchical structure of late 19th century France heavily hindered the spatial diffusion of the telephone. Rural areas were dominated by clientilistic power networks that used their position as intermediaries in a hierarchical communication structure between the rural regions and Paris to control local power. The new technology undercut these information filters by enabling uncontrolled communications between rural departments and Paris decision-makers (Carré, 1991). Therefore the local decision-makers who co-financed the telephone lines did not push themselves to help construct the new lines and so deliberately retarded the growth and the use of the French telephone. In fact, an even most drastic historical example of the constraint of hierarchical structures on the adoption and use of communication technologies is the decision not to promote further the diffusion of the telephone in Soviet Russia under Stalin. For a similar reason, in Ottoman Turkey the Sultan did not allow the establishment of a first telephone network in the capital fearing that the new technology might undermine his autocratic rule. 5

On the other hand, it has been pointed out that there are differences between cities and countryside, industries and agriculture/fishing, conditions of employment in companies on world market and local companies and some clashes between modern and traditional values.

3.1.3 International Communication The intensity of outside contact that a culture has makes it more or less open to the use of ICTs. For instance, migration flows can contribute to opening a culture up to outside influence. Moreover, migration can itself create demand for those ICTs that help migrants to keep in touch with the mother culture 6 . An example of this would be the links between Norwegians who have emigrated and their relatives still living in Norway which had created strong international private e-mail traffic to and from this country 7 . In a similar vein, Ireland, has a long tradition of emigration to the US, UK and Canada, to name but a few, and the Internet offers those Irish living abroad a real opportunity to access relevant and updated information on events happening in Ireland 8 . To take another example, one Israeli study showed that 60% of the Russians who have moved to Israel used the Internet to keep in touch with family and friends in Russia (Adoni, 2001). Lastly, it is not only keeping in touch with the motherland that is important for migrants - a study of the use of a server in the Palestinian territories indicated that many Palestinian’s who had left used it predominantly to keep in touch with and/or make contact with other diaspora living abroad (Hanafi, 2002).

Cutting communication channels during war Apart from such sociological data, historical studies remind us that there are factors, or indeed events, that can limit the contact that cultures have with the outside world. For example, during the First and Second World Wars, one of the first measures taken by the opposing countries after the start of hostilities was to stop all border-crossing letter, telegraph, and telephone traffic and, in the British case, to cut enemy telegraph sea-cables. This was a clear attempt to isolate the belligerent nations from world information flows 9 .

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In this respect we might consider not only more permanent of long term migrants but also those who spend a more limited time abroad and use ICTs (such as e-mail) to stay in touch with the mother culture – for example, students studying abroad, armed services serving abroad. 7 This high level of traffic was shown in the (unpublished) data from the EURESCOM P-903 project. 8

It has been reported that the majority of visitors to the main Irish news websites such as the Irish Times Online (http://www.ireland.com) and RTÉ Online (http://www.rte.ie) are Irish people living abroad. Therefore, the content of these websites targets an international rather than a domestic market. 9

However, this provided a strong impulse to develop communication technology that could overcome these barriers with the result that the radio telegraphy and telephony were well developed after the wars ended. The large number of trained radiotelegraphy operators was one of the reasons why the fledgling radio industry could start in the early 1920s (Flichy 1991).

3.1.4 Gender Cross-national surveys often produce statistics showing the patterns by gender (and age) in different countries 10 . However, when interpreting these it is important to bear in mind that there are some variations in the way in which gender is experienced in different countries (or cultures). For example, women’s participation in labour force varies, both in terms of the proportion of women working and the nature of that work 11 . This can have a bearing upon personal disposable income and thus the capacity of women to acquire ICTs. The level and form of work participation can have a bearing upon their ability to manage what is still commonly women’s main responsibility for the domestic sphere. So, for example, full-time work (in conjunction with variations in working hours, retail opening hours, or schooling closure hours in different countries) can influence their ability to co-ordinate work and family life (and we might speculate that this could affect the attractiveness of ICTs e.g. mobile phones, that could offer potential support in this respect). But work participation is only one element. We might consider women’s status in broader terms, including cultural variations in terms of women’s role and orientation to the family (to be discussed again in a later section) and the degree to which strict gender divisions are maintained across different aspects of life. 3.1.5 Ethnicity Ethnic background plays an important role in the diffusion of the Internet in the US, with a persistent gap as Afro-Americans and Hispanics lag behind whites and Asians in terms of access. In European studies this effect is under-researched as social researchers, market researchers and public statisticians are often wary of asking questions about ethnic background. However, ethnographic research on West Indian immigrant communities and their use of ICTs, as well as of immigrants’ communications in the Netherlands and in France (Calogirou and Andren, 1997) all show convincingly that ethnic background strongly influences the intensity, the social composition and the geographical reach of social networks and how they are maintained over distance by use of the telephone, mobile phone or e-mail 12 . But one has to be careful about talking about ethnic culture since such patterns reflect the influence of different historical experience, current socio-economic factors and particular difficulties in life experienced by some ethnic minorities. For example, in Denmark mobile phones diffused early to young second-generation immigrants (especially from Turkey, the largest ethnic group. But these families often live in 10

For example, patterns of mobile phone and Internet in the P-903 study (ManteMeijer and Haddon, 2001). 11 For example, Denmark has a high proportion of women working full-time, while the Netherlands has a higher proportion working part-time. 12 One thesis in Québec (UQAM) on the use of TV programs by muslim communities (LeRay, E.)

small rented apartments and so privacy can best be achieved outdoors, using the mobile 13 . They can also reflect what is on offer from the ICT supply side, for example, the selection of media such as TV and radio channels offered to ethnic communities. 3.1.6 Generational cultures Generational analysis looks at the era when people were born and then the experiences at different points of the life course to see what effects these factors have on ICT consumption. One factor here is the technologies they encountered at different time points, but another is the events and everyday life experiences which can have a formative influence and expectations, values, perceptions (to be discussed below) and in turn on how people react to, use and adopt ICTs. Either way, in a very inclusive way we might consider this also to be a cultural dimension in the sense that different generations may have somewhat different experiences in different places or communities, e.g. in different countries. To start with generational experiences of earlier technologies, it would appear that those first experienced in childhood, youth and sometimes early adulthood influence the way in which subsequent technologies are taken up at a later age.

Approaches to understanding the cultural experiences of particular generations: British young elderly and ICTs For example, a British study of the young elderly noted how, as in many other European countries, radio became a mass market product when this generation were in their youth (Haddon, 1995, Haddon and Silverstone, 1996). Meanwhile, familiarity with the phone often came first through work as it became an increasingly common tool in many jobs, especially the expanding white collar ones. So sometimes this generation would note how they were more at ease using the phone than their own parents had been. Television made its in-roads into the home in their early adult life in the 1950s and early 1960s. But on the whole this was still not the computer generation. Many of those nearer to being 75 years old in the 1990s had not lived through office automation during their working lives, while others had actively tried to avoid computers because being very near retirement age they had and had not wanted to have to take on new ways of working and learn computing skills at this stage. At the same time, their own children had usually been too old to be swept up by the computer and games boom of the 1980s. Meanwhile, a consumer survey by CREDOC in France in 1996 (see Babayou, 1997), found that the use of ICTs is much more linked to generation than to age. In this case, the report noted that older people used primarily the information media that they discovered when they became adults: for example mail is the media preferred by older people in distance purchasing. This generation felt a certain apprehension in relation to the new technologies, notably those which were the most publicised (the Internet for example), but they knew how to make use of more familiar equipment, sometimes 13

Personal communication, Lajla Klamer.

extensions of what they already used and corresponding to their practical daily needs, like television remote controls. To give an example of the generational effect of values, we can return to the UK study of the young elderly. Many of this generation were from working-class backgrounds and had undergone upward social mobility in their own lifetime as middle-class occupations expanded. Hence, it was common to have lived as a child in somewhat austere conditions from the British pre-war era into the early post-war years. Although they enjoyed more affluence from the 1950s, in certain respects nonconsumerist values were retained: those in this research would often talk about knowing ‘the value of money’. They were careful spenders, interested in getting value for money. They often resisted rushing to buy the latest version of a commodity, and had always been more inclined to replace items when they were sufficiently worn out. On the whole they were not impulse buyers, and acquisitions had to justified. Hence, perhaps relatively more than others, they argued in terms of not ‘needing’ any more equipment, facilities or services rather than not desiring them. They already had all the ICTs they had got used to and would often point out that they had been without various facilities for all their life so far and had managed. While some were more adventurous, most clearly did not want to try too much experimenting at this stage.

The content of communication and the shared experience of Japanese elderly people One Japanese study of elderly people participating in an on-line community noted that some the messages that they posted referred experiences from their earlier life which would have been understandable to peers who had lived through the same era (Kanayama, 2003). In other words, the content of communication reflected shared generational experiences, but also values and attitudes to life. 3.1.7 Religion Religion has traditionally been one of the most important ingredients of a culture as it influences the definition of the individual in society, especially the individual’s liberty, the structure of communications (i.e. whether they may be more horizontally or more vertically oriented) and the development of an independent third layer in society between the individual and the state consisting of civil society actors. Religiously influenced values explain in part the position of women and the family and the structure of the educational, the social welfare and the health systems.

Religion and Scandinavian book culture If we take an example that pre-dates ICTs, it has been claimed that the early and strong orientation towards written communication in the Nordic countries, the Scandinavian book culture, is largely explained by the influence of Protestants who stress the need for everyone to be able to read the Bible for themselves. One caveat here is that the effect of religion within a culture is not uni-dimensional. The organisation and place of religious churches and faiths within a territory will

greatly moderate the effect of religion, whether we study the effect of the Catholic, Anglican, Protestant, Muslim faiths or a mixture of these. The fact that religion is still considered an important factor might seem surprising in the light of the historical shift towards secular values. But the influence of religion may be more longer term. For example, it is not argued here, for instance, that Catholics might prefer letters to e-mail because they believe in God in a specific way. Rather, the models of Man and Society that the different faiths supported over the course of centuries has left an enduring imprint on culture and on communication patterns and this impact has survived the individual slowdown in religious affiliation. 3.1.8

Education and literacy

Both education in general and levels of basic ‘literacy’ - originally defined in terms of reading and writing but now more defuse given claims about skill requirements in an information society – can also be considered to be partly cultural in nature. Certainly the resources devoted to both of these in different countries reflect wider cultural values, including specific values about promoting social inclusiveness. National policy and how this is implemented in the education system and literacy programmes, are based in such values and priorities. But also the enthusiasm for or resistance to both of these in different countries or in specific communities also derive from cultural values (Haddon, 1998a). In fact, studies show that education actually impacts more strongly on levels of Internet adoption and on dropout rates than does income (Lenhart 2002; Thomas, 2002). But education as a factor is also influential in different ways. At one level it seems that the general capacity to navigate the opaque knowledge of the Internet is largely linked to educational experiences. At another level, as exemplified in France, education serves a proxy for social capital. Thus having a higher educational level implies that the user is embedded in networks of family and friends which are ICTrich and which have a high level of experience of these technologies and services. If we turn to more basic literacy, knowing how to read and to write seems to be a general social norm in modern societies 14 . However, when it comes to using these capacities for handling everyday life an important proportion of the population does not attain what we might call ‘functional literacy’. And thus, this group does not have the most basic prerequisites for using complicated technologies, reading manuals, or imagining search strategies on the Internet. The mental capacity to do abstract work is very unevenly distributed in social terms and is a strong barrier to ICT adoption and successful integration into everyday life routines (Weiss, 2001). 3.1.9 Language The domination of the Internet by English-language websites is a well acknowledged issue for non-English speakers (Vescovar, 1999; NTIA, 2000; Lazarus/Mora 2000). Although there are of course web-sites and services available in a variety of languages, overall is simply less, for example content, than for those who can speak 14

And indeed ICTs such as multimedia computers are used to help illiterate people with reading and writing programmes.

English. This can be more of a barrier for non-English speaking older people (Gilligan et al., 1998) and the less well educated who are less likely to speak a foreign language. The influence of language can work at other, more subtle, levels as well as just being a barrier to take-up. For example, software is often supplied in English first and then other languages, affecting the timing of when it becomes more accessible to different language speakers. Those who speak English and have access to English-language media, such as many Dutch watching English TV, therefore have access to more perspectives than those who do not speak English There are changes in ICT products which are starting to mitigate the influence of language e.g. DVDs offering films in multiple languages. Lastly, it is also important to take into account the role of orality in a culture in relation to writing, the type of alphabet, the use of images in communication etc. Such factors may influence people’s competencies concerning, for example, the use of i-MODE (notably the way the Japanese abbreviate messages).

Japanse language styles and textual communication A Japanese study of an elderly on-line community noted that the participants were used to text-based communication, expressing emotion in the messages they posted though the use of archaic language styles, dialect and poetry (Kanayama, 2003). Because of this experience, including a tradition of letting writing as an important means of communication, the on-line communication was quite rich.

3.2 Temporal structures Time (and the lifestyle associated with time use patterns) comes up as themes in various studies of ICTs. Here we start by considering variations in the subjective experience of time, move on to the more general time structures of different cultures and then focus on two specific issues: time spent indoors vs. outdoors and the relationship between work time and leisure time. 3.2.1 The subjective experience of time This is relevant for the use of ICTs since whether people in different cultures perceive problems with time might have a bearing on decisions to adopt technologies that offer solutions in terms of time-saving or, more commonly, allowing the more flexible use of time. And such perceptions might have a bearing upon people’s willingness to invest their time in acquiring and learning to use ICTs.

European comparative perceptions of time stress

Turning to empirical research on such perceptions, one qualitative study of focus groups from 6 European countries 15 noted that there were some systematic national differences with regard to how people articulate their subjective experience of time. While many participants acknowledged that they led busy lives, in some countries there was a great willingness to talk about this in terms of time pressure and stress 16 , whereas in others participants talked more about the importance of being in control of their own life, of avoiding stress – but not saying they expressed stress 17 (Klamer et al, 2000). This raises questions about whether there are cultural differences in perceptions and the experience of being busy or whether it is felt to be more and less acceptable and appropriate to express feelings of stress in different cultures – for instance, whether doing so in some cultures gives messages about ones ability to cope. 3.2.2 The time use structures and expectations The time structures of different nations, but also of different social groups, can differ. One example would be the timing of when work starts and ends (as well as the length of the working day). There is also some variation in the extent to which people are willing and able to be flexible as regards doing at least some work at home, in terms of the occasional day or evenings. In different countries and amongst different social groups the degree to which people engage in organised leisure activities, be that after school or after work, varies, which also effects time schedules. And the timing of activities differs even in matters such as when people eat. Quite simply, this can affect the timing of when people use ICTs, be that watching media, going on-line or communicating. For example, in Denmark the peak for fixed line calls has always been after 7pm when people have often finished their dinner 18 . Any national patterns are also somewhat influenced by various regulations, including company decisions such as pricing policies. For example, telecoms tariffs are lower in France after 10pm and this tariff structure contributes to the rise in Internet traffic after that time. While many of the above examples are somewhat speculative, showing when we expect time issues to be relevant, one contemporary study cited a particular influence of people time distribution.

The implications of Japan as outdoor orientated country The i-Mode study cited above also noted that Japan is a more outdoor-oriented society than many European countries, given that Japanese homes are small and lack privacy (Heres et al, 2002). Therefore people spend a good deal of time outside the home, which means that home-based-ICTs are not so attractive. The study argued that i-

15

This was the EURESCOM P-903 study. It involved six focus groups from each country. 16 For example, in Spain and Italy. 17 For example, in Denmark. 18 Perosnal communication, Lajla Klamer.

Mode became popular in part because having the Internet in the home was not so appealing but nevertheless Internet-like services were desired 19 . We also have to consider various cultural expectations about time. A first example would be social time norms – e.g. norms about when and when not to communicate. Apart from norms about how to make calls, how to speak, there are also ones about how long to call and when to make certain calls. A second example would be that in different countries there sometimes seem to be different expectations about how rigid the boundaries should be between work time and free time (Klamer et al, 2000), which once again influence the timing of when ICTs are used for work and for nonwork purposes. A final example would be the extent to which there are cultural or institutionalised expectations about ways of working e.g. do staff all take breaks together, or do they take a lunch break at all. This could have a bearing upon being reachable by phone or not during breaks and when people use the mobile phone at work for private calls. Two caveats have to be added. Although the above examples are framed in terms of national differences there may be different patterns within countries, and also different degrees to which time structures, or rather expectations about time, are rigid (as reflected in different norms about punctuality). Second, the influence of time differences may be increasingly eroded by other changes. For example, to what extent is there a process of homogenisation across countries, or some countries such as European ones – for example, in terms of moving to a 24/7 economy? Meanwhile, E-mail may be overcoming some of the problems of the timing of communication by virtue of being asynchronous.

3.3 Values Here we discuss issues such as people’s orientation towards innovation and the degree to which they have individualist or collectivist values. We look at certain other ‘cultural’ values that have been identified in previous studies. And we look at the consequences arising from the extent to which cultures are peer- or family-oriented. Cultural tastes will be discussed in the later section on artefacts as part of material culture. 3.3.1 Openness to technological innovation There are certainly perceptions that some countries’ populations are more open to technological innovation (vs. being relatively conservative in this respect). This is partly used as a rationale for ICT companies to test their products in some countries first – such as the UK, Hong Kong 20 and Japan. 19

This example could relate to the discussion below of the influence of ‘housing’. Although the choice of such testbeds also reflects other consideration such as economic power and in some cases the use of English. For example, PC games and software programs are often tested in Denmark since the Danes are regarded as a homogenous population with widespread knowledge of English, high PC penetration and because the are perceived as being willing to make criticisms and give suggestions – personal communication, Lajla Klamer. 20

Diffusion studies have analysed the effect of specific sets of values on the speed of the diffusion of innovations (Rogers, 1995). Potential future users can be characterised by their social position, their position in social networks, etc. but also the degree to which they are exposed to new information coming from outside, and their receptiveness to these innovations. The diffusion of the telephone in Germany and in the U.S. provides numerous examples of these effects (Thomas, 1995). Within countries, the cultural values of the different types of adopter identified by Rogers have also been discussed – e.g. those of early adopters. 3.3.2 Individualism One particular value distinction that occurs in a number of guises is that between an orientation to individualism 21 or to the group, in whatever form. For example, one Italian study hypothesised that the mobile phone was so popular with Italians because of the exceptional individualism 22 and the great flexibility that they have developed in the world of work (above all in regions of advanced capitalism, for example in North East Italy). The study argued that individualism and flexibility are developing extremely rapidly as these qualities were, and still are, married to what she calls the ‘national character’ (Fortunati, 1997). So in this case, individualism is cited as a factor shaping the rate of adoption of an ICT.

Korean family-orientation and ICTs However, these values can also work on other ways. For example, if we take as special case of collectivistic values that of family orientation, one Korean study has argued how in Korean life, people are often considered to be members of families more than individuals (Yoon, 2002). This is illustrated in the way that young people do not really have personal space in the home (e.g. their rooms are accessible to other family members without permission). This shapes not so much the rate but rather the nature of ICT adoption (and hence) usage in that ICTs (like the PC) are often familial rather than individual possessions (which can lead to tensions between siblings). Specifically in relation to the mobile phone, these values mean that communication with family on the mobile is important, including by text-messaging. In other words, value orientation affected usage patterns. In fact, the study argues that for many young people, calls from parents are more significant than calls from peers, they are seen as a form of ‘mobile affection’, an expression of family bonding and even calls from people who are quasi-family members have to be respected. Hence, the study argues that the specific orientation to family in Confucian Asia (i.e. also China and Japan) makes a difference in use compared to use of the mobile in the West: that 21

This can also relate to discussions of how much privacy people expect or desire in different cultures. 22 But as we will see in the Korean example below, such claims about national characteristics can also be challenged – e.g. some might argue that Italian culture is very family oriented, judging by the importance of visiting families, o the fact that many adult children stay at home until they leave to have their own family. Personal communication, Lajla Klamer.

while we can find similar examples to Western studies of children wanting more independence and using the mobile to be more independent, we often find that the mobile also reproduce more traditional Korean identity. However, not all accounts of the nature of national cultures agree. For example, drawing on previous general sociological writings on Korean culture, another Korean study of the mobile phone noted the importance of several values including devoting time to maintaining ties with social networks (Kim, 2000). Whereas some other national studies have pointed to the importance of this specifically for teenagers (e.g. Ling, 1998), this Korean study points to the importance of meeting socially after work among adults, and noted how, compared to American meetings for example, this was often done at relatively short notice. While this practice was already important before the mobile arrived, this technology has enhanced the ability to make such appointments, making it easier to meet this goal of maintaining networks, and sometimes allowing the scheduling of more than one meeting on the same evening. Also in contrast to the claims about the family in Confucian Asia noted earlier, the iMode study cited earlier noted that in Japan family and job culture were oriented not so much to the family circle but to the peers of household members - i.e. the children have their own social networks, so do mothers, so do fathers, but these different social networks do not meet each other (Heres et al, 2002). This study argues that peer society is so important that it colours everyday life: if peers acquire technology, or learn about it, this knowledge and interest is quickly passed on to their social networks. This, it is argued, also favoured the take-up of i-Mode. These examples remind us that claims about the nature of national culture may be important but they can also be problematic, with different emphases in different accounts. And how do outsiders – or maybe even insiders – choose between them. Certainly it means that one has to be a little careful when looking at single country studies that try to define themselves, culturally, in the world. Finally, we dimension of individualism we might consider is the autonomy of children - especially in terms of the degree to which parents in different countries attempt to regulate their children’s use of ICTs

Parental styles of regulating ICTs: European variation One cross-national study showed that parents in Sweden and Italy were less strict and rigorous than both those in Belgian Flanders and those in France. Parents in the first two countries had more lenient parenting styles, granting more freedom to children and this included their approaches to regulating children’s media use (Pasquier et al, 1998). However, it is clear that we also have to be a little careful because there is also variation within countries. For example, British studies have shown that working class parents regulate their children’s TV watching less (e.g. Buckingham, 1991) and a more recent European study of children has shown the similar influence of socioeconomic status across countries (Pasquier, 2001).

3.3.3 Other cultural values The work of Hofstede (1980) and Trompenaars (1993), looking at cultural norms from a managerial perspective, have been cited in some studies looking at the use of and values regarding ICTs. For example, this is referred to in a study interpreting Dutch and US focus group feedback about the mobile phone (Mante, 2002) and in a study including different patterns of adoption of the Internet across countries (Thomas and Mante-Meijer, 2001). If we take the work of Trompenaars, these cultural norms include elements such as individualism vs. collectivism (described above), whether cultures have universalist or particularist orientations, whether cultures are specific or diverse, whether cultures are affective or neutral, how cultures accord status (whether it is ascribed and achieved), and how cultures relate to nature (e.g. controlling it vs. letting it run its course).

US-Dutch attitudes to being reachable and the blurring of boundaries between home and work Apart from these more systematic studies of cultural elements, various individual studies of ICTs also note other values 23 . For instance, in a US-Dutch comparative study involving focus groups, the researchers found differences in the acceptability of always being reachable by others and especially of letting work enter into the private sphere - both were resisted more by the Dutch, which had a bearing upon mobile phone communication (Mante, 2002). If we take another example of how the study of values has been operationalised, a pan-European survey contained questions about certain social values (e.g. one question about attitudes towards life asked about the desirability of being rich and important). After taking the ‘hard’ socio-demographic factors like education, gender and age as well as country into account, the analysis showed that that for young users, in countries that had passed the initial stages of mass diffusion this particular social value could help to explain the segmentation of E-Mail, SMS and mobile telephony users (Smoreda and Thomas, 2001).

3.4 Communication Inevitably by this stage in the report we start to find overlap with some of the sections above. For example, the wider role in society of oral versus written communication, as well as the role of music and images in different cultures has already been noted in the section on education and literacy. The norms of communication were referred to the discussion of time issues. And different modes of communication are implied in some of the above discussion of values. In the section on individualism vs. collectivism we already saw two examples where the outcomes referred to related to communication patterns: the Korean example of patterns of mobile phone use and the preferences as regards communication forms amongst those developing Groupware. 23

Another example would be adaptation: the degrees to which people want flexibility in their lives or want more rigid structures. This was explore in the EURESCOM P903 study (Mante-Meijer and Haddon, 2001) but empirically it did not appear to be so influential.

This section now looks at other ways in which communication patterns and expectations – indeed ‘communication cultures’ - can be considered to be cultural factors in their own right, and they have been referred to as such in other studies. 3.4.1 Communication forms, patterns and expectations For example, in one Finnish study, while rejecting some stereotypes of the ‘silent Finn’, the research draws up previous analyses of speech culture, both internationally and specifically that of the Finns (Puro, 2002). The study notes expectations of appropriate speech behaviour (e.g. about the absences of small talk, the value of silence, of being direct), and discusses how this is reflected in both fixed phone and mobile phone patterns of interaction, but also how the mobile might challenge traditional such Finnish speech culture.

Italians and Israelis: public space and mobile phones Meanwhile, the Italian study cited earlier noted how in the hands of Italians the mobile phone had become a particularly ‘antisocial’ instrument (Fortunati, 1997). This is because ‘wherever the emphasis is placed on the individual, as in the Italian case, the public sphere goes neglected and unheeded’: and here research cites other studies of the Italian’s reluctant inclination to respect the ‘res publica’ (implicitly compared to some other European countries). In fact, a five-country survey showed that Italians were distinctly more willing to switch their phones on in a range of public spaces compared to some other Europeans 24 (Haddon, 1998c). A similar point was made about Israelis’ willingness to use the mobile in most public spaces, complete with anecdotal examples that received widespread media coverage (Schejter and Cohen, 2002). In some countries it has been argued that it is the social control of certain forms of communication that shapes communication preferences. For example, in perhaps a rather extreme example, but one which shares some common elements with other countries, Japanese researchers have argued that mobile e-mail in Japan is popular amongst youth partly because of the strong regulation of voice telephony in schools and public places (Ito and Okabe, 2003). In schools, where mobiles tend to be officially banned, certainly from the classroom, youth nevertheless used the mobile (under the desk) illicitly to pass on emails during lessons. The prohibition is equally strong in many public spaces, with ‘no mobile phone’ signs in trains and buses, and regular announcements over the loud speakers to this effect. As a result, almost no participants in this study had voice calls in these settings, but instead used mobile email extensively. 3.4.2 Low context vs. high context cultures When people communicate in ‘low context’ cultures they take for granted implicit understandings that do not have to be articulated (Hall, 1997). When such patterns of communication operate, participants agree on the structure of decisions quickly, they 24

British, French, German and Spanish

do not have to spend time negotiating each set of understandings from basic principles. Abbreviations, emoticons such as the ‘smilies’ used in e-mail and the development of other such codes that are understood by the communicators would be examples of low context communication. A related for of analysis was drawn upon in a study looking at GroupWare use in different cultures this time made a distinction between collectivist and individualist cultures as regards the way that the division of tasks is organised (Massey et al, 2001). The study argued that collectivist cultures leaned towards favouring rich-context communication. Such cultures are characterised by lower tolerance of uncertainty and ambiguity, conflict avoidance and they show a high desire for consensus. People belonging to this culture also preferred to reach decisions through indirect communication. Conversely, individualist, low-context cultures prefer to reach decisions through more exact communication by using confrontation and debate for which synchronous communication is more appropriate. The study then went on to show, using field-studies and experiments how the different cultures used and perceived the GroupWare technology differently.

3.5 Material culture Next we move on to consider how culture in physically built into the design of space. This includes its influence on the spatial layout of the settlement within countries, the size and nature of urban spaces and the form of housing, and the symbolic significance of artefacts. 3.5.1 Spatial layout of the settlement system Let us assume, for the moment, the very spatial organisation of countries is a candidate for being considered ‘cultural’. Certainly, towns, urban places, are the social spaces where exchanges within and between cultures take place. This is still true, even for the Internet, when you consider where digital content is produced (Kellerman, 2002; Zook, 2001 for the US and Western Europe; Steineke, 2000 for Norway). To return for a moment to the issue of culture shaping ICTs that was noted at the start of the paper, one way in which the national layout of urban centres influences ICTs is in terms of whether they are a single-node urban system 25 , such as in France and Britain, or a multi-nodal system, such as in Germany or Switzerland. These different systems encourage communication systems to be developed, deployed and used in different ways. In the single-node case, for example, the spatial concentration of potential mobile telephone customers in South East England facilitated the rapid rollout of mobile telephony in the British capital region though at the same time it retarded that development in regions less attractive for the operator. In the multi-node case, every communication technology will tend to include a strong long-distance component. 25

Single-node systems mean that one city, the capital, dominates in a country

Within countries, whether one lives in rural 26 , smaller urban or larger urban areas can have an influence of the experience of ICTs, or at least the options that are open to one 27 . The reasons may not always be ‘cultural’. For example, since state regulators sometimes require service providers to cover a certain proportion of the population which pushes the companies to go to the large towns first 28 . But also for commercial reasons, fewer ICT services are usually provided in rural settings because of the expense in relation to the low density of people. One example would be cable networks. While those in rural settings could use satellite to access similar media, they would still not have the interactive TV option, for example. To take another factor that we might hesitate to call ‘cultural’, technical support for ICT use can also be further away in rural areas. In addition, the more competitive prices are first found in the larger towns, meaning that ICTs are, or are at first, more expensive in rural areas and smaller towns. How come? But spatial layout also has some bearing upon mobility patterns, with, for example, those living in the countryside being more reliant on the car. This raises the question of whether the mobile, for example, becomes more attractive because of concerns about car breakdowns. Finally, we might consider how relations are managed over space, especially how they are managed at a distance. This raises issues of whether (cultural) expectations are such that people are allowed to act on their own, whether they internalise norms (of a company, or the state etc) or whether they are closely monitored and given orders at a distance from a centralised base. This might be relevant to how teleworking is experienced, for example, and we might speculate that issues of autonomy might have some bearing upon ICT use 29 . 3.5.2 Housing The housing characteristics of different countries (e.g. size, interior design) For example, in 5-country 30 qualitative study of telecoms in 1996 there were differences between a number of countries as regards the strategy of going to another 26

Of course, that division is also not so straightforward. On the other hand, rural areas should not always be seen in terms of ICT disadvantage. For example, people living in such settings may be more interested in services used like telebanking because of the lack of local physical banks. Given that CCTV cameras are more likely to be found in urban areas there is less experience of surveillance than in the cities. Meanwhile the rural population is in some places changing as urbanite commuters move there, without necessarily a commitment to an rural way of life but wanting and demanding the ICT facilities that they are used to from the cities. 28 This varies by service. For instance, it is usually true for telephone coverage, it was originally less true for ADSL coverage. 29 An historical example of the gist of this point is that when communications from the battlefront improved by the time of the Crimean war, the generals back home tried to micromanage the fighting at a distance rather than giving the initiative to the commanders on the scene, as had previously been the case. 30 France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK 27

room to seek privacy when making or receiving calls (Haddon, 1998c). However, on further analysis this in large part reflected the different distributions of different sized houses in the countries (and implicitly, different numbers of rooms). Comparing houses of the same size, much of the differences disappeared. Although we cannot demonstrate evidence in this report, we might speculate that housing size in different countries may also have a bearing upon options to telework, for example, with its implications for the use of ICTs.

Asian housing and private communications However, size is not the only consideration. The degree to which people have privacy in their homes is partly a housing issue partly a matter of expectation (as noted in the Korean study above where parents could enter children’s rooms without permission. To take a different example, one Japanese study of younger people showed that they used public phones because of the lack of privacy at home (especially because it was very easy to hear phone conversations due to the thin walls in Japanese homes) (cited in de Gournay, 1996). The spatial design of housing and what facilities31 are located where is also a consideration. For example, in the UK (and other countries) the fact that in the early 20th Century many houses only had heating in the central room in the home meant that people congregated there. Only later when other rooms were heated, and with the arrival of central heating especially, did household members, especially children, spend more time in separate bedrooms. This clearly might have some bearing upon where and hence how ICTs are used (as in current discussions of children’s media rich bedroom cultures – Bovill and Livingstone, 2001). But one might still find such differences between countries and maybe within countries in terms of spending time in together in central parts of the home versus spending time in personalised private spaces. 3.5.3 Artefacts and cultural tastes Here we might consider phenomena like fashion, cultural orientations towards creativity and novelty (as expressed in leisure activities, clothes, appearance, etc) as well as the role of elite avant-garde culture. In other words, we can think of culture as expressed in areas of life such as art, decoration, design, commercial offerings, etc. Such matters, for example, shapely distinguish Northern from Southern Europe, the latter being closer to Japan in terms of its fashion culture. This becomes all the more relevant when we consider that ICTs are not just functional artefacts but symbolic ones, which are subject to influences such as fashion as are the other items we consume in everyday life. One need only think of the Nokia fashion mobile phones and the stylish PC colours now offered in some countries such as grey, 31

For example, how many phone sockets there are installed and where may be different in different countries. When telephones were first installed in private homes the British tradition was to locate the phone in the hall, whereas in Denmark phones were placed in the sitting-room. The location of the phone can clearly affect its use. Personal communication, Lajla Klamer.

black and silver computers in the US. IKEA even offer small home office equipment to aesthetically integrate into the living room. But having made this general point, there can be cultural differences in terms of the colour schemes favoured in different country’s homes, which may have a bearing upon how equipment such as PCs are blended into such environments. If we turn to fit in Bourdieu’s work on cultural capital, the meaning of different brands, including ICT brands, may vary in different countries. For example, a Bang and Olufsen may connote something a little upmarket in Scandinavia, but in France it signifies elite consumption.

3.6 National but not ‘cultural’: An exploration Before we reflect in a little more depth on the nature and definitions of what might count as ‘cultural’ influences, we might want to reflect on factors that can create nature differences but which we might not want to count as cultural. Here, as an example, we come back to the influence of the history of how ICTs were supplied in different countries. Here are some examples. 1. The i-Mode study noted that in Europe people are used to SMS and used to sending e-mail on the Internet – i.e. there are alternatives to i-Mode for communicating (Heres et al, 2002). There were in practice no such alternatives in Japan: home based Internet was not so widespread and SMS was not very developed. 2. A report on the first wave of an international longitudinal study ‘e-Living’ noted that of the countries surveyed Israelis were the heaviest users of mobile phone (in terms of the number of calls). But Israelis do not use SMS so much. This was because there were 3 different operators, and originally the SMS systems were not available – they have only been compatible in the last year – and only 2 could use SMS 32 . So there are standards issues here 33 3. A 5-country 34 qualitative study in 1998 of middle-class households’ use and non-use of the Internet noted that in Norway, where the Internet was at that time most established in the workplace, even Norwegians without home access tended to regard the familiar Net mundanely and dispassionately – it was known to them (Haddon, 1999). In other countries, there were more nonusers whose reactions were based on media images, or who were curious or enthusiastic: sometimes they had high expectations and sometimes they were disappointed with it because of this 4. An early international survey conducted by the Dutch Telecom found that a low penetration of fixed telephony, combined with a high waiting list for new fixed connections, was found in various countries showing relatively high adoption rates for mobile telephony (Bakalis et al, 1997). This study also noted that in Nordic countries geographical factors made it unattractive to develop a widely spread fixed network - which might have helped the earlier adoption of the mobile there. A Korean study also pointed out that the mobile 32

Personal communication form Yoel Raban at an e-Living presentation There are also questions about connect agreements between the operators which we see with regard to early Multi-media messaging services (MMS). 34 Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, UK 33

was popular because in the rapidly developing Korean economy there had never been enough fixed phones to satisfy demand, nor enough public phones 35 (Kim, 2002). 5. In the qualitative study of the Internet, compared to the other countries, the more limited use of credit-card and the underdevelopment of the mail-order business in Italy, largely because of the unreliability of the post, worked against the development of online shopping (Haddon, 1998b). Lastly, many national studies cite the role of particular events 36 . Sometimes these can help explain the results of studies of ICTs. For example, in one survey in Israel about ‘safety on the Internet’ parents were much more concerned that adults would use it to take advantage of children compared to a comparable study in the US. But it was pointed out by the researchers that this figure is particular high because of a wellpublicised events in Israel whereby an Israeli teenagers made contact with someone on-line and was lured to his death in a Palestinian attack (reported in Haddon, 2001).

4. Conclusions 4.1 Overview In this paper we have understood ‘culture’ as a set of commonly shared symbols, values, beliefs, and attitudes, and their translation into everyday social perceptions, behaviour and material artefacts. ‘Cultures’ can exist at numerous levels, both larger and smaller than the nation state. However, while this lays down some broad principles, we acknowledge early on that the boundaries of culture, and what counts as cultural is open to different interpretations. We have proceeded knowing that there are grey areas, and ones where there might be disagreement over using this label. Indeed, we have sometimes pointed out where this might happen. At one level, working on this report has itself been an exercise or a starting point for thinking about this issue of what counts as ‘cultural’ and where to draw boundaries. Although the focus of this paper has been on how culture influences the experience of ICTs, we started by briefly considering how factors which could be considered to be cultural themselves help to shape ICTs. We referred both two wider historical and theoretical debates but also to some concrete examples that illustrate this process in terms of (potentially) ‘cultural’ considerations shaping what is available in what forms, what content to be found accessible via ICTs, the regulation of use and control over the supply side, which may mean the blocking of ICTs or at least applying limitations to their spread and accessibility.

35

The same is true in many African countries today Citing particular events can also be a means to saying something about culture. For example, there are normally queues to use public phones in Korea. One study cites incident of a quarrel that broke out in such a queue leading to one person killing another (Kim, 2002). The point is, the anecdote reflects not just isolated case but is indicative of frustrations caused by the lack of infrastructure (i.e. public phones). 36

But then the main text attempted to systematically chart the many elements that have been identified as cultural influences and show the diverse ways in which they influenced the experience of ICTs 37 . These discussions are summarised below.

37

On the whole, we have not attempted to consider the effects of ICTs on cultural differences.

4.2 Overview of cultural factors Social structure Factor

Notes

Degree of Homogeneity Extent to which egalitarian. Communication patterns with the outside world

This section employed largely historical analysis and referred to general claims, but an example illustrated how this has been employed in analysis of ICT take-up. Most clearly seen due to migration, although there were historical examples of attempts to control that communication Not so much the familiar socio-demographic category for showing different patterns. Rather appreciating the cultural dimensions of gender: it is experienced differently in different cultures. While this has an influence any ‘cultural’ dimension is made complicated by the fact that there are many factors at work shaping ICT related decisions Through studies of the elderly: how values and orientations, which could have a bearing upon ICT use, were influenced by earlier life experiences. Cultural in terms of macro, long term analysis, looking at the imprint it has made on wider society values and perceptions. These partly reflect cultural values. Literacy here signifies not only language skills but the spread of more general competences. Especially in relation to the dominance of English and the advantage this gives to English speakers in a number of ways

Gender

Ethnicity

Generational culture

Religion

Education provision and the support for literacy Language

Temporal structures of daily life Factor Subjective experience of time Societal time use structures Cultural expectations about time

Notes For example, in terms of cultural differences in perception of time stress. These can have a bearing upon how and when we use ICTs, for example, when we communicate As exemplified by norms of communication and the rigidity of the boundaries between work and leisure times

Values Factor

Notes

Openness to technological innovation

This has been reflected in company policies about trial markets. We also considered the traits of different stages of users identified in diffusion that could be considered to be cultural. This has been picked out in particular studies of ICTs in different countries, although the somewhat contrasting claims made show that identifying the features of ones own ‘culture’ can be problematic.

The degree to which societies are individualistic or grouporientated, including family-oriented Other cultural values

Other values that have been identified and how these have been used in ICTs research

Communication Factor Communication patterns and expectations Low and high context cultures

Notes These go some way to understanding, for example, ICT use and reactions to that use in public spaces Whether the ‘context’ is high or low influences the degree to which points have to be made explicit, or whether they are implictly understood

Material culture Factor Spatial considerations (Especially the ruralurban division)

National differences in housing characteristics Artefacts

Notes These can influence the experience of ICTs in myriad ways, although here this discussion also provided many examples underlining the fact that the influences at work may not be usually thought of as ‘cultural’. But some may be considered partly cultural, as in the mobility patterns and there implications for ICTs and expectations of how relationships are managed at a distance Sze, the privacy they afforded household members and their facilities were shown to have a variety of effects on ICT use Artefacts, including ICTs, and settings into which ICTs have to fit, possess symbolic meanings, reflected in discussions of fashions and cultural tastes

Although not covered in these summary notes, in the main text above we examined other factors that can shape national differences in the diffusion and use of ICTs, which may not normally be seen as ‘cultural’.

4.3 What ‘cultural’ factors can influence If these are the influences under this broad heading of ‘culture’, what dimensions of how we experience ICTs do they influence? Types of influence The adoption of ICTs

The usage of ICTs

Example The take-up of I-MODE in Japan. We also considered various historical examples of the more general diffusion of ICTs within and between societies e.g. telephone diffusion in the rural US. In terms of how much they are used, the timing of use, what they are used for, what choices made and the styles of use

Cultural influences have a bearing upon other factors themselves shaping adoption and use The individual’s capability, in various senses, to use ICTs Interest in ICTs and familiarity with ICTs The symbolic meaning of ICTs Factors controlling or restricting the amount of use

Societal time and spatial structures in which people operate, being able to learn skills to use ICTs

Signalling cultural capital (what type of person one is) and lifestyle Slow diffusion of French telephony. Cutting communication with the outside world in the war.

Finally, the factors identified can influence: The nature of The use of ICTs in public places and reactions to this relationships to other people through the use of ICTs The nature of The norms concerning how we communicate and styles of communication through communication using ICTs ICTs

4.4 The uses of the report Primarily, the report can serve as a tool for making us sensitive to the wide range of ways in which factors conceptualised as cultural influence our experience of ICTs. As such, it can provide the basis for a kind of checklist to inform research, design, marketing decision-making (e.g. which market, what one has to do for that market), ICT policy-making etc.

The report shows how cultural factors can help our attempts to understand differences in national patterns of diffusion, such as in analysis of the digital divide between countries. Cultural differences become one consideration amongst others. The report indicates where cultural factors can help in understanding uneven patterns adoption, use etc within countries is of course important for policy makers, given concerns such as those around social exclusion and measures for promoting or supporting access to some ICTs innovations. The report reminds us that we have to ask about the specificity or generalisability of research conducted within a particular country. For example, if presenting to country specific research to an international audience, to what extent could those in other countries learn from it? To what extent might various factors, including cultural differences (but also the national histories of markets, the socio-demographic distribution of population, etc) mean that findings are more or less likely to be replicated elsewhere? The report shows how a consideration of cultural factors can help companies assess how much likely to be able to replicate the success of some ICTs innovations in other countries (as discussed whether the success of the Japanese i-Mode can be replicated in Europe ). The report sensitises us to some problems and issues around defining culture, some of the limits of 'cultural analysis and areas where we might need to develop our thinking further.

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