“You're Invading the World and You Don't Even Know Where Slovenia Is!” An Analysis of an Online Forum Among American, Australian and Slovenian University Students

Abstract

This paper is about an international electronic forum set up among university students in the United States, Australia, and Slovenia. It seeks to (a) develop a richer understanding of how Americans view themselves in relation to a globalizing world, (b) examine how American, Slovenian and Australian university students use an interactive online context to advance and challenge particular points of view within, and across, domestic boundaries, and (c) reflect on the ways in which the participants, in particular the American participants, might be said to have been moved, or not moved, to reassess their (national) views on various issues of global significance.

Keywords:

• Internet
• Identity
• Internationalization
• University Students
• Americans

Notes

1. A detailed syllabus for the 2008 version of the course is available online at http://mysite.du.edu/~cdemonth/teaching.htm.

2. The University of the Southwest, Slovenia University and University of Australia are pseudonyms for real universities in the United States, Slovenia, and Australia.

3. American is clearly a problematic term, as it can, and often does, conflate U.S. citizen with American. At a broad level of analysis Canadian and Mexican citizens are Americans as well. However, U.S. American is (a) an unconventional term and, as a result, somewhat awkward and (b) is not used by any of the participants in the global forum. Therefore, I use the term “American” rather than “U.S. American” from here on.

4. The Pew Global Attitudes Project is a series of worldwide public opinion surveys. Since its inception in 2001, the Project has released 23 major reports. As of the spring of 2009, more than 175,000 interviews in 55 countries had been conducted as part of the project's work.

5. The USW and SU instructors posted occasionally to the forum while the UA instructor did not.

6. The Pew surveys show a clear bias in terms of which countries are, and are not, polled regularly. For instance, Great Britain, France, and Germany have been included in all seven Pew polls conducted between 2003 to 2008, while South African has been polled just twice in the same time period. Many countries—including Slovenia—have never been included in the Pew surveys.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christof Demont-Heinrich

Christof Demont-Heinrich (Ph.D.) is an assistant professor in the Media, Film and Journalism Studies Department at the University of Denver, USA

Marko Ivanišin

Marko Ivanišin is a teaching assistant for the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Maribor, Slovenia