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Attitudes toward Technology and Communication 153

methodical approach with photographs was used: interviewees were
shown pictures of everyday situations and asked to state whether or
not these situations represented “culture” from their point of view.
The “cultural” situations assessed differently by members of the var-
ious language groups are shown in Figure 1.
This figure reveals two notions of culture, as articulated by the
author of the study:

The Latin areas show a systematically stronger tendency to
accept technically portrayed culture within the overall notion
of the term, meaning the consumption of newspapers and mag-
azines, television and computers. Common to all the situations
was the fact that they included forms of modern mass culture
and markets and took the form of indirect publicity. An inter-
mediary was always present between organising consumption
and the act itself: direct contact with a public was excluded or
secondary. In the German-speaking area, reaction to this was
diametrically opposite: those approached distanced themselves
from this attitude. Here, situations with a better chance of

Figure 1
Cultural Elements and Linguistic Groups

The 10 elements that differentiate between conceptions
of culture in the various language areas:

Source: Hans-Peter Meier-Dallach, 1991