Profile Columns In Chinese University Websites And British University Websites: A Cross-cultural Study

Internet currently becomes a new communication tool with its popularization in recent years.Website,one of the major carriers of information dissemination on the Internet,is giving rise to the new communication manners.At the same time,there is a growing number of students who choose to study abroad.When choosing schools,they try to get the basic information of schools through their official websites.University websites,therefore,deserve close attention.Official websites for the universities are the media for them to set up public and positive images to attract more students.Apart from that,cross-cultural website study becomes a new topic for research in cross-cultural communication nowadays.As culture to a large extent influences people's lives,this research aims to focus on the university website to confirm whether culture has impact on the design of university websites.The author believes that cultural values have great influence on the design of the profile columns of Chinese and British university websites.Then quantitative method is adopted to verify that.Firstly,20 Chinese and 20 British profile columns of university websites are chosen as objects.Next,cultural elements in the profile columns are used to examine the existence of cultural differences in the two countries' column by applying SPSS to statistical analysis.Lastly,the author tries to use Hofstede's and Hall's theories to interpret the cultural phenomena.The conclusion reveals that cultural values do not exert strong effect on the design of profile columns in the two countries' university websites.However,it still provides reference to further website study from cultural perspective,which means another critical review of Hofstede's and Hall's theories in practice in the Internet era.