Short instructions for the workshops.

Workshop 1

Li Andersson-Yang, Jönköping University: How social media reshape the patterns of intercultural communication - promoting Swedish higher education in China as an illustration 


Asia counts for more than two thirds of the sending population for degree seeking students around the globe. As a common term, Asia means a vast continent but given by the historical, economical, ecological and technological differentiations, the practice of promoting western higher education are rather different in Northeast Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and central Asia. We will look at those variations on the surface.

Thanks to modern technology advancing, social media plays an increasingly significant role in the marketing and branding of higher education. Digital marketing makes it possible to have a marketing outreach to such a scale and depth that have not been seen before. Asian countries, such as China, are traditionally considered as representing collectivism, high power distance, face maintenance, high-context communication in its cultural patterns. However, under the context of social media, many of those traditional patterns are seriously altered, the distinctions between oriental and western cultural are blurred. Let’s take a look at how the East has become more West and how the barriers for cross-cultural communications have been removed to a certain extent.

Workshop 3

Thommy Josefsson, Jönjöping University: Intercultural Curriculum Development  

Intercultural Communication is offered as an interdisciplinary subject in courses at most universities. The target group stretches from students in education, social work, media communication, health, business and engineering to professionals choosing to study the subject as elective. Consequently, the challenge is great to produce course- and study plans that are relevant to the different contexts of intercultural communication. The workshop aims at exploring ways to develop the curriculum of intercultural communication regarding content and learning objectives. Moreover, the workshop becomes a forum for exchange of ideas between participants involved in teaching intercultural communication in different contexts.