Culture and social computing

I’ve been writing for Jay Deragon about social computing and culture. It’s been good for me since I’ve not written an academic style article for some time, and its given me an opportunity to immerse myself in Hofstede again and return me to my cross-cultural psychology roots.

Ultimately, it seems social computing is something of a pan-cultural phenomenon. Of the 6.5 billion people living on the planet, 1 billion use the internet, and some 0.5 billion report using social computing tools. Interestingly enough, though, different cultures have different levels of uptake of this medium. Why?

If you account for socio-economic factors, and look at access to high-speed internet services, the developing countries like Korea, Brazil, China and Mexico, have a rate of uptake of social computing that is still faster than those developed countries like the USA, Canada and the UK. Therefore, access to technology is not the only factor in getting people to use social computing tools. Culture seems to have something to do with it as well.

Luckily, when it comes to looking at comparing and differentiating aspects of culture, we have Hofstede [1] to look toward for some guidance. When using his measures to describe cultures, particularly the Individualism/Collectivism index and the Power-Distance index, and graphing developing and developed countries against these indexes, we get a clear picture of what is motivating different cultures to use social computing tools.

Overall, Collectivist developing countries usage of social networking sites is greater than that of Individualist developed countries: a result that is consistent with Hofstede’s definitions and his cultural dimensions index. This is because the Individualism/Collectivism dimension refers to the relative priority given to the person or the group (often the extended family). Collectivism, for example, includes:

• feeling of involvement in, and contribution to, the lives of others
• sharing of material benefits
• sharing of non-material resources
• willingness of the person to accept the opinions and views of others
• concern by a person about the effects of actions or decisions on others
• concern about self-presentation and loss of face
• belief in the correspondence of own outcomes with the outcomes of others

Whereas Individualism encompasses:

• personal independence
• uniqueness
• competition
• personal achievement and success
• introspection
• emphasis on internal attributes rather than other people’s opinions and indications

Developing countries who are less Individualist are more likely to use social networking websites (y = -0.916x + 71.214, R-squared = 0.5519). In contrast, in developed countries those who are more Individualist are more likely to use social networking websites (y = 0.3853x - 5.5885, R-squared = 0.692).In certain studies, both France and Germany are noted to have relatively low adoption of social networking sites. Given both have a score of approximately 70 on Individualism, these results confirms Kemp and others’ [2] research.

A possible reason for the opposite effect seen in Individualism is due to the interaction with Schwartz’s [3] Egalitarian Commitment factors, both of which are positively correlated with Hofstede’s Individualism. It may also be the result of another factor: Power-Distance.

When investigating Power-Distance, the results reflect an overall trend: as Power-Distance increases, use of social networking sites decreases. This is consistent with Hofstede’s definition when taking other cultural research on egality, like that of Basabe and Ros [4], into consideration.

For developing countries, those who are relatively low on Power-Distance (e.g. Korea) are more likely to use social networking sites, than those who are relatively high on Power-Distance (e.g. Mexico and China) (y = -1.4496x + 149.4, R-squared = 0.6884).

Developed countries show a similar relationship, with Power-Distance having a strong effect on use of social networking sites (y = -0.3718x + 40.335, R-squared = 0.7472).

These results show that all cultures use social networking sites, but that Collectivist cultures participation is higher overall than Individualist cultures. This is to be expected given the collectivist focus on group interaction and sharing and less on personal independence. It is likely, though, that strong social egalitarian traits within certain Individualist cultures, reflected as low Power-Distance, accounts for their usage.

The results also have implications for organisational culture and enterprise 2.0, particularly those workplaces like the Public Service that hold onto their high Power-Distance authoritarian structures. In a world where connecting to people is becoming more and more important, these results suggest large change management issues ahead when it comes time to put social computing tools onto the desktop.

M
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[1]. Hofstede, G. (1991). Cultures and organizations. Software of the mind. London: McGraw-Hill.

[2]. Kemp, M. B., Jaap Favier, J., Josh Bernoff, J., Bouquet, M., & Klevchuk, O. (2007) Europeans Have Adopted Social Computing Differently. Forrester Research. Media Release, 27 June. Online at: < http://www.forrester.com/ER/Press/Release/0,1769,1154,00.html>, accessed on 9 Sept 2007.

[3] Schwartz, S.H. (1994). Beyond individualism/collectivism: New cultural dimensions of values. In U. Kim, H.C. Triandis, C. Kagitcibasi, S. Choi, S., & G. Yoon, (Eds.), Individualism and collectivism: Theory, method and applications (pp. 85-119). Thousands Oaks, CA: Sage.

[4] Basabe, N. & Ros, M. (2005) Cultural dimensions and social behavior correlates: Individualism-Collectivism and Power-Distance. RIPS / IRSP, 18 (1), 189-225 © 2005, Presses Universitaires de Grenoble