As previously mentioned I am now enjoying a month of vacation. Apart from checking my e-mail every now and then, I’m trying my best to stay off-line . Please tune in again in the middle of August for more regular blog updates.

Stephanie and I had the pleasure of being on the same panel as Lisbeth Klastrup and Elmine Wijnia when giving our presentation yesterday. Our presentations were all related, even if we used different terminology and different approaches. In our presentation, Steph and I focused on presence in blogs, arguing that presence is important in any type of communicative environment, and that a high level of presence and co-presence in blogs will allow for lively and involved interaction. We made a distinction between event blogs, in which interaction becomes close to immediate, and general blogs, which are largely asynchronous in terms of interaction with other users, and talked about how different types of presence can be achieved in these different types of environments by implementing Fauconnier’s theory of mental spaces. Lisbeth also talked about immediacy in blogging, and discussed how simulated immediacy may be enough in this type of ìlive-writingî, comparing this to similar trends in e.g. television. She showed how linguistic cues can be used to accomplish this, namely deictic references (e.g. the use of adverbials such as ënowí and ëhereí). Deixis is important also in relation to presence, something which I discussed in my D- essay (a comparatively short masterís thesis). Elmine presented some findings from her masterís thesis, and among other things she touched upon the importance of truthfulness in communication, and argued that by adding an about page in your blog will help put communication in context. This issue was further discussed in the panel, where Lisbeth argued that the importance of the about page is probably more noticeable in a business network than in a social one. I agree with Elmine and Lisbeth that there are certain circumstances under which communication and networking certainly benefit from explicitly including this information (I often quickly try to identify the about page when encountering a new blog myself). However, I also believe that by looking at content and style of the blogging posts, you should be able to judge whether or not to trust the person youíre conversing with. All in all, I think our presentations complemented each other quite well, and I hope to be able to continue discussions.

Being in Vienna for BlogTalk, I had the opportunity to attend BlogWalk, an informal, open space gathering for people theorizing around blogs. The theme for this particular gathering was social networking through blogs. Not having read a whole lot on social networking myself, I had two main expectations on the event: 1) to discuss how and if networks can be developed and sustained through blogs only, and 2) to get a chance to more seriously start working on my own blogging network, by making new contacts and strengthening old ones.

Based on my own experiences of blogging, reflected in the almost non-existent network which could be associated with my blog, I was interested in finding out if anyone had actually developed strong ties with others through blogging conversation only. I had an opportunity to discuss this with Elmine Wijnia, who is researching blog communication and bases her work on Habermas’ theories. She agreed that blog interaction often is not enough if we want to develop strong and personal relationships, and made a good point about how important the personal tone is when judging whether a blog relationship is worth pursuing. Multiple communication channels as well as/or f2f meetings are very important in this context. Also, I would argue that blogs are an efficient way of maintaining contact with people youíve met f2f, for instance at conferences, and that this could help sustain social networks. This is the direction Iíll be taking as regards expectation nr 2) above.

Steph and I are enjoying ourselves here in Vienna. The weather is great, and we have met lot’s of nice people with interesting ideas. I will summarize some of my impressions at a later stage. We gave our presentation before lunch, and apart from speaking a bit too fast (we had to squeeze in a lot in 20 minutes) and from showing slides that turned out to be a bit too dark, things went well. You can find our slides here and our handout here. Steph is doing a great job liveblogging large parts of the conference and moblogging our trip, so I suggest you take a look over there. (I didn’t bring a laptop with me, but don’t mind being able to focus all my attention on the presentations…)

Among the participants at CATaC’04, 28 countries from all continents were represented. A great diversity was also found in the different academic backgrounds of the participants, which was apparent in the range of topics presented. Several of the presentations have been relevant to me, even if they perhaps weren’t directly connected to what I do.

Elisabeth W¸rtz from the IT University in Copenhagen presented an analysis of cultural differences found in the images used on McDonalds websites in different countries. She made use of Hofstede’s theory on cultural dimensions, and found several correlations between this theory and the material analyzed. However, it is apparent how difficult it is to identify the cause of these patterns. Do these adverts really represent the culture of the people, or could it be that the adverts display these specific characteristics because the company itself believes that these are cultural preferences, which, in their view then, should make them sell more burgers? It should also be noted that Hofstede’s theory was heavily criticized by some during the conference. For instance, Anne Hewling from the Open University in UK argued that there are great disadvantages in that Hofstede’s theory focuses on national cultures. As alternatives, she presented Raybourn et.al.’s (2003) notion of the development of a ‘third’ culture online, and Street’s (1993) notion that ‘culture is a verb’; it is action and doing and is nothing fixed. These oppositions seem well-grounded to me. Nevertheless, if one is to be able to generalize at all, simplified models are needed, and I would have liked to see some more specific suggestions on how to go about analyses without using Hofstede’s dimensions. Apart from Hofstede, which in fact was used by many at the conference, another ‘H-word’ was also applied, questioned and discussed: Hall and his theories on culture. Waipeng Lee, Nanyang Technological University, used his notion of ‘polychronicity’ to explain the high level of media use in Singapore. This might be something for me to look into further, since it could be applicable in my planned research on multiplex discourse scenarios in connection with multi-tasking. Another interesting presentation, given by Mary Evans, University of Washington, Seattle, regarded whether the tone of English has become globalized due to internet. By analyzing the “about us” page on more than 350 web pages in 20 countries along the dimension of formality, this research group had come to the conclusion that outer circle countries use a more formal tone than inner circle, and thus, that English tone not yet has become globalized on the web. They saw a shortcoming in their study in that formality might be judged differently by people with different cultural backgrounds and that this had not been taken into account. To investigate whether this would be the case, they are now trying to find informants in different countries to let them judge what they perceive as formal tone and not. Most other papers with a linguistic focus dealt with issues of how and if the internet might be used to preserve endangered languages. What I found most interesting in these discussions was the problems of putting completley oral languages on the internet in written form, and the question of the usefulness of written resources if most speakers are illiterate. The presentation that perhaps was most closely related to what I’m planning was Kenneth Reeder and Jˆrg Roche’s on “Intercultural communication challenges in cyberspace”, with a focus on language learning. I hope to have time to blog about that later. The presentations reported on here only represent the part of the conference that most closely related to my own research interests. Some other themes included ICT and democracy, hybridization vs. homogenization and technological vs. social/cultural determinism. This too, I will have to save for a later time (probalby for an oral presentation in HUMlab in the fall).