Intercultural Communication in the Virtual World

With the increasing use of the internet in today’s world, a lot of communication now takes place in virtual worlds. The players involved in these virtual worlds comes from various cultural backgrounds and each bring their own personal ideas and opinions of other cultures into the animated worlds they play in. Due to this, it is possible for new channels of communication to be created between cultures.


Griffin describes intercultural communication as “the management of messages for the purpose of creating meaning across cultures.” (Griffin, 3^rd edition, 404). Joshua S. Fouts and Rita King with Dancing Ink Productions started the “Understanding Islam Through Virtual Worlds” project. They took on this project to learn more about the Islam culture by following the trail of what was already happening culturally in the space that might yield new insight about Islam (J. Fouts & R. King, 2008).

There are both benefits and limitations of the virtual world in improving intercultural communication. There are many people who are not fortunate to travel or communicate face to face with people from different cultural backgrounds. The virtual world allow people to instantly communicate with many people of various cultures. This is one of the biggest benefits of communicating in the virtual world. Another benefit is that individuals are able to be themselves, openly express their differences, and embrace their culture without being physically harmed. The internet makes it extremely easy to communicate with people from different cultural backgrounds and subgroups. This aides in helping to understand cultures which can lead to communicating more effectively. With benefits there can also be limitations. Due to a persons race, age, gender, and other physical abilities being hidden to the virtual world, some may feel more bold to communicate in a negative way. When negative communication occurs this can prevent others from expressing their beliefs and differences which can be a huge limitation.

The virtual world is capable of creating communication channels between cultures and these channels can potentially improve intercultural communication. There are both benefits and limitations associated with intercultural communication in the virtual world. If we embrace diversity and are willing to be open to differences, the virtual world can be very beneficial to intercultural communication.

　
　

　

Fouts, J.S., & King, R.J. (2009). “Understanding Islam Through Virtual Worlds“. (Video). Retrieved from http://www.cceia.org/programs/archive/002/index.html