“Culture is everything, culture is the way we dress, the way we carry our heads, the way we walk, the way we tie our ties…” –Aime Cesair
In the recent past, I was involved in an arbitration in which a significant aspect of the dispute was related to the location of a comma in a sentence and the interpretation of the meaning of the comma. The participants involved were originally from Missouri, California, New York, Iran, and Mexico. Based on that experience, when considering the question “How do we create a trusting community on the Internet,” I believe we must first understand the many cultural differences and similarities of the participants involved, and then consider the force of culture, on the potential for misinterpretation of the printed word and the eventual erosion of trust.
To build trust on the Internet, I believe that we must have a sincere and empathetic understanding of the different cultural context of participants and how that impacts communication and promises made by participants during Internet dialogue. We must educate ourselves as to cultural differences that result in misinterpretations because often trust is broken as a result of interpretations based on those differences and not false or malevolent intent.
As an LLM student studying dispute resolution at the University of Missouri in Columbia, the most enlightening class I have taken is Professor Ilhyung Lee’s cross-cultural negotiation class. Inspired by his class, I will explore the affect of cultural differences and similarities on building trust on the Internet and the need for education as a prerequisite to meaningful Internet dialogue during dispute resolution.
In my next post, I will discuss the elements of culture that impact communication and how those elements can lead to misinterpretations and erode trust. In later posts, I will discuss Geert Hofstede’s four primary cultural dimensions: uncertainty avoidance, individualism and collectivism, power distance, and the masculinity index. I will also discuss Edward T. Hall’s cultural cues specifically monochromic and polychronic time orientation, and high and low context communication styles.
In answer to the question, “What other mechanisms can be established to create a trusting and trusted community in the virtual world?” I will propose a Culture Convergence Model for use by Trust Facilitators and as an educational tool to assist us all in building a community of trust and provide a basis to believe that others do tell the truth and keep their promises.
In conclusion to this post and for the purpose of future posts, please consider the following description of culture:
Culture is ‘a fundamental feature of human consciousness, the sine qua non of being human’; culture is our ‘social legacy’; culture may take over the world. Culture has also been described as ‘one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.’ There is no shortage of proposed definitions—150, according to one study. The definition of culture remains elusive and contested. The various definitions exist in part because the term is used by experts in a number of different social fields.”) (footnotes omitted). Lee, Culturally-Based Copyright Systems? The U.S. and Korea in Conflict, 79 Wash. U. L.Q. 1103, 1109–1110.
