Читать книгу An Introduction to Intercultural Communication - Fred E. Jandt - Страница 53

As you can see in the model of communication presented earlier, communication symbols can be verbal and nonverbal. While translation technology may deal to some extent with the verbal symbols, there remain the nonverbal. Research has demonstrated that culture is reflected in the nonverbal aspects of the Internet. Singh, Zhao, and Hu (2003) assert that “the web is not a culturally neutral medium,” because websites contain unique design elements that give “country-specific websites a look and feel unique to the local culture” (p. 63). Design elements include different icons, colors, and site structures (Barber & Badre, 1998). Schmid-Isler (2000) compared Western and Chinese Internet news sites and found that their layout is different. She contended that this difference is related to culturally influenced perceptions of information storage and display. For example, Google has clean lines and uncluttered “negative space.” Chinese web users are accustomed to pop-ups and floating banner ads. Chinese webpages are “packed with information and multimedia graphics, requir[ing] many scroll-downs to see the whole page” (Clark, 2016, p. 166). In contrast, Google seems static and dull to Chinese web users.