Internet Culture through Web 2.0 and Social Networks
How a Global Culture Was Evolved in the CyberSpace
Apr 19, 2009
Culture change is known as a time-consuming process, and every nation (or society) has its own solid culture evolved in the course of eons. According to the significant differences in various cultures, the most difficult aspect of immigration is adopting to a new culture. In the past two decades, people around the globe immigrated to a new cyber land called internet. Although people come from significantly different cultures, but there is no major cultural conflict between the internet users.
It is not aimed to conclude any solid axiom about the internet culture here; instead, this article attempts to address some open issues in this context. In fact, there are some vague points, which can assist further development of the internet in a more effective manner, and lead us in better understanding of the human civilization and culture.
The Rise of Internet Culture
An independent culture was formed in the internet community by the rise of web 2.0. Before that, the internet was just a one-way medium for reporting information. Web 2.0 introduced several possibilities for mutual communication of people across the internet, such as forums, social networks, video blogs, etc. In this circumstance, people had chance to behave, and the public behavior is the heart of a culture.
Immigrants to the Internet
One may think that the united culture of internet is due to the fact the all users are foreign immigrants; thus there should be no predominant culture. However, it s hard to claim this, as still the most dominant users of the internet come from the United States (in addition to the fact that when the internet was commonly popular in the US, it was poorly developed in most of countries). Moreover, from the internet business point of view, the target destination for online companies is still United States (and few other developed countries like Canada, UK, etc).
This means that an online shop or a referral website should be designed based on the US culture for successful performance, since the most visitors (and indeed those whose visits are profitable for the website owner) are from the United States. However, the internet is a rapidly growing technology, and the webmasters normally deal with the technology limitations and available possibilities, rather than cultural issues.
Culture of Design
In spite of the technology limitations quoted above, there is always an open home for cultural considerations, namely design. Technically, any kind of design is now possible to create webpages with desirable shapes. One of the most important outlooks of culture is architecture, and any independent culture (e.g. any country) has its own characteristic architecture. Is there such national architecture in the internet too?
The simplest element of architecture is color, as can be easily applied to any object like webpages. For instance, the dominant color in the architecture of the Scandinavian countries (and also Scotland), which are known as the home of Gothic art (i.e. based on dark colors), is gray. As a result, it is expected to see such preferences from the users and websites of this region.
However, it seems that the internet users have adopted themselves to a united culture.
Behavioral Culture
The public communicating systems, particularly social networks, are the most important place for the appearance of the so-called internet culture. In addition to the word-based communications, new developments of social networks have provided numerous opportunities of virtual actions, such as sending flower. In the latter example, it is expected to see such action more in the nations, which in their culture flower has a special value; but is it the case and obvious in the social networks activities?
Surely, such conclusions need subtle statistical research of people behaviors in social networks and generally across the internet; but apparently such cultural influences are not obvious in the internet. In any case, these are very important issues for both the internet development and social sciences, but unfortunately they are usually ignored.
