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Filipp Sapienza

Cultural Dimensions of Chinese and Chinese-American Websites

English | 中文

The importance of Chinese culture is growing within the US. Researchers of communication, usability, and electronic media have taken note of these developments and are directing their attention to Chinese interaction on and with the World Wide Web (see Ding 2011; Barnum 2011; Xia 2007). This brief report presents data collected from a recent content analysis comparing Chinese and Chinese-American web sites.

The project examines Chinese web sites through a cultural values approach that is a growing trend in studies of culture and electronic media (Singh and Pereira 2005; Lee and Choi 2007). Cultural values research uncovers universal dimensions and attitudes present in all societies (Hofstede 2001). These dimensions have been shown to connect with, if not guide, communicative habits, understandings, and social relations. Through numerically scaling the extent to which members of different cultures express the values, it becomes possible to explain how a given group acted in a communication situation, and from there, create communication that is more effective for culturally diverse groups. As with the prior research on cross-cultural situations, the present project utilizes the cultural dimensions approach because the dimensions can provide a generic standard through which to interpret the cultural values of a website.

Method of Analysis

Six paid coders were recruited as they responded to flyers posted at a university. The coders were asked to examine and rate six websites divided into two topical domains: government services sites and food/recipe sites. The specific sites were selected by the researcher in consultation with native speakers, who served as experts from the Chinese culture.

Three websites from each topical domain were selected: one American site in English, one Chinese site written in Chinese, and one site written for people who consider themselves as belonging to both the US and Chinese cultures. This last group of sites has elsewhere been called "translocal" in nature (Sapienza 2001) and is comprised of sites written by and for transnationals, immigrants, and others who have migrated from one society to another. Sites were limited to the topics of government and food to better account for the impact of subject matter on the cultural perceptions of a site (that is, the fact that a website might have a particular topical theme might significantly override certain cultural elements given user preferences). Sites were mirrored onto a Linux server using the HTTRACK application to ensure that coders were working with the same versions of sites over the multi-month duration of the study.

The six coders included those who knew Chinese or had Chinese heritage. More specifically, within this group of six, further demographic subdivisions were implemented in order to offset coding biases based on gender or ethnic background. Thus, the group was further subdivided accordingly:

Efforts were made to ensure that coders shared a similar conceptual understanding of the task and could properly complete the coding instrument. Prior to coding, coders were given a common training packet written in English and translated into Chinese and provided a live on-site training session. Coding sessions took place in two to three hour uninterrupted sessions in a user testing laboratory on a university campus. A coding instrument based on that developed by Singh and Pereira (2005 58-60) was developed and provided in both Chinese and English for each coder. This instrument was used because the prior research by Singh and Pereira indicates that it has been tested for validity, accuracy, and reliability.

After the training, a set of dimensions on sites similar to those actually coded were evaluated to establish inter-rater reliability. The metric was calculated using a percentage agreement method suggested in the literature (Goodwin 2001) and used by Singh and Pereira, the creators of the coding rubric (2005 62). The reliability for Chinese sites was 66 percent. Although this figure represents an acceptable level of reliability for this type of study (see Singh and Baack 2004), two caveats must be considered. First, the HTTRACK mirroring software was only able to partially mirror one of the Chinese websites used in the training of coders. Some portions included advertisements and embedded graphics from third-party servers that could not be adequately mirrored. As a result, some components of the website(s) changed from coder to coder and session to session. Second, the current study used percentage agreement in order to preserve historical continuity with prior research (specifically that conducted by Singh and Pereira); however, the percentage agreement method is increasingly being set aside in favor of other methods (such as Krippendorff’s alpha). Readers are advised to consider these limitations while interpreting the data as well as follow up with recent literature about inter-rater reliability statistics.

Outcomes

Website ratings were compared with country classification scores based on a study conducted by Fernandez, Carlson, Stepina and Nicholson (1997). The Fernandez et al. study updated data from Hofstede’s own work but included data from China. Scores from the study were compared and then standardized according to a formula that rendered a dimension as follows: a negative score indicates one side of the dimension, while a positive score corresponds to the opposite side of the dimension. For example, the dimensions of Collectivism and Individualism were folded into one linear metric, Collectivism-Individualism, where a negative score such as -1.0 reflects collectivism and a positive score such as 1.0 reflects individualism. The country dimension scores provided in the study by Fernandez et al. are represented in Table 1.

Scores from the current project were collected (see Table 2) and standardized according to the same formula provided by the Fernandez study (1997 46). Note that the Fernandez study evaluated four dimensions of culture, leaving out the dimension of “Low/High context.” Although data from the current study of websites includes coder scores related to context, the actual country score is generally represented in prior literature as a categorical rather than continuous variable (Hall 1976).

Score Proximity to Chinese and/or American Culture

Comparing the strength or weakness of a particular cultural influence on a culturally heterogeneous website can partially be ascertained through numerical differentiation of the dimension scores. A qualitiative comparison of specific cultural thematics might be attempted to uncover these characteristics in greater depth and fidelity, but the outcomes may be difficult to verify. For example, it may be the case that the Chinese-American sites have more Chinese than American symbols, but the importance of those symbols to users is debatable and requires some latitudinal standardization. What counts as culturally significant between any two individuals nearly always involves contestation and negotiation.

The cultural dimensions can represent a somewhat universal standard applicable across cultures that can be used to benchmark whether a site is more Chinese or American along a particular dimension. Such analysis can be augmented with expert analysis as to the importance of specific symbols on a website. A limitation of the current project is that it lacks this follow-up analysis.

Numerical dimension comparisons are established by taking the absolute value of the difference between the Chinese-American and country/website score, and then comparing the differences. For example, subtracting the collectivist/individualist dimension on the Chinese-American website score from the collectivist/individualist Chinese country score yields a value of 0.37. Subtracting the Chinese-American website score from the American country score yields 2.11. Since there is a greater value (distance) between the Chinese-American and American country score than the Chinese-American and Chinese country score, we can conclude that along the collectivist/individualist dimension, the website is culturally closer to China than America. Tables 3 and 4 display the complete results of this analysis along two lines: (1) whether a website, by virtue of dimension scores, is closer to American or Chinese country scores; and (2) whether a website, by virtue of dimension scores, is closer to American or Chinese website scores, which may differ from the actual country scores.

Discussion

In a study of this kind, the predicted position of Chinese-American sites might reasonably be expected to fall between country scores on the dimensions. Contrary to this expectation, the data here indicate that the scores vary according to individual dimension, culture, and topic. Therefore it may not be accurate to assume that a website reflecting cultural dimensions from both Chinese and American societies be designed with an eye toward equally balancing content reflective of the two societies. Rather, it may be necessary to consider the impact and weight that particular symbols might have on the actual users of a site. This process requires usability practitioners to go beyond reliance of broad numerical models to include articulated and considered evaluations of website content by prospective users, a form of analysis missing from the current project. Additionally, in the case of multi-ethnic and/or immigrant groups, additional intervening identity issues impact usability preferences. As one example, generational and linguistic differences and attitudes are often highly sensitive among multi-ethnic and immigrant groups. A developer of websites for this group will need to be sensitive to these “third-variable” distinctions.

References

Barnum, C. (2011). What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate: How Cultural Factors Affect Online Communication between East and West. In St. Amant, K. and Sapienza, F. Culture, Communication, and Cyberspace: Rethinking Technical Communication for International Online Environments. Amityville, NY: Baywood Press.

Ding, D. (2011). Pleasure in Naming All the Parts of the Known in Their Expected Order: How Traditional Chinese Agrarian Culture Influences Modern Chinese Cyberspace Communication. In St. Amant, K. and Sapienza, F. Culture, Communication, and Cyberspace: Rethinking Technical Communication for International Online Environments. Amityville, NY: Baywood Press.

Fernandez, D., Carlson, D., Stepina, L., and Nicholson, J. (1997). Hofstede’s Country Classification 25 Years Later. The Journal of Social Psychology 137 (1), 43-54.

Goodwin, L. (2001). Interrater Agreement and Reliability. Measurement in Physical Education and Exercise Science 5 (1), 13-34.

Hall, E.T. (1976). Beyond culture. Garden City, NY: Anchor.

Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s consequences: International differences in work-related values. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Lee, W. and Choi, S. (2007). Classifying Web Users: A Cultural Value-Based Approach. In St. Amant, K. Linguistic and Cultural Online Communication Issues in the Global Age. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Sapienza, F. (2001). Nurturing Translocal Communication: Russian Immigrants on the World Wide Web. Technical Communication 48 (4), 435-448.

Singh, N. and Baack, D. (2004). Web Site Adaptation: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of U.S. and Mexican Web Sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 9(4).

Singh, N. and Pereira, A. (2005). The Culturally Customized Web Site. Oxford UK: Elsevier.

Xia, Y. (2007). Intercultural Computer-Mediated Communication Between Chinese and U.S. College Students. In St. Amant, K. Linguistic and Cultural Online Communication Issues in the Global Age. Hershey: IGI Global.