Social presence in the web-based classroom: Implications for intercultural communication

Social presence is a theory derived from social psychology to explain social interac-tions in a mediated communication and is defined as the degree to which interlocutors in a communications medium perceive each other as real. This study investigates the effect of computer-mediated communication on the social presence of international students who spoke English as a foreign language in two Web-based graduate courses offered in the United States and aims to explore how linguistic and cultural differ-ences influenced their social presence