Navel gazing predicts blogging behaviour

In past posts, I’ve looked at various aspects of motivation that influence people and their adoption of social computing tools. Originally, this was influenced by Andrew Boyd’s post on Maslow and meeting social needs. More recently, though, I’ve been looking at Hofstede’s cultural dimensions — Individualism, Collectivism, Power-Distance, etc — and asking the question, “how does culture affect use of social computing tools?” When writing my recent article on this topic, I was looking at descriptions of Individualism and wondered whether it specifically influences blogging behaviour.

Oyserman, Coon and Kemmelmeier [1] showed that core aspects of Individualist beliefs include:

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

It was introspection in particular that started me thinking, “is this why people blog?” Do Individualist beliefs motivate people to gaze away at their proverbial navels?

Andrew’s lean on this was toward achievement and success, saying that his “pick for Maslow’s sustainable motivator of choice for bloggers is Esteem”.

Kimando, though, thinks introspection is behind her musings:

“I have felt that I have nothing much that I want to write about. This is bad not because I delude myself to think that anyone is depending on me writing in my little blog but because the introspection that I do while blogging is good for me.”

I agree with Kimando — introspection drives my blogging behaviour and I suspect the majority of others’ behaviour.

This may suggest that, for those cultures high on the Collectivism index, the networking building aspect is what drives them. This is certainly the activity we see reflected in Korea and their use of websites like CyWorld — where 90% of Korean’s under the age of 20 are said to have accounts. For those cultures high on the Individualism index, though, blogging might well be more their preferred activity.

So, what drives your blogging behaviour? Or even your other social computing habits? And does it reflect your countries cultural dimensions?

M

—-

[1] Oyserman, D., Coon, H.M. & Kemmelmeier, M. (2002). Rethinking Individualism and Collectivism: Evaluation of Theoretical assumptions and meta-analyses. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 3-72.

Individualism, Power-Distance, and social computing

Last post I wrote about some research and social computing, specifically using Hofstede’s cultural dimensions to predict usage of social computing. The latest research from Forrester backs up the stats. In certain studies, both France and Germany are noted to have relatively low adoption of social networking sites in relation to the UK.

When comparing France and the UK on the Individualism and Power-Distance indexes, and looking at their use of social computing tools, as reported by recent Ipos data, we can see how they compare.

I figured I’d also put Sweden in because Forrester makes mention of it with the UK when comparing it to France and Germany. And Australia, well it’s there because I’m Australian and I’m curious to see how it rates.

Through this we can see that countries high on Individualism, but low on Power-Distance, have an increased probability of using social networking sites. From my previous post, this chance for developed countries is y = 0.3853x - 5.5885 (R-squared = 0.692) on the Individualism index and y = -0.3718x + 40.335 (R-squared = 0.7472) on the Power-Distance index. So, what sort of numbers would we expect from countries like Sweden or Australia?

Sweden is lower on Power-Distance than the UK (31 compared to 35) and so would have an approximate usage of 28.8% — slightly higher than the UK’s 28%. Australia has a Power-Distance index of 36 and would therefore have an approximate social computing usage of 22% of its population. Both are higher than France’s 18% and German’s 19%.

Using the Individualism index reveals similar trends, with Sweden approximately 22% and Australia 29% predicted usage.

I think all I need now is some actual research data to play with.

M

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
—
[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