This document summarizes research on how people engage in virtual boundary crossing through the internet even without physical travel. It finds that American college students who read foreign news websites are more likely to have traveled abroad previously and to communicate internationally online. These "boundary crossers" tend to be more liberal in their views, especially those aged 25 and younger, as international exposure during formative years may influence political identity development. While virtual travel does not replace real-world experiences, it can reinforce and expand on them, demonstrating how boundaries are recreated both physically and virtually in an increasingly globalized online world.

1. Traveling Without Moving
Foreign news and boundary-
crossing in Cyberspace
Jeremy Edwards
University of Texas at Austin

2. The Online World
 It’s now easier than ever to find foreign
media/cultural products on the Internet
 The online world has its own
“geography” of cultures and nations--
just like the “real” world
 What happens when people “travel”
virtually over the Internet? How can we
think about this phenomenon?

3. Diaspora in Cyberspace
 Anderson (1991): Nations as “imagined
communities” thru print media
 Thompson (2002): Visual vs. print
 Mitra (1997): Web sites exclude some
people and welcome others
 Boczkowski (1999): expats overtly
express cultural ideas taken for granted
at home

4. Boundary Crossing
 Halavais (2000): National boundaries
re-created on the Internet
 Need a concept that covers both virtual
and real-world “boundaries”
– (Though really, all boundaries are virtual)
 Information or cultural product is
traveling, even if a person isn’t

5. Acculturation, real and virtual
 Acculturation/socialization related to
long-term, regular, non-threatening
interpersonal communication
 Melkote & Liu (2000): Chinese grad
students “going home” over the Internet
– Increased behavioral acculturation
– Decreased value acculturation

6. Online Survey, November 2003
 790 American college students: are
they boundary-crossers?
– 92% have traveled abroad
– 49% use the Internet to communicate
internationally
– 20% read foreign news websites
 Three different groups, or just one?

7. Boundary-crossers are travelers
 Foreign news readers are people who
have already been abroad
 Traveling to more countries--> more
likely to read foreign news
 Same relationship, but weaker, for
travel --> international communication

8. OOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOO
OOOO
*
O O
O O O
OOOOO
OOOOO
OOOOO
OOO
OOO
O O
Travelers
Foreign
News
Readers
Communicators
O
O
O O

9. Liberalization?
 Travelers, communicators, foreign-news
readers are all more liberal than non-
boundary-crossers…
 …but only if they are 25-and-under
 Alwin & Krosnick (1991): 25-and-
under’s most likely to change political
identity

10. A map for boundary crossing
 Travel abroad
 Acculturation takes place
 Return home
 Media used to reinforce/revisit/expand
travel experience
 In “impressionable years,” liberalization
takes place too

11. Issues/Problems/Questions
 92% Travelers: representative sample?
 Liberal/Conservative maybe an
oversimplification of acculturation--but
something is going on
 Are online travelers “traveling” to new
places, or “going home” to places
they’ve already been?
 Other types of boundary crossing?

12. Questions
and, perhaps, answers