What'S It Worth To You? The Costs And Affordances Of Cmc Tools To Asian And American Users

In recent years, a growing number of studies examining how culture shapes computer-mediated communication (CMC) have appeared in the CHI and CSCW literature. Findings from these studies reveal that cultural differences exist, but no clear underlying explanation can account for results across studies. We describe several limitations of the theoretical frameworks used to motivate many of the prior studies over the past decade, most notably the assumption that tasks and media used in these studies are perceived similarly by participants from different cultural backgrounds. We then describe an interview study in which we asked 22 participants from America, Korea, India and China about their perceptions of media and motivations for media choices in different hypothetical settings. The results suggest cultural differences in how media are perceived, specifically, that the ability for media to support social in addition to task processes is more important for participants from China, Korea and India than for participants from the U.S. We conclude with some recommendations for enhancing CMC theories to account for cultural differences.