Traveling Without Moving

1
Traveling Without Moving

• Foreign news and boundary-crossing in Cyberspace
• Jeremy Edwards
• University of Texas at Austin

2
The Online World

• Its now easier than ever to find foreign
  media/cultural products on the Internet
• The online world has its own geography of
  cultures and nations--just like the real world
• What happens when people travel virtually over
  the Internet? How can we think about this
  phenomenon?

3
Diaspora in Cyberspace

• Anderson (1991) Nations as imagined
  communities thru print media
• Thompson (2002) Visual vs. print
• Mitra (1997) Web sites exclude some people and
  welcome others
• Boczkowski (1999) expats overtly express
  cultural ideas taken for granted at home

4
Boundary Crossing

• Halavais (2000) National boundaries re-created
  on the Internet
• Need a concept that covers both virtual and
  real-world boundaries
• (Though really, all boundaries are virtual)
• Information or cultural product is traveling,
  even if a person isnt

5
Acculturation, real and virtual

• Acculturation/socialization related to long-term,
  regular, non-threatening interpersonal
  communication
• Melkote Liu (2000) Chinese grad students
  going home over the Internet
• Increased behavioral acculturation
• Decreased value acculturation

6
Online Survey, November 2003

• 790 American college students are they
  boundary-crossers?
• 92 have traveled abroad
• 49 use the Internet to communicate
  internationally
• 20 read foreign news websites
• Three different groups, or just one?

7
Boundary-crossers are travelers

• Foreign news readers are people who have already
  been abroad
• Traveling to more countries--gt more likely to
  read foreign news
• Same relationship, but weaker, for travel --gt
  international communication

8
Travelers
OOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOO OOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
O O O
OO
OOO OOO
Foreign News Readers
O O

Communicators
O O
O O
9
Liberalization?

• Travelers, communicators, foreign-news readers
  are all more liberal than non-boundary-crossers
• but only if they are 25-and-under
• Alwin Krosnick (1991) 25-and-unders most
  likely to change political identity

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A map for boundary crossing

• Travel abroad
• Acculturation takes place
• Return home
• Media used to reinforce/revisit/expand travel
  experience
• In impressionable years, liberalization takes
  place too

11
Issues/Problems/Questions

• 92 Travelers representative sample?
• Liberal/Conservative maybe an oversimplification
  of acculturation--but something is going on
• Are online travelers traveling to new places,
  or going home to places theyve already been?
• Other types of boundary crossing?

12
Questions and, perhaps, answers