University graduates are required to possess intercultural competence in addition to strong academic skills in today’s globalized world. Although such competence has been defined in various theoretical models by intercultural scholars, it remains unknown how the recipients of higher education (the students) define this concept. A total of 130 undergraduate university students (from Western and non-Western cultures), living on a multicultural campus, provided short qualitative responses to a written question on how they define intercultural competence. According to a qualitative content analysis, the students defined intercultural competence in terms of interaction, communication, and cultural harmony. Unlike intercultural scholars, the students placed more emphasis on the understanding and awareness of other cultures rather than focusing on their own culture. It appears that young university students from multicultural backgrounds consider tolerance and collective harmony as the most important components of intercultural competence in their initial stages of intercultural development.
Abstract. This contribution examines the 2013 Gezi Park protests in Turkey by drawing on the social identity model of collective action (SIMCA) and the slacktivism versus facilitation debate in the literature on digitally enabled collective action. Contrary to the slacktivism hypothesis that claims online collective action to lack an apparent impact on the real world, the current study indicates a facilitating role of online collective action in the Gezi Park protests. By means of a large-scale online survey (N = 1,127) and a subsequent latent path analysis, the study demonstrates that the endurance of the movement was kept alive by both offline and online collective actions. The relationship between offline/online action and protest motivations was mediated by three predictors of collective action derived from the SIMCA: perceived injustice, social identity, and perceived efficacy. Results show that protestors in Turkey, independent of whether they became active in the digital or the real world, were likely to protest again to the extent that they perceived developments in Turkey as unjust, identified strongly with the Çapulcus [Turkish for looters] as a social group, and perceived this group to be efficient in changing social injustice in the country.
Faced with an increasingly diverse society, Germany is challenged with the integration of different ethnic minorities. Previous studies have shown that mass media can play a crucial role in the integration process. However, what has not been extensively researched in this context yet are social media in particular. What is missing in research is a conceptual framework to better understand the interplay between social media use and integration. Therefore, this paper focuses on social media use and the integration of ethnic minorities into German society from a conceptual perspective. What is proposed here is a new interdisciplinary conceptual framework which clearly distinguishes between integration that happens in society ("offline") and integration that happens in virtual communities ("online").The aim of this paper is to expand integration research to social media use as well as to offer a new interdisciplinary conceptual framework for further empirical research.
Within Hofstede's framework of individualistic and collectivistic cultures, this contribution examines measurement equivalence of hedonic and eudaimonic entertainment motivations in two different cultures, namely Germany representing a more individualistic culture (N = 180) and Turkey representing a more collectivistic culture (N = 97). By means of a multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, we could secure configural invariance for both hedonic and eudaimonic entertainment motivations across the German and Turkish sample. Metric invariance, however, could only be obtained for hedonic, but not for eudaimonic motivations. Scalar invariance was obtained for neither of the two entertainment motivations. The study points to the importance of equivalence testing when conducting cross-cultural research. and Turkey representing a more collectivistic culture (N = 97). By means of a multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MCFA), we could secure configural invariance for both hedonic and eudaimonic entertainment motivations across the German and Turkish sample. Metric invariance, however, could only be obtained for hedonic, but not for eudaimonic motivations. Scalar invariance was obtained for neither of the two entertainment motivations. The study points to the importance of equivalence testing when conducting cross-cultural research.
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