Cultural differences in construction and utilisation of electronic mail from an African and Irish perspective

Abstract

This study sets out to explore whether different cultural backgrounds and specifically learned rules of behaviour affect the usage of computer mediated communication. The study appears to support the general argument that individuals' different cultural influences do have some impact on communication strategies particularly those from a high context cultural background. What is however very significant is the finding that those individuals who are from a high context cultural background but are long term residents in a low context society gradually behave more similarly to the hosting culture and that the cultural conditioning in their styles of communication is lessened or altogether diminished over time.