Online Intercultural Communication: Myths and Realities

Abstract

The rapid proliferation of the use of the Internet as a tool of communication has raised a number of thorny questions in the area of intercultural communication. The main hypothesis of the present research review is that computer mediated communication has turned into a mixed blessing. Although, the Internet has the potentiality to facilitate companionate exchanges among cultures and languages, this fashionable channel of communication has turned into a tool for enhancing culturally rhetorical differences. The following issues served as the focus of our research: First, whether the Internet has closed the gap between core and peripheral countries or it has created a digitally stratified global society dividing countries between those that have online access and those without? Second, whether democracy as a social and political value is fully represented on the Internet? Third, whether the Internet has promoted globalization or it has furthered the notion of North Americanization?

Humanities Review Journal Vol. 6 2006: pp. 32-45