Collaborative Information Seeking in Intercultural Computer-Mediated Communication Groups

Abstract

This article examines the process of collaborative information seeking in intercultural computer-mediated communication (CMC) groups. The authors conducted a field experiment in which 86 students from three distant universities (one in the United States, two in Singapore) participated. The students participated in a collaborative learning practice in which they socially recommended information using a CMC system. The results demonstrate that the social context—that is, preexisting social networks, groups, and intergroup boundaries—significantly constrained the flow of information across intercultural CMC groups. The authors also found that the influence of the social context on CMC collaboration could be moderated by other contingent factors such as national culture and individuals' outcome expectancies of Internet use. The authors present the results from testing their hypotheses using multivariate p* and Quadratic Assignment Procedure network regression analyses and conclude with a discussion of the findings and implications for future research.