Cultural awareness in social media

The increasing availability of the Web has been breaking down communication limitations in society and enabling the easy transcending of physical borders. Additionally, the emergence of social media like forums, blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc., is bringing technology closer to people who are not experts. By using global communication systems, people are changing continents, countries, regions, cultures and languages very easily, so easily that they are mostly not aware that they are mobile in a virtual world. To bring connections and communications even closer to people, the necessary tools were developed to support the needs of users in different countries and language groups (i.e. the translation of tools into national languages). However, less support was given to differences in cultures. Users of these tools and collaborative communities have to be aware that they are writing, chatting, presenting, to/with other users who could be members of different language groups and cultural communities [22]. Language barriers are usually bridged by common languages like English, but we do not have any common or general culture. People using social media primarily collect cultural and language examinations through their own experiences and general mobility: by travelling, working and studying. Nevertheless, they can also gain additional knowledge on languages, cultures and cultural awareness through social media itself and through other collaborative virtual communities in which they participate. But how much can we trust different categories of social media, such as wikis for example? The quality and certainty of available materials remains an open question. For that reason, we suggest the use of authorized materials already available over the Web and in different virtual communities, but not necessarily social media. Some suggestions supporting this idea will be presented in the paper and oriented to two EU-supported projects: ValeurTech [1], [2] and ELLEIEC [6].