A contrastive study between Australian and Malaysian women’s online advice-seeking strategies on IVF. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Language Studies 2021 (pp. 7-12). Universiti Malaysia Sarawak.

Abstract

With the advent of technology and the Internet, studies on communication strategies have shifted from face-to-face interactions to computer-mediated communication. However, research on online advice-seeking strategies focusing on specific cultural groups are limited, and have centred largely on the North American (Locher, 2006), European (Placencia, 2012), and the East Asian regions (Morrow, 2012). The present study is a contrastive study comparing the online advice-seeking strategies between an eastern society (Malaysia) and a western society (Australia). A content analysis approach was employed, emulating Kouper’s (2010) and Locher's (2006) method of analysing online advice messages. The findings showed that although both forums were similar in many aspects, there were some variations in the women’s advice-seeking strategies, indicating influence of different cultural backgrounds and different needs of Australian women and Malaysian women