Description
The increasingly global nature of the World Wide Web presents new challenges and opportunities for technical communicators who must develop content for clients or colleagues from other cultures and in other nations. As international online access grows, technical communicators will encounter a range of challenges related to culture and communication in cyberspace. These challenges include how to design content and develop services for online distribution to a culturally diverse audience of users; how to address cultural and linguistic factors effectively when collaborating with international colleagues and clients via online media; and how to develop effective online teaching and training practices and materials for use in learning environments comprised of culturally diverse groups of students. The contributors to Culture, Communication and Cyberspace examine these challenges through chapters that explore the different aspects of international online communication. The contributing authors use a range of methodologies to review a variety of topics related to culture and communication in cyberspace. In so doing, the authors also examine how business trends, such as international outsourcing, content management, and the use of open source software (OSS), are affecting and could change practices in the field of technical communication as related to online cross-cultural interactions.
Table of Contents
Culture, Cyberspace, and the New Challenges for Technical Communicators Kirk St.Amant
SECTION I: THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION IN CYBERSPACE
CHAPTER 1
Using Global Contexts to Localize Online Content for International Audiences R. Peter Hunsinger
CHAPTER 2
Making the User the Localization Expert: Employing User-Customization Strategies in Globalizing Online Content Clinton R. Lanier
CHAPTER 3
Optimizing International Information Systems Matthew McCool
CHAPTER 4
Cyberspace, International Intellectual Property Law, and Rhetoric Martine Courant Rife
SECTION II: ONLINE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN CULTURES
CHAPTER 5
Pleasure in Naming All the Parts of the Known in Their Expected Order: How Traditional Chinese Agrarian Culture Influences Modern Chinese Cyberspace Communication Daniel D. Ding
CHAPTER 6
What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate: How Cultural Factors Affect Online Communication Between East and West Carol M. Barnum
CHAPTER 7
Meeting Each Other Online: Corpus-Based Insights on Preparing Professional Writers for International Settings Boyd Davis, Tsui-ping Chen, Hui-fang Peng, and Paul Blewchamp
SECTION III: CROSS-CULTURAL COLLABORATIONS AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
CHAPTER 8
Virtual Design Studio: Facilitating Online Learning and Communication Between U.S. and Kenyan Participants Audrey Bennett, Ron Eglash, and Mukkai Krishnamoorthy
CHAPTER 9
Cultural Adaptation of Cybereducation Judith B. Strother
CHAPTER 10
Digital Ecologies: Observations of Intercultural Interactions in Learning Management Systems Sipai Klein and Sharon Trujillo Lalla
Meet the Contributors
Index
Index
