Introduction & background

What can research and theory tell us about culture and communication in digital spaces? What happens when people from different cultural backgrounds try to communicate using digital technologies? What challenges do they face? How do the special challenges of intercultural communication in digital environments affect teaching and learning? Which theories of culture or of communication can help us understand communication dynamics in digital spaces? How might digital environments (and especially digital learning environments), be better designed to facilitate human communications? How is global digital communication driving social, political and cultural change? Do digital communication technologies represent opportunities or threats to human cultures?

This review offers a roadmap and thematic analysis of literature from 2003-2023 presented at https://digitalcultures.ca. In it, we consider what research is telling us about whether digital communication technologies represent new opportunities, new threats, or both, for human cultures.