Посткроссинг как современный способ межкультурной коммуникации

Муниципальное общеобразовательное Учреждение Лицей №6

муниципального района Мелеузовский район Республики Башкортостан

The goals of “postcrossing” -to connect people all over the world

with the help of postcards, regardless of their age, gender,

 place of residence, race or religion.

Исследовательская работа

«Postcrossing  as a modern way of

intercultural communication»

Alsu Makhmutova

Form 10 A

Lyceum 6

Teacher

Olga Melkoedova

                                  Meleuz, 2020

Contents

1. Introduction. 2

2. The internet community “postcrossing”. 4

3. From the history of “postcrossing”. 5

4. Тypes of exchanges in postcrossing. 7

4.1. The official exchange. 7

4.2. Exchange via the project forum.. 8

4.3. Exchange in a circle. 8

4.4. Travelling envelope. 8

4.5. Other types of exchange. 9

5. Stages of work on the project 10

5.1. Checking in on the “postcrossing”. 10

5.2. Sending postcards 13

5.3. Receiving postcards 14

7. Reasons for the growing popularity of the "Postcrossing" phenomenon». 15

6. Practical part 7. Reasons for the growing popularity of the "Postcrossing" phenomenon»  15

18

7.1. The survey. 18

8. Conclusion. 20

1.  

1. Introduction

I have pleasant memories from my childhood of my great-grandmother opening her trunk, taking out old letters and postcards, rereading them, and then carefully folding them back. Sometimes she let me look at the letters, touch the stamps on them. It was a miracle: the cards were very beautiful, and on the back of them were written in smooth handwriting congratulations on the holiday. The postcards came from all over the country.

However, times are changing: in the modern world, various gadgets and the Internet have become available and people have begun to communicate more often through social networks, having stopped writing paper letters. But as the English philosopher Francis Bacon said, “Everything in the world repeats itself”. In other words, in 2005, the idea of “postcrossing” appeared, the boundaries of which are getting wider every year, and the popularity continues to grow.

So if you've ever tried to tell people who live on the other side of the planet how good the place where you were born is, if you've ever dreamed of traveling around the world to experience a variety of cultures, or thought about getting a postcard from someone from abroad, then postcrossing - is a chance to realize your dream.

The word "postcrossing" is a combination of the two words “postcard” – “открытка” and “crossing” - “пересечение”, which means “exchanging postcards”. The goals of “postcrossing” are clear and simple – to connect people all over the world with the help of postcards, regardless of their age, gender, place of residence, race or religion.

 With the help of the Internet, a community has been created for which there are no barriers, borders, or age restrictions. This project got its start quite recently, but every year its capabilities continue to grow, and it becomes more popular in society. I have already been a participant of this project and I want to introduce you to it, as well as tell others about this online community.

The purpose of my work is to study a modern phenomenon of written and network communication, to tell about a modern, unique, international project "post-crossing", which, in my opinion, contributes to the development of intercultural communication.

The object of my research is an international Internet project "postcrossing". Project website: https://www.postcrossing.com/.

Тo answer the question "Why does this phenomenon attract people " I set myself the following tasks:

1.     Explore the "postcrossing" online community.

2.     Become a participant and get my own experience of participating in the project

3.     To examine statistics about the participants of the project (their number, countries, age, gender, and draw conclusions).

4.     Interview high school students at my school to determine if they are familiar with this project and use this forum.

5.     Investigate the reasons for the growing popularity of this phenomenon.

6.     To sum up the work done.

2. The internet community “postcrossing”

Postcrossing is an international online postcard exchange project that was created in 2005 with the initial idea of creating an online platform to support a non-virtual hobby, to be able to receive postcards from all over the world. Residents of different countries can take part in this project, not only individually, but also in groups, classes, and schools. The main language of the forum is English. Project website: https://www.postcrossing.com/.  The principle of exchanging postcards is based on a single database of all project participants, as well as a mechanism for issuing addresses, aimed at ensuring that the difference between sent and received postcards for each participant is minimal. At the same time, postcrossing has an indirect exchange system, that is, by sending cards to one user, the participant receives them from    others.

The beauty of postcrossing is that it allows you to get "news" from different parts of the world for free (conditionally free, you will have to spend money on mail when you send someone a postcard). Many people consider such cards as a souvenir or collectible.

3. From the history of “postcrossing”

The idea of postcrossing belongs to students from Portugal Paolo Morales and Anna Campos. They created and developed the website and its logo. The site was launched on July 14, 2005, where after seven years of its existence in May 2012, the 1st million postcards were sent. The gradual emergence of online shopping that sells postcards and stamps for postcrossing. And the Belarusian Post even announced the days of Post-Crosser — July 8, October 8 and December 8. On these days, you can send postcards with a 10% discount (however, in the amount of at least 10 pieces). After studying the statistics of different countries, it becomes clear that the largest community of postcrossers in the world is Russian-about 60,000 participants, and the largest number of postcards traveling around the world was sent from Germany — about three million. In January 2019, more than 756,900 people from 213 countries were registered in the project.  This gives us the right to speak about the growing popularity of postcrossing.

Countries with the highest number of postcards sent
Rating	Country	Number of participants	Number of postcards sent
1	Germany	53 197	7 377 802
2	Russia	97 163	6 125 206
3	USA	69 695	5 292 814
4	Netherlands	39 986	4 023 023
5	Finland	21 437	3 221 921
6	China	69 309	2 195 882
7	Belarus	30 097	2 154 798
8	Ukraine	25 968	1 422 683
9	Czech	20 980	1 378 287
10	Poland	32 817	1 308 294
11	Japan	10 109	1 118 744
12	France	15 912	1 022 166
13	Great Britain	16 021	981 242
14	Canada	10 260	809 389

This spreadsheet shows that the most active participants of postcrossing are: Germany – 7 377 802, Russia – 6 125 206 and United States - 5 814 292 (countries with the highest number of postcards sent).

4. Types of exchanges in postcrossing

4.1. The official exchange

Official exchange is a term used in postcrossing to refer to postcards sent via the site's automated interface. The principle of exchange is as follows:

1. The participant asks the system for a random address of another participant and sends them a postcard;

2. When a postcard reaches the recipient, the recipient registers it in the system using the identification code that the sender should have specified;

3. After at least one participant's postcard has been registered, its address is randomly assigned to the request of another participant, while the address distribution algorithm is aimed at minimizing the difference between the number of received and sent postcards.

Using this exchange mechanism involves three statuses for each transaction:

·        on the way (traveling),

·        received (registered),

·        the delivery period has expired.

The first status assumes that the system has given the sender the recipient's address and the message is in transit or has not yet been sent. When the card reaches the recipient, the recipient logs in under their account and registers it by entering the ID code that the sender should have specified on the card. The identification code consists of two parts: two letters and several numbers. The letters correspond to the sender's country code in the format RU-8758732, and the number indicates the serial number of the postcard sent via the system from this country. After registration, the card gets the status “received” (registered).  If the card has not been registered after 60 days from the date of sending, it is assigned the status “expired” (expired), thus, the number of cards with the status “on the way”(traveling) is reduced by one. This status is entered into the system due to the existence of a limit on the number of cards that simultaneously have the status “on the way” for each user. This limit is 5 for first-time users and increases with the number of postcards sent by the participant that have reached the recipient.

4.2. Exchange via the project forum

Tag - a method for exchanging postcards “along the chain”. Everyone who marks in the corresponding topic on the forum (usually, the topic corresponds to a certain topic of opening), sends a postcard to the user above, and receives a postcard from the next marked one.

There is also a subspecies of tags known as offer tags. In them, the participant offers some postcards, and interested users contact him with the corresponding message in the topic on the forum. In this case, the user sends the card to you, and not you to him, as in normal tags.

There are also tags associated with a specific country (country tags) or region. A participant is allowed to mark in such a tag only if the last person to mark belongs to the opposite group within this tag. Thus, in the “Russia x other countries” tag, users from Russia can only be marked after users from other countries, and vice versa.

4.3. Exchange in a circle

The sharing circle brings together users into groups according to some criterion. In the classic version of this exchange, each participant sends a card to each of the members of their group. Thus, each pair of participants within the group will send each other one card (or more than one, if these are the terms of exchange).

4.4. Travelling envelope

A traveling envelope is a type of exchange in which a group of users send the same card or envelope along a chain to each other. This type of exchange is appreciated by fans of postage stamps and postmarks, since the cover or envelope is almost completely covered by them as a result of a full circle of participants.

In addition, this system can be used for sequential exchange of cards in an envelope: each member of the group can take several cards from the envelope, replacing them with the same number of their own, and send it further down the chain.

4.5. Other types of exchange

On the basis of the postcrossing forum, exchanges of various related topics are also common, in particular, the exchange of stamps, coins, banknotes, and stickers. The organization of these types of exchange is similar to similar principles of postcard exchange.

The postcrossing site stores a variety of statistics for each user, for each country, and for the entire project as a whole. Thus, users can choose the most convenient type of exchange in postcrossing. So how to become a member of this online community?

5. Stages of work on the project

5.1            Checking in on the “postcrossing”

To become a postcrossing participant, you must register on this forum. So I registered on the main site https://www.postcrossing.com/.

To register, I needed the following personal information: full name, email address, country of residence, postal address. After registration, you must fill in the “participant profile”, specifying the main information about yourself: name, gender, age, hobbies and preferences in postcards.

Participants are always interested in who they send the letter to, so many write about their interests, favorite activities, and postcrossers often make a “wish-list”. In the “wish list” they specify the desired themes of postcards: retro, popular artists or favorite movies, nature, technology, animals. Despite the fact thatthe main language of communication between project participants is English  many people ask you to write a few words in your native language with a translation on the card. Each project participant has their own languages listed in their profile. Thanks to the international staff, you can find friends and actively practice almost any language in the world. And to write a lengthy letter, you will have to look in the dictionary. Many students in different countries register for «Postcrossing” to improve their language skills.

After you filled in all the fields, a confirmation email is sent to your email address, after clicking on the link your page starts working.

This is what my profile looks like on the site (see appendix 1):

 Your next steps:

1.     You get the address through the site.

2.     To Send a postcard to the address you will receive an e-mail with the card`s identification number-ID

3.     After you have received a random recipient, you can view the participant's profile, study their preferences based on the information they want from you

4.     Now you must send a postcard with the ID number clearly written on it.

5.     Waiting for the card to arrive at the recipient.

6.     After that, the recipient registers the received card on the Postcrossing site, which makes you the next person whose address will be given to the next postcrosser who wants to send a postcard

The first step is to get the address to send the card to. You will receive an e-mail with the card's identification number-ID. The identification code consists of two parts: two letters and several numbers. The letters correspond to the sender's country code in ISO 3166 format, and the number indicates the serial number of the card sent via the system from this country. The card ID allows you to uniquely identify your card in the system.

After you have received a random recipient, you can view the participant's profile, study their preferences based on the information they want from you, and their wishes based on the images on the card

Now you must send a postcard with the ID number clearly written on it. This will allow the recipient to register it on the Postcrossing site, which makes you the next person whose address will be given to the next postcrosser who wants to send a postcard (one important detail — postcrossing in the classic version is an indirect exchange, that is, you send a postcard to one person, receives it from a completely different person).

The waiting for a response may be long, because of a large number of people participate in the mailing list, but the letter to the new participant comes later than everyone else, since when choosing mailing addresses, priority is given to those participants who sent the largest number of emails.

5.2            Sending postcards

It was important for me to participate in this project and send postcards to the right addresses. At this stage, after reviewing the profiles of each recipient, I signed 5 cards with my wishes in English to Canada, the United States, Uzbekistan, Slovakia and Germany. After that, I had to go to Ufa, as the local post office does not allow to send postcards abroad.

5.3            Receiving postcards

Project participants receive postcards from other users. The selection is also random, but the number of cards sent and received is always approximately the same for each participant. After receiving the card and reading the message left on its back, you must register the arrival of the card by thanking the sender. After that, a new card will be sent to him in respons

At this point, due to the long delivery time and sending cards, I still haven't received a response. However, I am looking forward to receiving the long-awaited postcards.

6       Practical part

6.1            The survey

To find out how many people are familiar with this forum, I conducted a survey among 50 high school students from Lyceum №6. First, I asked them if they knew what “postcrossing” was. The results were shocking for me, because only 8% of them knew about the existence of this project.

Another question was: “Do you find it interesting to communicate sending paper letters and postcards?”.  In this case, 30 young people were all hands “for” in support of this idea!

Then I asked whether students would like to try to participate in this Internet project themselves, 80% of the survey participants enthusiastically agreed, and the remaining 20% abstained, because it would be much easier for them to write emails. I would like to add that several of my peers have already become participants in the Postcrossing project. They have already registered and will soon send their first email!

7.     Reasons for the growing popularity of the "Postcrossing" phenomenon»

To answer the question about the reasons that encourage people to join the project, I analyzed the forum of the site and other social networks. Here are some excerpts:

 “Postcrossing is really fun for me as I am disabled and no longer able to travel. And making friends along the way is a big PLUS! It’s so nice to get "HAPPY MAIL" in my post box instead of only bills. So grateful for this hobby!” 

                   Manda Burnett

   "I have always been interested in how people live in different parts of the world. Having taken up post-crossing, I got a great opportunity to get acquainted with the inhabitants of countries that we used to call exotic. I did not know, for example, that the money of distant Belize depicted the English Queen and that a third of the inhabitants of Suriname are Hindus. The warmth with which people respond to requests to exchange cards is striking: they are also interested in learning more about our country."

 Yegor Khavansky

"And how nice it is to read the recipient's words if they like my card! So it was sent for a reason, and someone on Earth was as happy as I was! Then I go down to my mailbox and open it... Hurray! I got a postcard! How many stamps, what stamps, the message! Every card has a soul in it. I remember the day when I received a recipe on a postcard from London from a girl who invented different dishes herself. Having prepared and tasted it, I actually got a taste of England."

Alexei Phase

"There are so many of us in this world! Honestly! I came to understand that all people are so different, so unique! Everyone will write something in their own handwriting, they will want to, maybe even in their own language... From the small content of the postcards, you can already understand what kind of person this is, what sent it: the nature of his life, character, and why he is involved in this project...

We are surrounded by acquaintances, friends, and relatives. And for us, this is our whole world, and postcrossing gives us the opportunity to learn about a completely different world - about such distant, unfamiliar, but sometimes very funny people that we would never have known or even thought about.”

Albina from Tashkent

“I started penpalling with 14, had a family break and restarted some years ago. It is still one of my most important hobbies. Getting handwritten letters is very special, to know that somebody somewhere in the world sat down to write a letter especially for you, this makes it very, very special .”

ZhuoCheng

“Sometimes I'm just amazed by the journey that this little piece of paper has made to get to me and then it makes the world seem smaller and more loving.”

                                                                                                     Bob Phillips

“Can’t wait to see the handwriting, culture, picture, stickers, stamp, age of sender! “     

                                                                                            Nicky van Linden

 “It is like finding out another person in this world is caring, gentle, and kind...and it makes me feel more a part of the whole human identity.”

                                                                                          Beca Mann Stoked

Having studied the forum, we can conclude that for the older and middle generations, this is a kind of indicator of nostalgia for the past and an occasion to recall the romance of postal correspondence, for the younger generation-a chance to join a new way of communication.

What attracts people to the project:

1.     Positive emotions from waiting and receiving the next card and getting emotional is like winning the lottery. There is a sporting excitement from the process itself - which postcrossing card to buy, where to buy it, what brand to stick... and much more.

2.     Getting new knowledge about different countries and life in them.

3.     Communicating with people from all over the world.

4.     Many people consider postcrossing their “hobby”.

5.     The improvement of the language.

8.     Conclusion

Summing up the work done, I came to the conclusion that the international Internet project "postcrossing" is a chance to realize many goals:

1.     Firstly, postcrossing tries to remind humanity of the existence of a pen and paper for expressing their thoughts.

2.     In my opinion, Postcrossing can be considered a kind of hobby, someone considers the received postcards as a collectible (such people often set a goal to collect as many "countries" as possible). And where collecting is— there is excitement, passion, purpose, hope, life, but not someone else's serial or virtual, but your own.

3.     Someone wants to make new friends. Someone just likes the signs of attention. After all, many people just like to receive real mail (especially when there is still an element of intrigue and surprise, because you do not know in advance “when” and “from whom” the card will come).

In that way, we can say that postcrossing is a modern way of inter-cultural communication, which combines communication, reading, collecting and creativity. Moreover, by communicating with people from different countries, you establish direct contacts, learn a lot about people, countries, their lives and customs, form a respectful attitude to the culture of other people. Writing postcards develops our ability to communicate with native speakers of a foreign language, expands our circle of communication and pushes us to work on ourselves, to improve the English language. I think postcrossing is more than a hobby, it is more than just an activity for yourself, as it pursues such a noble goal as bringing people together all over the world.

The history of postal correspondence is so rich that it would be unfair to forget about it, so we should be grateful to these colorful “greetings” that have pleased humanity for many years!

Anyway, without the Internet in postcrossing still cannot do. Moreover, it plays a crucial role in it. The system, at first glance, is complex, but I tried to understand it and tried to convey my ideas to you.

Collect cards and send them! Look for your own, original and unique card that will be able to convey to the recipient your emotions and mood, to communicate what cannot always be expressed in words.