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Cultural Attitudes Towards Technology and Communication

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Date: Tue, 23 Sep 1997 08:34:31 -0500 (CDT) From: Charles Ess

[...]

CALL FOR PAPERS: CATaC 98

CULTURAL ATTITUDES TOWARDS TECHNOLOGY AND COMMUNICATION Special Issue: Electronic Journal of Communication/La Revue Electronique de Communication International Conference: CATAC '98, 1-3, August 1998, National Museum of Science and Industry, London, UK

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) networks, such as the Internet and the World Wide Web, offer tantalizing possibilities of global communications. If such communications facilitate dialogues which both cross and preserve irreducible cultural and political boundaries, they may contribute immeasurably to greater global understanding and democratization. But diverse cultural attitudes towards technology and communication also issue in culturally distinctive ways of implementing and using CMC technologies. Some of these culturally-grounded differences in implementation and use frustrate, rather than facilitate, hopes for greater global communication.

Our thematic question: how do diverse cultural attitudes shape the implementation and use of CMC technologies?

We seek to respond to this question by bringing together, in a special journal issue, international conference, and likely book publication, papers which articulate the connections between specific cultural values and present and/or possible future communicative practices involving CMC technologies. We seek articles which, taken together, will help readers, researchers, and practitioners of computer-mediated communication - especially in the service of "electronic democracy" - better understand the role of diverse cultural attitudes as hindering and/or furthering the implementation of global computer communications systems such as the Internet and the World Wide Web.

The conference brings together presenters from throughout the world who will provide diverse perspectives - both in terms of the specific culture(s) they highlight in their presentations, and in terms of the discipline(s) through which they approach the conference themes:- Communicative attitudes and practices in diverse industrialized countries - i.e., whose infrastructure and economic resources are roughly comparable, but whose cultural attitudes and communicative practices may differ.- Communicative attitudes and practices in industrialized and industrializing countries, including attention to: the role of gender in cultural expectations regarding appropriate communicative behaviors; how different cultures cope with information overload, and with more information (= more knowledge?) of other cultures.- Emerging uses of CMC technologies to preserve local languages/cultures over against a prevailing, homogeneous/homogenizing "Internet Culture," - vis-a-vis the isolation of those who have access to the highly technological resources of CMC environments from "marginalized" communities in both developed and developing societies.- East/West cultural attitudes and communicative practices.- "The Politics of the Electronic Global Village" - how far do CMC technologies "democratize" (meaning?) and how far do they help preserve more hierarchical regimes/cultures?

PRELIMINARY PROGRAM

Saturday, August 1 9:00 First session: Communication in Industrialized Cultures Presenter/chair: Herbert Hrachovec (Philosophy, Vienna), "New Kids on the Net" Mike Sandbothe (Philosophy, Magdeburg) "American Pragmatism and the Internet" Fay Sudweeks (Key Centre of Design Computing, Dept of Architectural and Design Science, University of Sydney, Australia, "Group Consciousness and Collaborative Work" Lucienne Rey (TA-Programm, Switzerland), "Attitudes towards Technology and Communication across the Multiple Cultures of Switzerland" 11:00 Break 11:30 Respondant/Discussion 12:30 Lunch 14:00 Second session: Communication in Industrializing / Capitalizing Countries Chair: Fay Sudweeks Additional papers to be selected 16:00 Break 16:30 Respondant/Discussion (ca. 1 hr)

Sunday, August 2 9:00 Third session: Homogeneity, Marginalization, and the Preservation of Local Cultures Chair: Sheizaf Rafaeli (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Papers to be selected 11:00 Break 11:30 Respondant/Discussion 12:30 Lunch 14:00 Fourth Session: The Politics of the Electronic Global Village Chair: Charles Ess Ian Connell (University of Wolverhampton, UK), "European Policy and Political Use of Information and Communications Technology" Antje Gimmler (Marburg University), "The Internet, the Public Sphere, and Individual and Group Identity" Additional papers to be selected 16:00 Break 16:30 Respondant/Discussion

19:00 Conference Dinner

Monday, August 3 9:00 Fifth session: East/West cultural attitudes and communicative practices Chair/presenter: Ang Peng Hwa (Nanayang Technological University, Singapore). "Internet Censorship in Asia and the Pacific Rim" James Dew (Beijing) "Chinese and English conceptions of privacy and the Internet" Sunny Yoon, "Computerization and Education in Korea" Additional papers to be selected 11:00 Break 11:30 Respondant/discussion 12:30 Lunch 14:00-17:00 Conference plenary, closing remarks: Philosophers and Communication Theorists in Dialogue

Sponsoring institutions and organizations:

Communication & Technology Division, International Communication Association; The Communication Technology Policy Section, International Association for Media & Communication Research; Javnost-The Public, the journal of the European Institute for Communication and Culture (Ljubljana, Slovenia); The National Museum of Science and Industry (the Science Museum), London, UK The Korea Society, publisher of The U.S.-Korea Review; Philosophy East and West: a Quarterly of Comparative Philosophy, affiliated with the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy; Technology Assessment Programm, Switzerland.

All submissions will be peer-reviewed by an international panel of scholars and researchers. The special issue of the Electronic Journal of Communication/La Revue electronique de Communication (EJC/ReC) will appear in the third quarter of 1998. For additional information on this project, visit our Web sites:

Submissions to the special issue with an abstract, are due to the guest editor, Dr. Charles Ess, by November 1, 1997. For more information, please contact Dr Charles Ess, .

Submissions to the conference are due to the co-chair, Fay Sudweeks, by 1 November 1997. For more information, please contact Fay Sudweeks, . ```

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