Namibian and American cultural orientations toward facebook

Abstract

Nadkarni and Hofman’s meta-review of literature on Facebook usage recommends examining differences in Facebook use between collectivistic and individualistic cultures. We discuss early findings of an exploratory study to compare use between participants in America, Namibia, and expatriate Namibians. From this, we identified five key areas of difference: 1) Motivations for joining Facebook; 2) Attitude toward Facebook connections; 3) Self presentation and photo sharing; 4) Communication about death, religion, and politics; 5) General privacy definitions. However, our findings showed no statistical difference in the Collectivism Scale administered among the three groups, despite Namibia being considered a highly collectivistic county and the US being a highly individualistic country.