ICTs and Digital Culture: A comparative study of South Korea and the U.S.

Sung Jin Park and Raul Lejano
(Department of Planning, Policy, and Design)

The proposed research will investigate how communities “acculturate” around ICTs. Efficiency of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) usage as well as legibility of ICTs to potential users are the important aspects in implementing information policies. Recently, the digital divide has been highlighted as a critical issue in the cultural assimilation of ICTs.  In spite of limited government budgets, many proponents of ICTs, especially in developing nations, tend to focus solely on increasing physical availability of ICTs hoping acculturation, and economic and social benefits, will somehow follow as a matter of course. This overlooks the importance of information policies necessary for making ICTs culturally accessible, as well as the social-cultural adaptation necessary for promoting the efficient use of the ICTs. The research sees the quality of electronic information resources as a critical determinant of efficient IT usage at the individual level. The research will address how cultural differences act in concert with the degree of openness and quality of digital resources generated by the government, and how it influences individual behavior toward IT use by examining two leading ICT proponents, South Korea and the United States.

First Person Sharpshooters: A Study of Console FPS Players

Morgan Romine (PhD student, Department of Anthropology)

The goal of this project is to expand the body of knowledge of sociality in online games to include the players and interactions of console games. Thus far, the majority of research done about online gaming has focused on massively multiplayer online computer games. Rather than investigating the online communities in PC-based games, this study focuses on the players of multiplayer First Person Shooter games that are played on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console using the Xbox Live online networking system. Players will be asked to participate in a web survey consisting of questions covering basic demographic information and their online play experience, and game companies will hopefully provide certain in-game statistics. Ideally, these player surveys and the associated research interactions will provide both quantitative data and ethnographic accounts that can be compared to results of other online gaming surveys and referenced for future assessments of online communities.

Xbox gamers

Facebook: Semiotics and Identity among Generation 1.5 Chinese Immigrants

Yen-Lin Chou (PhD student, Department of Education)

The current study aims to better understand how the use of Facebook is interrelated with collegiate-level generation 1.5 Chinese immigrant students’ language development and identity formation. Recent years have seen increased attention given to the ways computer-mediated communication (CMC) affects language learners’ trajectories of language practices in social contexts and cultural identity developments (Black, 2008; Lam, 2004). However, few empirical studies have explored the relationship between Facebook and immigrant students’ online literacies, social interactions, and cultural identity representations. It is believed that the digital composition of Facebook allows users to generate not only linguistic forms but also visual images (e.g. photos and video and audio clips), which increase their meaningful transmissions in on-line communications, especially across potential language and ethnic barriers. In order to address this gap, this study will examine four, collegiate-level generation 1.5 Chinese immigrant students’ literacy and social practices on Facebook. Qualitative research methods, such as semi-structured interviews, direct/unstructured observations, and collection of physical artifacts (e.g. field notes, Internet data, and interview translations and transcriptions) will be used. The purpose of this research study is to better understand how college-age generation 1.5 Chinese immigrant students use the multimodal (image, text, sound, space, movement) functions of Facebook to communicate, express themselves, and represent their identities.