Visualizing and Analyzing Cultural Voices in Computer-Mediated Communication through Social Gaming Simulation

Abstract

The present study aims at establishing digital scholarly methods to understand the transformational processes of thought and behavior in individuals within changing socio-cultural situations. We adopted the socio-cultural approach as a conceptual framework that considers cultural phenomena as dynamic processes for the interplay of cultural voices in "personal" and "authoritative" layers. We first designed a gaming simulation based on actual societal changes and conflicts among stakeholders regarding nuclear power plants. Next, we developed a net-based communication tool that supports players' dialogues and records the trajectories of players' utterances and attitudes. After the experimental gaming simulation, we utilized the KACHINA CUBE system (KC) to visualize the social events, dialogues, and attitude changes of players. With this system, the diversity and commonality across the players' transformations were exposed onto KC's 3D space. The debriefing session also revealed that non-linear transformations of the players were derived from the interplay of their multi-layered cultural voices.