Online Communication: Bridging the Gap

So, communication, it’s kinda the key to all forms of relationships; from professional all the way to personal relationships. One aspect of communication, or branch of communication, is the intricate dance that is communicating across cultures. You may be thinking, “Brandon, I don’t communicate with too many people from other cultures, why do I need to know about this?” Because it’s important to have effective communication methods in our ever expanding world. It’s more likely to be impactful on your life than you may think.

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This map shows the internet use across the world related to time of day.

Let me explain: The world is a big place, yet with technology it gets smaller with every leap in communication that is made. Yet, a barrier remains in the way between good communication across country lines. That is cultural communication. It does seem daunting, however, it is a skill that can be pretty easily learned. The future is communication beyond country lines.

An obstacle that is prevalent is, as I said before, the actual country lines. Each civilization on this planet has quirks that affect everything from how formally you greet individuals and average political beliefs. This even includes the average time it takes to open up to someone, and the average empathy level of the country. For example, I knew a friend that was originally from Germany, and for the most part, she opened up about her life relatively quickly, and would complain about how closed off Americans were. This problem surfaces mainly when people are unable to accept differing opinions, or when people are generally ignorant about the suffering of people across the globe. For example, an American is likely to be more ignorant concerning the immigration crisis in Europe, and may instead know more about the immigration friction at the U.S.’s southern border.

The solution to this is by opening yourself up to the potential experiences of others. This ensures that, from your perspective, both parties are communicating from an equal playing field, and that goes a long way to ensuring effective intercultural communication. This strategy is important due to the increased spread of globalization recently. I can hop on a discord call with individuals across the world right now while writing this article, in fact, for half of this article thus far, I was talking to both of my interview subjects from earlier articles, Rishi and Blitz. They both live in different time zones, yet we were able to chat it up for free utilizing the internet. If you’re the type of person to join interest groups virtually, this will be an invaluable strategy.

The obstacle itself spawns from simply living in a different culture. We run into barriers of language as well as general formality barriers. This could lead to translation errors, or simple miscommunication between two parties that aren’t native speakers of the language that they are utilizing. These Cultural Differences are more common than you would think. Another example of this is taking a look at how America and Denmark, two individualistic cultures, handled the Covid 19 Pandemic. The U.S. didn’t handle it well, and Denmark definitely handled it better, this is due to slight cultural differences. These differences apply to communication as well.

Let’s talk about solutions. I have mentioned a couple of times that opening yourself up to other cultures is the solution to this issue. How do you go about doing that? Well the first step here is to avoid echo chambers. Sure it’s great to hear someone mimic your belief, but it does nothing for your growth as a person. You should keep yourself open to differing opinions, which in turn will increase your exposure to new people, new ideas, and new cultures. I found this article that expands on some more strategies to introduce other cultures to your life.

Opening up yourself to other cultures will help bridge the cultural communication gap period. The news is a good example of this. You would avoid any biased news sites or channels attributing the struggles of a civilization into stereotypes to sell news, rather you would be able to expand your worldview, and personify people across the globe. This would also ensure that you are doing a decent amount of research concerning the culture that you’re connecting to, rather than just going into the conversation proverbially unarmed. Essentially, this strategy would help bridge the gap between cultural communication, as well as countering the Agenda Setting theory.

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Cultural communication is extremely important in today’s time. We live in a world that is steadily getting smaller and smaller. As I said earlier, and have mentioned in other blog posts, some of my best friends are hundreds of miles away from me, yet we hang out more often than I do with my IRL friends (in real life.). Cultural communication is a skill that will help you in your future. Globalism is the future, technological expansion makes interactions with other cultures an inevitability. So, going forward, open yourself up to the world. I believe that with open lines of communication that it’ll become a brighter place, and hopefully it will only continue to follow this trend.