The impact of culture and social interaction on weblog design: a Malaysian case

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to investigate any cultural impacts on end‐users' web page design in weblogs.

Design/methodology/approach

The design preferences of 201 weblogs in Malaysia have been collected using content analysis method and the existence of Malaysian cultural traits on the web pages tested.

Findings

The results confirm that there is no cultural impact on weblog designs, which is contrary to existing studies that reported cultural traits in static web page design. This paper concludes by suggesting the increased social interaction among webloggers as one of reasons of weakened cultural impacts in weblog design behaviour.

Originality/value

Culture has been considered as one of major factors that affect the design behaviour of static web pages which mostly support one‐way interaction between information providers and information consumers. On the other hand, the recent adoption of Web 2.0 technology enabled bi‐directional interaction between information providers and consumers and it is not known if there is still a strong cultural impact on web page design based on this new technology.

Citation

Ali, M. and Lee, H. (2011), "The impact of culture and social interaction on weblog design: a Malaysian case", Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Vol. 24 No. 5, pp. 406-423. https://doi.org/10.1108/17410391111166495