Culture, Identity, and the Internet

Nils ZURAWSKI <zurawsk@uni-muenster.de>
Universität Münster
Germany

Abstract

Speaking of the Internet, culture and identity are two of the foremost subjects regarding its social aspects. And the most frequently asked question is "What does the Internet do to culture and identity?" This question certainly has its merits, but it reduces people and their cultures to somewhat willingless objects being altered by technology. Inverting the question into "What do culture and identity do to the Internet and its use?" may shed more light on the complex relation of cultural identity and the uses of technology.

The subject of such an approach is the people using modern communication technologies and their culture. This opens up various advantages for an analysis:

• Technology and its application can be viewed according to the daily life situations of people all across the world;
• The social and political structures that influence the power relations among individuals, groups, and governments can be addressed in order to better understand uses and perceptions of the Internet; and
• Finally, the people themselves can be asked about their motivation, goals, casual uses, and perceptions in regard to the Internet and its narratives.

In July and August 1997, I conducted a survey which was especially set up to examine these questions and to analyze the problems mentioned above. The questionnaire consisted of about 50 questions, addressing the status of the people's (immigrant -- "native") motivation to use and their actual use of the Internet as well as asking for an assessment of terms and general views about the Internet and its impact on global issues.

The study will be supplemented by several "rounds" of single additional questions for participants of the initial survey, based on the material derived from the analysis of the data received. This will take place during the first half of 1998.

The results contribute to the analysis of the relation of culture, identity, and the Internet. It is especially the people's potential to organize and act upon the premises of culture and identity, be that an ethnic, work, or gender-centered identity, that is of vital importance for future work. An analysis of these potentials is paramount for the development of strategies to empower groups and overcome existing inequalities by using modern communication technology such as the Internet. Any strategy to implement technologies has to be based on such "ethnological" data as well as on market analysis, which often does not account for cultural issues.

Contents

• Introduction
• Theoretical background and basic assumptions
• The questionnaire: design and intentions
• Results: evaluation, discussion, and context
  • a. Demographics
  • b. The Internet and self-organization
• Conclusions
• Notes

Introduction

Culture and identity are two of the foremost subjects when speaking about the Internet and its social aspects. But there seem to be only two views when it comes to the relation between technology, society, and culture at large: The Internet then is either bad or good for society and its culture in general. Both views, obviously the opposite sides of one coin, state a very deterministic view of technology; i.e., technology alone acts and changes societies and their cultures.

Therefore it is not surprising that one of the most frequently asked questions concerning the Internet is "What does the Internet do to a given culture and identity?"

This question certainly has its merits, but it reduces people and their cultures to somewhat willingless objects being affected and altered by technology. Inverting the question into "What do culture and identity do to/with the Internet and its use?" may shed more light on the relation between cultural identity and the uses of technology. I want to argue here that identity -- meaning "real" life identity -- is important for the uses and perceptions of the Internet. I therefore set up a survey which was to examine this relation and that is the focal point of this paper.

Theoretical background and basic assumptions

The primary assumptions for this survey were the self-organizing potential of the Internet and the actual use of it; i.e., that people use the Internet because of its excellence to discuss issues that affect their day-to-day lives and maybe organize along identities or lines of interest.

Other than prominent narratives tell, the Internet is not a place where identity plays little or no role at all, but is on the contrary a place where identity is important and provides a tool through which needs, problems, or issues related to identity (not only ethnic, but also gender, age, or class) may be articulated.

Earlier nonempirical, phenomenological research on ethnicity and the Internet showed that relations of this kind can be observed and have an important impact on how the Internet is used and developed.

Although the survey was focused on the Internet, its use, and significance, conclusions can also be drawn about the implications of the social and political backgrounds against which these processes take place. It is necessary to take this analysis beyond the Internet, as the inherent logic of the Internet and many of today's processes of social change originate in the same "global narrative."

The most important feature of this narrative is a "global-village ideology," which neglects national and regional borders as well as social, political, and economical frontiers. Along with this somewhat misconceived picture of today's world, differences, such as those that relate to cultural identity, are said to be nonexistent, or at best remnants of a premodern age. Differences should be kept to the private sphere and must not interfere with the politics of the public sphere. Ethnicity then has to be limited to folklore, such as performances for tourists, especially in the countries of the South, and is not seen as a way to live a self-determined life. Thus ethnic conflicts are also not recognized as the result of possible oppression or existing inequalities, but rather as archaic tribal sentiments, for which a market-driven "world village" has no room, let alone attention (the same can be said of other nonmainstream identities and cultures).

Identities other than those that can easily be incorporated into the mainstream politics of a global market economy will therefore be ignored and thus rendered virtually nonexistent. To me these seem to be rather dangerous politics, considering ethnic conflicts all over the globe and growing social unrest in many countries of the North.

Although this global-village-economy narrative promotes somewhat anarchistic models of "less state" and more private responsibility (reading corporate) and empowerment for all by means of the market, it is nonetheless a hegemonial ideology, whose beneficiaries are primarily a few big transnational corporations (TNCs) which are mostly situated in the North. On a political level, it can be stated that the North (Europe, US-America, and Japan) maintains its hegemonial power by way of this ideology.

The Internet can be seen as a result and a motor of this ideology, with the exception that it is to a great extent a truly self-organizing system, which is used as an alternative means of disseminating information and discourses on an equal-voice principle.

To assume, however, that the principle of equality of sending and receiving information renders inequalities of various kinds insignificant and invisible would be false and misleading. Quite to the contrary, these issues are an essential part of the Internet, as the social and political structures that influence the power relations among individuals, groups, and governments can be freely articulated there. Therefore, these issues have to be equally addressed in an analysis that aims for a better understanding of the uses and perceptions of the Internet. The survey tried to examine the relation between the Internet and the "outside world," of which the Internet is an integral part.

The subjects of my approach, however, were the users of modern communication technologies and their cultures themselves. This opens up great advantages for an analysis, for the actors themselves can be questioned about their evaluations, motivations, and assessments, which provides qualitative as well as quantitative data for the study.

The questionnaire: design and intentions

The survey took place over a two-month period between June and August 1997. It was aimed at Internet users and their motivations, goals, casual uses, and perceptions in regard to the Internet and its narratives. Therefore it was designed to proceed entirely on the Internet.

The questionnaire consisted of 61 questions divided into 5 sections and was advertised through individuals, which operated as multiplicators, mailing lists, and some Usenet-groups in the soc.culture hierarchy. The questionnaire was either sent to interested persons by e-mail on request or could be reached via the World Wide Web. Three different language versions -- English, French and German -- were available. Unfortunately I didn't do a Spanish version, which would have opened up the survey to many people in Latin America, as I learned during the phase of collecting the data.

The preparation of this survey took approximately 5 months and was based on prior theoretical and phenomenological research on the relation between identity, culture, and the Internet (see Zurawski 1996 and 1997) [1].

The division of the questionnaire was due to analytical purposes, i.e., different aspects of the above-mentioned relation as well as some general data about the users and their use of Internet services.

Part one asked for general demographical data, such as age, sex, occupation, educational degree, and some more specific data such as country of birth, nationality, and self-assigned ethnic group.

Part two posed questions on migration and cultural contacts. The part was divided into two sections according to the status of the respondee, i.e., if the persons or his/her parents had migrated to where they were living at the time of the survey or not. I assumed that the status of being a migrant (in the broadest sense -- i.e., studying, working abroad, etc.) may have an impact on people's perceptions of their own culture and its use on the Internet. As it would be ignorant to assume that nonmigrants live without contact with people in other regions of the world, similar questions were posed to them as well. The questions reflected this assumption. Section one dealt with the contacts of migrants to other immigrants in the host country and their personal experiences; section two dealt with the international contacts nonmigrants may have and the role the Internet plays in keeping these relationships alive.

Part three dealt explicitly with the relation of the Internet and issues of cultural identity. A first set of questions focused on the Internet use and the assessment of the medium's effectiveness regarding the dissemination and discussion of cultural issues. A second part asked for the personal interests of the respondees on and off the Internet. A last part was dedicated to possible social or political commitments and the role the Internet might play in them.

The assessment of various statements was the goal of part four. Nineteen statements about the Internet and the information age were presented and were to be rated on a scale ranging from agreeing very much ("1") to not at all ("4"). The intention here was to evaluate the respondees' personal views on popular statements about these issues. Agreement or disagreement with the phrases may reveal certain types of Internet users, e.g., those that are very optimistic about the Internet or those that are rather pessimistic about technology in general. Furthermore, these questions served as a test if the statements, which were taken from media discourses about the Internet (print as well as TV), are taken for real or if these are considered mere media hype or part of hegemonial narratives as discussed above.

In the last section, six open questions were formulated about "global society" and ethnicity. For each question, up to five items could be named, chosen freely by the respondees according to their personal views. The questions were concerning the term "global village"; "the definition of ethnicity"; the definition of "one's own ethnic identity"; the changes brought about by the information society; and, lastly, a question asking for an outlook on the political, cultural, or social changes the Internet might cause. These questions were aimed at personal beliefs, norms, and values of the persons answering. The last question was testing the expectations of the Internet's future impact, which also reflect how people view their world (or certain aspects of it) as of today.

The survey to a great extent tried to capture the motivations, interests, and assessments of various issues -- most prominently, cultural identity -- and their relation to the Internet. Seventeen questions were designed as open questions with each having space for four to six items being answered. These questions were used especially to further explore the field of research and added to the experimental and explorational character of the study.

Internet surveys as well as survey methods are new and have yet to be tested and evaluated. That holds especially true for the kind of survey and approach I have chosen to test my theoretical assumptions.

Therefore this survey can be seen as the result of a thorough earlier research, but also a work in progress which serves as a starting point for future studies in this field. Thus this paper reflects this ongoing work and cannot be seen as a finished or complete evaluation.

Results: evaluation, discussion, and context

The questionnaire was answered by 135 people from around the world. Only 120 questionnaires could be used for the final evaluation, because of some problems with the Web page on the initial day of the study (the answers were not able to be processed, due to incompleteness). In addition I had 15 more requests for e-mail questionnaires, which in fact were never sent back to me. This small amount of responses makes it hard to call the survey representative. Thus the survey doesn't give a picture of the Internet users in their totality, but it does provide some insights into what some of them do think and how they assess certain developments. From the overall sample, however, important conclusions can be drawn about certain user types and the importance of the Internet for specific uses.

a. Demographics

The respondees came from 21 countries around the globe, with the USA and Germany standing at the top followed by Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Austria. The place of birth added up to 25 countries with the same ranking. Forty-four different ethnic groups were named and a third (29.9%, N=110) said that they were categorized under yet another ethnic label by third parties. Caucasian, White, and German were the single most frequent labels named, followed by other "European" groups such as "Celtic," "Anglo-Saxon," or "European." When resampling these labels by region (Europe, Africa, etc.), the "European" ones stand at the top, before "American" and "Australian." All others add up to a fourth, containing many from non-OECD countries and so-called cosmopolitan labels, such as "Black," "Jewish," "global," or even "middle-class." Although the GVU-survey [2] operated with "primarily spoken language" as an indicator of ethnicity in addition to race -- which I find very unsatisfying, as it doesn't reflect the self-assigning moment of ethnicity -- the results come quite close regarding the variety of the self-assigned ethnic labels.

The average age is 34.97 years, which corresponds perfectly with the average age reported in the 8th user survey of the GVU (N=10,000), where the average is 35.7 years. The slightly younger age in my survey seems to respond to the greater amount of European users, which are found out to be younger in the GVU survey. A cross-tabulation of age and the country of residence shows a similar tendency.

The foremost area of occupation in my survey is the educational sector (with slightly over 50%, half of them students), followed by management and others. Of the survey participants, 31.9% had an undergraduate degree of some sort, 36.6% a graduate degree, and 16.8% a doctorate. The high number of people in educational areas might be due to the fact that the advertisement of the survey was to a great extent done in academic mailing lists and those that are devoted to social and political engagement. This too may be responsible for a high number of women (42.9%; compared to 38.5% in the GVU survey) among the respondees. Whether this is an indication for the self-organizing and empowering potential of the Internet, I will discuss shortly.

First conclusions can be drawn from these data, which are important for any further analysis. The demographics here suggest that the participants of my survey are mainly academics and come from or live in the "North" rather than in the "South." It seems to me that the respondees represent an elite rather than an average user, although knowledge of whom I left out cannot be obtained. This reveals one of the major obstacles of Internet surveys. The comparison to the GVU survey, however, confirms my assumption. This means that the Internet users in general represent some kind of elite that hold the power and control over the use of the Internet and most importantly over its content. When considering the Internet as a tool of empowerment, especially in the field of human rights or ethnic issues, the control over content such as self-images and other distributed information becomes crucial. This aspect is a prerequisite when analyzing the empowering and self-organizing potential of the Internet and its services.

b. The Internet and self-organization

Two basic questions underlie this section:

1. In which way do people make use of the Internet; i.e., does it reflect their personal interests and the situations in which they live?
2. What about identity on the Internet? Does it play a role for the actual use?

A range of questions was focused upon these issues, asking for personal interests in general, issues of interest on the Internet, as well as social/political engagement and if the Internet is used for it. These were all open questions to which a great number of different answers were given. For better analysis I sampled these answers into categories, which were generated on the basis of the items themselves.

When asked what contents available on the Internet are especially of interest (N=117), educational and scientific information made up 30.8%, followed by news (12%), special information such as sexual orientation (9,4%), leisure, and an "exchange" item which contained unspecified use of mailing lists, e-mail, and netnews (both 8.5%). As four items could be named here -- 15 items were identified altogether -- the second, third, and fourth namings showed similar rankings, but with smaller differences between the items. Special interests and scientific information stood out as the two most prominent on all four listings The unspecified use of mailing lists, e-mail, and netnews as a means of exchange and communication was continuously visible around 8.4% through three of the four listings (N=107, 91, 75).

The three most frequently named personal interest items were politics (N=104, 16.3%), social and society issues (18.3%), and issues on women, gender, and sexuality (together: 17.3%). Scientific information was fourth with only 7%. Politics and society issues kept appearing at the top in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th listings (N=98, 92, 71, 52). Also, scientific information and issues on ethnicity and migration gained some points. Software and computers got relatively little attention in both personal interests and issues that are looked for on the Internet.

Given that a large portion of the respondees are academics, the high amount of scientific information that is being sought on the Internet is not very surprising. As it is not specified what field this scientific information belongs to, it can be assumed that the personal interests are also subject of research. Scientific research, then, is not looked for as a purpose by itself on the Internet, but to answer questions or gather material on a particular issue, which might correspond to the personal interests stated.

A cross-tabulation of the two aspects (Internet-interests/personal-interests) underlines this tendency and the relationship between the two.

In addition to the scientific orientation of the respondees, it seems that many are participating in social or political action. 69.8% (N=116) state that they are socially or politically engaged. 64.5% (N=90) of these use the Internet for this engagement. The major fields of engagement are social (27.5%, N=969), sexual orientation (20.3%), and political (17.4%). Under social engagement I subsumed such issues as whiteness, women's issues, immigrant and minority rights, disability, health care, social justice, and development. Sexual orientation includes exclusively gay and lesbian issues, as others were not stated. Political engagement was assumed when engaged in a political party.

Although I didn't have sexual orientation in mind when inquiring about ethnicity and cultural identity, it seems that this is of importance to quite a few people in this survey. Also, this corresponds well to the items named as being important for one's own cultural/ethnic identity, especially the item "personal experience," which would correspond well with a homosexual identity. "Personal experience" stands at the top in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th listings (N=84, 70, 51, 38). The most-named item in the first listing (N=86) was historical ancestry (20.9%), before language (16.3%). While language is not of great importance in the further listings, historical ancestry is 2nd in all the other four.

When asked if they knew any resources that are devoted to cultural/ethnic issues (N=79, 1st listing), 27% of the respondees named either mailing lists (11.4%) or Web sites (16.5%), which together with those focused on special interests (gay and lesbian issues) added up to 51.9%. The rest were split on other kinds of lists or sites, which were more scientifically or generally oriented, but nevertheless had an ethnic or cultural tendency. 38.9% (N=113) use these resources and do make a statement on what actually is communicated via these lists or Web sites. Group-specific information, such as events, history, etc., ranked 1st with 24.4% (N=45, 1st listing), followed by political and socially relevant and educational/scientific information (both 11.1%). The second listing (N=34) saw political and socially relevant information at the top with group-specific at 2nd and educational/scientific on 3rd. The other listings were similar, but cannot be accounted for here, because of their small numbers. Even with those respondees that use these resources, it is hard to make significant statements, because of the small numbers. However, the fact that almost 40% use these resources and that many more know about them in one or the other form, in accordance with my phenomenological research, makes it possible to say that ethnic/cultural identity is articulated on the Internet. To the question if these resources are "meaningful at all," 39.2% (N=102) indicated "very meaningful" and 51.5% checked "moderately meaningful," which would back my assumption. And most important, 83.3% (N=42) of those that use these resources indicated that their own ethnic identity is of "very much" importance (26.2%) or "moderate" importance (57.1%). The rest indicated "little" or "no" importance.

The degree of importance of one's own ethnic/cultural identity, however, is not significant for the subjects preferably discussed on the Internet or the respondees' personal interests, which certainly reflects upon the audience of the Internet and the general significance of elites for the articulation of identity on the Internet.

Conclusions

The conclusions drawn from the data presented above can by no means be final or conclusive, but do provide a superb tool for further analysis of Internet and information-society-related questions and issues.

As has been said at the beginning, the composition of the respondees in this survey suggests that mainly White, "Western," and rather well-educated people answered the questionnaire. Those that were coming from non-OECD countries mostly migrated to the "North." The number of those migrants that gave "study" or "work abroad" as reasons for their migration is high. Only three stated that they were political refugees. I have doubts that any of the respondees belong to those people that are featured in news shows, having been squeezed onto small boats or killed because of the wrong surname, which supposedly indicates a different ethnic identity. I believe even more that research in the area of identity and ethnicity -- and this is applies especially to the Internet -- must also focus on the political economy of communication technologies and the power relations that are part of it, as Francois Fortier showed for the latter two in his recent PhD thesis[3].

Taking parts of the answers given in the survey as qualitative interviews, a statement such as the one made by a Black female from the Bermudas that "resources for Blacks are mainly for African-Americans" alone requires further and deeper analysis of contents of lists and Web sites, which will be an integral part in the completion of this survey.

An aspect which can be stated from the data examined above, however, is the fact that ethnicity or cultural identity -- as a decentralized organizational form other than national- or state-oriented ones with their fixed and centralized identities -- was and is applied to the Internet by its users, even more so since the Internet provides the appropriate background, with its decentralized technology and the various nonnationalistic but rather global narratives.

The assessments of some of the statements given in section 4 of the survey underline this last assumption. 40.7% (N=113) agreed very much or moderately with the statement "the nationstate doesn't play a role on the Internet." However, the statement "the nationstate doesn't play a role in a global society," was agreed with very much or moderately by only 23.9% (N=113). And in addition, 42.5% (N=113) respondees agreed with the statement "the Internet creates new communities" which will replace the existing ones.

These assessments may be indicators for the Internet's self-organizing potential, which does have implications for the world beyond the Internet. The major consequence which has to be clearly seen is that self-organization as opposed to the hegemonial concept of the nationstate must be acknowledged and reckoned with. Communities and societies may organize all or parts of their interaction on such a concept.

As it is rather unlikely that states will completely vanish in the near future, they nevertheless will have to cooperate more with the people. Self-organization such as ethnicity would be one resource communities, individuals, and the state could profit from.

The much praised self-organizing potential of the market very often works against people, as in many cases it is not self-organized but is backed and supported by states with arms and other means of power as Schiller (1995) pointed out [4].

Modes of self-organization, which follow different logics from that of the market, are needed. Issues that focus on identity and culture could work against a total commodification of the Internet and help make the Internet a truly empowering tool.

Notes

1. Cf. Zurawski, Nils: Beyond th e global information frontiers: What global concepts ('Weltbilder') are there on the Internet and why? Paper presented at the INET'97 in Kuala Lumpur

----: Ethnicity and the Internet in a global society. Paper presented at the INET'96 in Montreal

2. The GVU-user surveys are conducted by the Graphics, Visualization & Usability Center, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology. The data used for the comparison in this paper were taken from the 8th user survey issued in fall 1997.

3. Francois Fortier: Civil Society Computer Networks. The perilous road of cyber-politics. PhD Diss. 1997

4. Schiller; Herbert: Information Inequalities. London 1995.