Culture, technology, and multivocality in an Internet-age organization.

摘要

In this study, I focused on the interconnections of power, technology, and culture in an attempt to understand how students discursively negotiated their own meanings within a university that represents technology as an ideologically neutral communication system that provides equal opportunities for all students to achieve their academic goals. I explored how students discursively negotiated new identities as communication in virtual space reduces student-teacher interaction in traditional classrooms.; An ethnically diverse group of 30 students provided the data for this study during more than 40 hours of fieldwork spread over 3 months on the campus of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. I employed multiple methods of gathering data and analyzed participants' e-mail messages and narratives. Participants were generally supportive of technology, although European Americans were more enthusiastic about technology than their African-American and Hispanic counterparts. However, European Americans appeared to trust the communication system, while African-Americans did not trust the system. The perception by African-Americans that instructors were hostile to their communication style may be responsible for their distrust of the system. Participants sent mixed messages about the use of e-mail in classroom contexts. On the one hand, they thought e-mail was great for teacher-student interaction, on the other 24 of the 26 members of focus groups (92%) said computer-assisted classrooms would not improve the teaching-learning situation. In fact 12 of the 26 participants (46%) said the introduction of computer technology into the classroom would actually make them learn less. Finally, there were differences between the African-Americans and European Americans regarding the frequency, content, and style of e-mail communication. This is probably because the rhetorical assumptions of African Americans diverge from instructors' expectations. Participants noted that instructors reacted negatively to the use of African-Americans' high context, indirect style in e-mail messages. Thus, culture may influence one's level of comfort with electronic communication.; This university needs to question the rhetoric of progress that surrounds technology and listen more to diverse voices before investing more in electronic communication.