Teacher - Student (face to face)
In face-to-face conversation, there are many subtle cues provided by body language and vocal intonation that let us know how, what we are saying is affecting the other person. These cues are completely absent in online communication, so strive to be concise, clear, and polite in your writing, and flexible in your interpretation of students' postings. This follows an old network axiom: Be precise in what you send, and forgiving in what you receive.
Here are some tips to help you better communicate with your student online:
Create a personal presence. Try to convey warmth and caring through words. Allow the student to get a
sense of who you are by:
- Sharing related personal experiences
- Commenting from your own personal perspective
- Sharing relevant resources (when possible)
Read over your posting. - Is what you wrote clear
and understandable? Did you use jargon?
Is your message cryptic or abrupt?
- Did you address the content of the student's
previous message(s)? Or, at a minimum, did you acknowledge the student's message, even if It's just to say that you've
read it and are giving it some thought?
- Did you pose a question or make a statement in
a manner that invites dialogue?
Visualize the student.
Imagine that the student is present. When you listen to
others speak, you show interest, puzzlement, agreement, and disagreement
through eye contact and body language. In the text-only online environment,
those signals can be translated into electronic equivalents by doing the
following:
- Using the student's name, and ending with your name.
- Showing
acknowledgment of a message from a student, even if it's just to say that
you've read it.
- Presenting an alternative to an idea.
- Asking for additional information about a
message.
Ask for clarification when appropriate.
Ask students, "Can you tell me a little more about
X?"
Tell them, "I didn't quite understand what you meant by Y."
"I don't have any experience with Z. Can you explain it to me?"
There are a variety of topics covered to do with face to face communication skills. Aspects covered include listening, questioning, non-verbal communication and more.
Email often leads to misunderstandings, while face-to-face and phone communications are still quite popular, according to a government survey.
Over a quarter of men's email jokes fall flat and involve them in lengthy explanations due to 'crossed wires'.
Women aren't that far behind. One in five women admit their emailed jokes have confused their recipients, says a BMRB Omnibus survey for the Department of Trade and Industry.
Men appear to have worse timing than women. Twenty-six per cent of men and 13 per cent of women admit that bad timing in sending jokes has created difficulties.
In addition, one in five men say they've handled sensitive matters badly by email. Only 12 per cent of women found that they had made this mistake.
The 'trigger-finger problem' still has its place in the email world, the survey reveals. Just under 10 per cent of the 1,107 people surveyed admitted they - and presumably their recipients - had suffered confusion after sending an e 515y2419f mail to the wrong person.
This data goes a long way towards explaining why people still use traditional methods of communication such as face-to-face meetings and the telephone.
The most frequent means of communication with colleagues is face-to-face, with 58 per cent of people claiming to use it, while 28 per cent prefer the phone. Communication with customers is carried out 42 per cent of the time through face-to-face encounters and 38 per cent by phone.
The survey was released by the Department of Trade and Industry just as the 1 October deadline approaches for all businesses to establish statutory minimum dismissal and disciplinary procedures.
Encouraging communication is a key issue for the department. In over a third of the 115,000 work dispute cases that hit Employment Tribunals, the individuals and managers involved have not discussed the case at all.
Face-to-Face or e-mail: the medium makes a difference
Each year some 4 trillion e-mails are sent worldwide from about 600 million electronic mailboxes. In 1995, employees sent three e-mails per day and received five. E-mail usage has jumped more than sixfold, with employees now sending an average of 20 e-mails and receiving 30 each day.
During March and April 2001, Rogen International initiated the first study on the effectiveness of e-mail and face-to-face communication in the work place. The study found that the use of e-mail has grown by more than 600 percent in six years, with executives spending at least two hours per day using this communication tool.
More than 1,400 senior- and middle-level executives participated in the international survey. They said that despite popular myth, e-mail has not reduced the amount of face-to-face communication required at work.
While executives are spending an average 120 minutes a day receiving, checking, preparing and sending e-mails, they are also still spending 130 minutes a day in formal and informal face-to-face meetings.
The message from the research is clear. Business leaders should ensure that they maintain the right balance between face-to-face and e-mail. Keeping e-mail relevant to all employees is the challenge. According to the study, more than 30 percent of e-mails received by employees are not directly relevant to their jobs, and this affects an organization's bottom line.
Taking on board this feedback from executives, Table 1 demonstrates the effect of poor e-mail management on productivity:
The calculations in Table 1 are based on an average compensation cost per employee per year of US$50,000, 225 workdays in a year, and 8 work hours in a day.
E-mail has revolutionized the quick and broad distribution of information. Almost 85 percent of participants in this study agreed that e-mail has improved organizational communication, and e-mail and face-to-face ranked together as preferred channels for general communication. The telephone and written memos/facsimile ranked a distant third and fourth respectively.
This is a clear message to business leaders when they are communicating vital information to employees: Use face-to-face first. Up to 81 percent of respondents prefer to receive good or bad news and other important information face-to-face.
Survey findings clearly show that some business leaders are not selecting the right communication channels for their messages, and, as a result, they are not being persuasive communicators. The research also shows that more than 66 percent of executives believe face-to- face communication skills had declined in their organizations because of the growing use of e-mail.
Greg
Crowther is head of strategic communication for the global communication
consultancy Rogen International,
COPYRIGHT 2001 International Association of Business Communicators
The Subtle Benefits of Face-To-Face Communication
Americans no longer participate in local community organizations, or become members of assorted clubs with as much fervor as they used to. The political involvement of Americans has also decreased significantly in the last fort years. In the book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam uses facts like these, buttressed with data from experimental studies to argue that American community is on the decline. To him, this means that Americans are not as involved with each other and thus do not maintain as much social capital.
For Putnam, this is a problem because social capital has many important benefits, including improving people's lives both biologically and psychologically. Having close and frequent connections with other members of a community makes an individual healthier. It also does much to promote behaviors which are beneficial for the whole society and encourage a more socially oriented populace.
One thing that Putnam does not seem able to determine is the effect of the Internet on American social capital. In Networks in the Global Village, we read arguments that the Internet provides strong communities which are beneficial in many ways. These communities can provide intimate relationships and support of all kinds. Moreover, Barry Wellman and Milena Gulia argue that these online communities do not take away from real communities. A major part of their argument is that Net-based interactions are often supplemental to other forms of interaction and that involvement in Net-based communication does not rule out participation in other communities.
The essay in Networks and the Global Village makes many references to the angst people felt about the depersonalized communication of the telephone when it was introduced and suggests that such feelings were unfounded. However, as far as I can tell, they give no proof of this fact. When we read from the book Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold, we saw arguments that cellular telephone technology has allowed people to become more connected to each other, and thus has in fact increased community be making connections easier to maintain. I think we are seeing the many ways in which our varied communication networks allow the links in our social network to be activated. Face-to-face communication is difficult to maintain, and as such, we are continually becoming more reliant on other, easier forms of communication to maintain these relationships.
How does this synthesize with Putnam's view that American community is on the decline? Certainly, he may be underestimating the participation of people in Internet communities, as he admits himself that comprehensive studies on the issue have not been done. If Internet communities are on equal footing with neighborhood communities and local communities, then maybe community participation is not decreasing, it is just shifting. The Internet is growing at an exponential rate, so it makes sense to believe that Internet communities are increasing rapidly as well.
In fact, decreasing long distance telephone
rates and the widespread use of cellular telephones may also account for this.
People may have transitioned to maintaining social capital through simple,
cheap telephone calls. In fact, I am currently working for a small company in
I argue that it is, as long as we believe that online and telephone based interactions are equally as valuable as face-to-face interactions. I feel that Internet communities are significantly different from local ones. My personal experiences online have shown that online communities have often been tainted by the willingness of other members to be more caustic and extreme than they might in real life. In fact, I did a small study on this issue for my social psychology class. The other members of my group and I distributed questionnaires on volatile issues to Stanford students across campus and the students were asked to rate how strongly they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements made on the questionnaire. Half of the students were asked to write the answers on a sheet of paper that was handed to the questioner, and the other half were asked to fill out the questionnaire online. We found that people expressed more extreme views when the questionnaire was filled out online. Certainly this study is not perfect but it seems to support the idea that we behave differently online than face-to-face.
Online interactions often provide anonymity and an ability to present ourselves differently than we might ordinarily. The predominance of written communication gives us a way to edit our utterances until they fit the image we want to project, something which is not quite so simple in a real time environment. Since our words are our only connection to others, it is much easier to be duplicitous or even self-deluding.
There is a bigger concern here though. Putnam argues that community is good because it has many positive effects. He says that involvement in community actually increases a person's biological and mental health. Biologists and psychologists have also shown that physical contact provides biological benefits, as well, and without it people become depressed and ill. Laughter is, of course, the best medicine, and though this may not be medically proven, it rings true for me. I question whether typing "LOL" on a keyboard has the same benefits. Malcolm Gladwell argued in The Tipping Point that much of communication is done non-verbally and emotions can easily be transferred from person to person without the utterance of a single word. If community loses its physical aspect, I believe that many of the subtle benefits that go along with physical face-to-face contact will also be lost.
Community also encourages socially beneficial behavior. Internet communities can often be characterized by the ease of entry and exit to these communities, which is certainly a benefit when we want to be able to join. I think that the normative effects of community are part of what encourages the social behavior described by Putnam. If one behaves badly, or is not supportive of the community, one easily finds oneself the object of criticism from the other members of the community. In a local community this can be devastating because there is no way to escape the members of such a community. Online, it is easy to suddenly disappear from the community and find a new one. In fact, is often even possible to just change the handle by which you are known in the community and adopt a new identity for the community, thereby absolving yourself of all your old sins.
In our course, we have found out that American community is collapsing and the Internet community is growing. We have speculated that our social networks are becoming more diffuse, spreading our connections across the nation and the globe. As we become less tied down geographically, we are starting to rely more heavily on non-physical means of communication to activate our connections. I worry that in such a system, the value of each connection is lessened and that the benefits we gain from each connection decreases. I think that in this world of the Internet, e-mail, instant messaging, cell phones, pagers, faxes, and the World Wide Web, we should keep in mind the importance of face-to-face communication. While we maximize the abilities and benefits of these new communication technologies, we need to remember to engage in local communities and physical interaction for the subtle and important benefits which they provide.
The Internet is not about technology, it is not about information, it is about communication-people talking with each other, people exchanging e-mail, people doing the low ASCII dance. The Internet is mass participation in fully bi-directional, uncensored mass communication. Communication is the basis, the foundation... The Internet is a community of chronic communicators.
The idea of a community accessible only via my computer screen sounded cold to me at first, but I learned quickly that people can feel passionately about e-mail and computer conferences. I've become one of them. I care about these people I met through my computer.
Emotion is present in computer-mediated communication (CMC). People meet via CMC every day, exchange information, debate, argue, woo, commiserate, and support. They may meet via a mailing list or newsgroup, and continue the interaction via e-mail. Their relationships can range from the cold, professional encounter, to the hot, intimate rendezvous. Rheingold describes people in virtual communities as using the words they type on screens to exchange pleasantries and argue, engage in intellectual discourse, conduct commerce, exchange knowledge, share emotional support, make plans, brainstorm, gossip, feud, fall in love, find friends and lose them, play games, flirt, create a little high art and a lot of idle talk (3).
More than a few of that list of activities are "emotional." People bring their real-life problems and personalities with them to their "virtual" lives, and, therefore, CMC must inherently include all kinds of emotional content. None of us are so thick-skinned that a "virtual" interaction couldn't bring a flush to our face as we read a flame directed at our latest post to a newsgroup. Virtual-schmirtual... ASCII can prick -- or please.
Moreover, beyond simply carrying emotional content, CMC becomes a new way for people to "find" each other, a way for personal relationships to build-at least, that is what Rheingold (1993) and others have seen. However, Kiesler (1984), Stoll (1996), and others have found CMC to be an inadequate way for people to share emotional content, let alone develop meaningful, long-lasting relationships, due to the lack of nonverbal "cues." Rheingold argues against this view of CMC as lacking, by asking: "Who is to say that this preference for one mode of communication-informal written text [instead of face-to-face]--is somehow less authentically human than audible speech?" He continues:
Those who find virtual communities cold places point at the limits of the technology, its most dangerous pitfalls.... but these critiques don't tell us how Philcat and Lhary and the Allisons and my own family could have found the community of support and information we found on the WELL when we needed it (24).
This review essay will survey some of the critical approaches to CMC and emotion, with special emphasis on scholarship dealing with CMC and the development of personal relationships.
Lea and Spears (1995), note that, currently, relationship research "privileges certain types of relationships while neglecting others," including relationships made through CMC. On-line relationships are just one of the many understudied relationship types . Lea and Spears write that, to date, scholars have "concentrated primarily on romance, friendship, and marriage among young, white, middle-class, heterosexual Westerners whose relationships are conducted in the open..." (x). Lea and Spears argue that studying on-line relationships offers challenges to relationship research, choosing to focus on the "social context" for the development of what they call "electronic relationships" (not the best term, in my opinion), viewing all personal relationships as "socially situated" (199). Thus, the definition of a "personal relationship," under Lea and Spears' view, takes into account its social context.
CMC relationships are not only worthy of study-one would think that scholars would be lured to their complexities. Slowly-so slowly-this is happening. But it's taken longer than it should for CMC relationships to receive scholarly attention.
Many scholars (and others) assume the following about CMC-initiated and conducted relationships. They are:
You will see these assumptions arise again and again in the literature -- but rarely with any bite to back up their bark. My intention is to show many sides of the CMC relationship issues, and to hopefully go beyond the typical assumptions.
Almost all theorists agree that interpersonal attraction is a "positive or negative attitude toward another person" (Berscheid & Hatfield, 1978, 2). "Attitude" means a "person's readiness to respond toward an object, or a class of objects, in a favorable or unfavorable manner." Interpersonal attraction (or interpersonal hostility) is defined as "an individual's tendency or predisposition to evaluate another person or symbol of that person in a positive (or negative) way" (Berscheid & Hatfield, 1978, 2)
Measures of attraction discussed include some that do not come into play in CMC, nor can they be measured, including: eye-contact (how long individuals engage in mutual eye-contact appears to be a determinant of interpersonal attraction) "inclination" to one another (leaning towards and other body language); and the distance one stands from another. However, other "measures" can occur in CMC, including favor-doing (exerting oneself to "provide benefits for another") (Berscheid & Hatfield, 1978, 17-18).
Albert Mehrabian (1981), in Silent Messages: Implicit Communication of Emotions and Attitudes, writes about the "nonverbal and implicit verbal behavior" in communication. He asserts that in the "realm of feelings" our "facial and vocal expressions, postures, movements, and gestures" are very important. When our words "contradict the messages contained within them, others mistrust what we say-they rely almost completely on what we do" (iii). (See Section 4 , "Reduced Cues..." for perspectives reflecting the belief that absence of cues negatively impacts CMC).
As
people continue to interact and maintain a relationship, they "gradually
move toward deeper areas of their mutual personalities through the use of
words, bodily behavior, and environmental behaviors" (Altman &
Taylor, 1973, 27) And, in CMC, bodily and environmental aspects are
reduced or removed, giving words/text all importance. Within any interpersonal
interaction there is an "exchange" in communication. We read between
the lines. We look for cues and for an equal amount of exchange between
communication partners, ideally. Who is talking more? Who is writing more? Who
writes and responds to more e-mail, and how frequently? Because often in CMC
people are interacting with relative "strangers" (people they have
never met "in real life"), the dynamics of when to disclose, and what
to disclose comes into play: ... "people are discouraged from expressing
personal feelings to strangers and so it becomes necessary to rely on implicit
behavior to infer how another person feels and how to pursue a relationship further"
(Mehrabian, 156).
Altman and
Jourard & Lasakow (1958) hypothesized that "liking" another person is a result of having "disclosed" to the person, almost "independent of that person's reaction to the disclosure" (cited in Altman & Taylor, 50). Altman & Taylor posit an interactional theory: "Revealing leads to liking and liking leads to revealing," as a cyclical and continuous set of events (50).
Lea and Spears (1995), note that interpersonal cues are "more likely to be sensitive to the communication bandwidth of the medium of interaction and may ... take longer and be more difficult to communicate than social cues." They differentiate between social attraction and personal attraction. Social attraction is "attraction to those aspects of the self that are conferred by membership of or affiliation with certain social groups or categorizations," while personal attraction is "attraction to the idiosyncratic aspects of an individual" (226). Personal attraction is not based on group processes, but instead on "interpersonal processes," such as the development of intimacy (227).
Lea and Spears also argue that technology, including CMC, does not weaken social conditions of communication "so much as afford more efficient opportunities for constituting them" (229). Wellman and Gulia (1995) state that the limited research to date suggests that relationships developed on-line are "much like most of the ones they develop in their 'real life' communities: rather weak, intermittent, and specialized."
Laurel N.
Hellerstein (1985) also found that heavy users of e-mail and
electronic conferencing, in a university setting, were more likely to use the
computer to "initiate new friendships, make new friends, and communicate
with others," whereas "light" users tended to do build
relationships in other ways. Hellerstein studied the "social use" of
CMC (the "Cyber mail" and conferencing system) at the
Emoticons combine punctuation marks and symbols into miniature sideways faces that reveal sender's mood. They are also sometimes called "smilies." Adding to the end of a sentence "lets others know you're joking or feeling cheerful" ("Cybershrink," 20). Adding a frowning face, such as achieves the opposite effect. Anna Nelson says that emoticon use is highest in "meet and greet" situations where one wants to appear approachable . Some researchers have posited that emoticons are useful in making up for the lack of nonverbal context cues in CMC.
Some people seem to use these depersonalized modes of communication to get very personal with each other. For these people, at the right times, CMC is a way to connect with another human being .
Some computer-mediated MUDS allow users to type out narrative descriptions of conversational nonverbal behaviors. Participants can "say"-send typed messages which appear surrounded by quotation marks and preceded by dialogue tags, or they can "emote" or "pose" . Emoting, in MUDs, is a way to use commands to bring action and emotion to language. For example, if my name is "Brittney" in a MUD and I type "emote cries out loud," the result for others on the MUD would be "Brittney cries out loud"-giving my "character" action and movement-and even emotion.
The use of poses as well as words to convey meaning gives MUDs an "odd but definitely useful kind of disembodied body language." In Internet Relay Chat (IRC), people also use emoting, by typing "/me jumps up and down" (translated to users on the channel as "Brittney jumps up and down"). Rheingold comments on the new dimension that emoting gives to your MUD and IRC conversations: "Instead of replying to a statement, you can smirk. Instead of leaving the room, you can disappear in a cloud of iridescent, bubble-gum-flavored bubbles" (148). This "new dimension" could be considered a way of adding socioemotional content.
Lea and Spears admit that the comprehensive analysis of CMC is not currently possible. In my opinion, it never will be. Currently limited by the "paucity of available data" (199), the very nature of CMC will always pose problems for researchers. Most people are not going to knowingly allow access to their personal correspondences, in any format. It is easier to study group interaction, but how does one study CMC at the one-on-one level? First of all, most CMC data is from organizational studies. Furthermore, it is only a very few studies that have focused on organizational CMC for social and recreational purposes. These include Ord (1989) and Finholt & Sproull (1990). A very few ethnographies of network communities formed in bulletin boards exist. Reid's 1991 thesis, Electropolis: Communication and Community on Internet Relay Chat, was unable for review, but appears to be a promising ethnography.
"How does anyone find friends? " Howard Rheingold asks this question in The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (1993). Rheingold sees CMC as offering a chance to "magnify" your chances of finding a peer group-and friends. Rheingold uses his own personal experience to exemplify this phenomena. The Virtual Community includes Rheingold's account of his time on the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) -- an electronic bulletin-board system, the types of communication which occurred there, the people he met-who helped him and whom he helped. Writing of his daughter, who grew up seeing her father sitting in front of a computer screen at night, he says:
My seven-year old daughter knows that her father congregates with a family of invisible friends who seem to gather in his computer. Sometimes he talks to them, even if nobody else can see them. And she knows that these invisible friends sometimes show up in the flesh, materializing from the next block or the other side of the planet (1).
Rheingold describes an "emotional attachment" to his "invisible friends," an attachment that he shares with millions of people participating in "virtual communities." He describes finding the WELL as discovering a "cozy little world that had been flourishing without me, hidden within the walls of my house." Rheingold writes: "...I learned quickly that people can feel passionately about e-mail and computer conferences. I've become one of them. I care about these people I met through my computer..." (1).
Rheingold's activities on the WELL included participating in a Parenting Conference, giving information and emotional support to a friend who just learned his son was diagnosed with leukemia. Another family's emotional trials were described via the WELL:
Sitting in front of our computers with our hearts racing and tears in our eyes, in Tokyo and Sacramento and Austin, we read about Lillie's croup, her tracheotomy, the days and nights at Massachusetts General Hospital, and now the vigil over Lillie's breathing and the watchful attention to the mechanical apparatus that kept her alive... (19)
The father of Lillie described above, Jay, wrote of his WELL experience, describing it as one of "solace" and "support": "Any difficulty is harder to bear in isolation. There is nothing to measure against, to lean against. Typing out my journal entries into the computer and over the phone lines, I found fellowship and comfort in this unlikely medium" (Rheingold, 20).
Parks and Floyd (1996) explain that a personal relationship develops as "its participants come to depend on each other more deeply and in more complex ways" and that as relationships develop, breadth and depth of interaction increases including variety of discussion topics, activities, and communication channels. Parks and Floyd distributed a questionnaire to participants in Usenet, finding that more than half (57%) of the subjects recording breadth scores in the upper half of the scale, meaning that the number of and types of communication interactions were increasing as relationships developed.
Lea and Spears (1995) point out the particular "technical," as well as social power that CMC has in configuring relationships, seeing it as a positive rather than negative effect of CMC:
As a text medium, some of the most delicate and perhaps questionable bases of people's relationships that are reenacted daily through talk are freshly exposed to the actors themselves, to their partners, and to third parties... Coupled with this, the immensely powerful information storage and search capabilities of computer technology mean that every word of every conversation ever conducted between two people via computer can be accurately retained and perfectly recalled at will by either party ( 232).
In short, CMC conversations are not tied to time and place in which they were originated, taking the concept of asynchronous communication to its limits. Yet, despite asynchronicity, time can matter. Walther and Tidwell (1995), did find that the time lag of replies did relate to perceptions and seemed to serve as "nonverbal cues." (see "Time Matters," in Section 6 of this document.)
Can "love" be found and fostered via CMC? If one believes that love is essentially in the mind of the person "in love," then it seems that it can be found. Theorists generally agree that "romantic love is inexorably tied up with fantasy" (Berscheid & Hatfield, 153). As Waller and Hill (1951) put it: "Idealization is an essential element in romantic love" (120). How better to idealize than through CMC, where one is left to paint his or her own mental picture of someone?
Despite this rich fodder, the research regarding on-line "intimate" love relationships is sparse. Most of the writing in this area comes from the popular press, including articles in magazines such as Time, Essence, Glamour, mostly with such themes as "finding love on-line." In one such article, "E-mail romance? Can the Internet help your love life?" (Glamour, February 1996) Lesley Dormen gives examples from office romances, such as one that "Vicky" describes. She exchanged increasingly sexy and intimate e-mail with a colleague in another department of the corporation: "Every day our dialogue got more explicit. When that message sign blipped, I'd be practically orgasmic." However, according to Vicky, in face-to-face encounters, nothing changed: "I'd see him in the hall and blush like crazy, but he'd be totally normal. Rocklike. It was bizarre!" (Dormen, 1996, 106)
When Vicky finally got "fed up" with the situation, she pulled the man into her office and asked him if they indeed where going to "get together." His response was: "I don't know what to say... Maybe, maybe not. Can't we just do this e-mail thing for now?" Vicky pulled the plug on the relationship, feeling like she was "electronically had" by a man through his "romantic cowardice behind a computer screen" (106).
In contrast to Vicky, Claire e-mails back and forth with her boyfriend a few times every workday and finds CMC comfortable, making interaction "smoother" and "more direct," like "whispering together in the dark-e-mail breaks down barriers between us".
Dormen's article gives real-life examples of CMC "romances" but it is told mostly from the female perspective without getting input from both sides of the relationship. Also, it is not a scholarly piece, not going into much detail, not including actual e-mail dialogue.
In
"He Typed, She Typed," 1996 McLean Greaves and Jeanette Valentine tell both
sides of the romance "story," each detailing his/her version of their
on-line encounter-one that was "arranged" by Essence magazine.
Valentine liked Greaves' humor, analysis, and gender politics, but admitted she
was also concerned about "more superficial matters," like appearance,
just in case they clicked and wanted to meet in real life. They started out
talking about romantic atmosphere, meeting on American On-Line. Valentine (nick
JJJVVV) wrote: "After three months of teasing we be here. I envision a
Other incidences of romantic relationships in CMC can be found in articles by Chidley (1994); De Lacy (1987); and Smolowe (1995). In scholarship, Parks & Adelman (1983) also deal with this subject (unable for review).
...In several critical ways computer discourses at least superficially appear to stand outside the conventions of everyday orality and literacy (Aycock & Buchignani, 1995, 184, citing Crane, 1991).
CMC is seen as inferior to face-to-face communication by most of the research in the past ten years. This is not universal, as, according to Nancy Baym (1995), "too much work" in CMC research assumes that "the computer itself is the sole influence on communicative outcomes" (139), but those perspectives will be covered in the next section.
In 1987, Culnan and Markus described an approach as the "cues filtered out" theory (also called "reduced cues") which posits that the computer has a "low social presence" because it filters out important aspects of communication that participants in face-to-face communication are privy to (paralanguage-pitch, intensity, stress, tempo, volume), leaving a conversation in a "social vacuum" (Baym, 140). Culnan and Markus (1987) identified an assumption that substituting CMC for face-to-face communication will "result in predictable changes in intrapersonal and interpersonal variables" (423). Similarly, Sproull and Kiesler (1986) outline a "lack of social context cues" hypothesis. Social context cues include nonverbal cues which "define the nature of the social situation and actors' identities and relative status" (Walther, 1993, 383).
Lea and Spears (1995) point out the various arguments against CMC's ability to foster personal relationships, including relationship research and theories' emphases on (1) physical proximity; (2) face-to-face interaction; and (3) nonverbal communication as the "essential processes of relating" between humans (233).
Additionally, Baron (1984) considers CMC as ill-suited for "social uses of language," despite the evidence of social interactions throughout CMC (IRC, MUDs, Usenet, e-mail). All in all, many researchers are asserting that only the "illusion" of community is created via CMC, that the only relationships created are "shallow, impersonal, and often hostile" (Parks & Floyd, 1996) (see Section 5, on "The Dark Side" for coverage of the hostile side of CMC). People interacting via CMC are, arguably, getting lower "social context information," and, according to Sproull and Kiesler (1986) become more "self-absorbed versus other-oriented" in CMC, leading to "flaming" and posturing to increase status (to negate the equalization effects of CMC) (Sproull & Kiesler, 1986). Moreover, Berger and Calabrese (1975) assert that, under "uncertainty reduction" theory, in CMC if you are not able to reduce uncertainty, then the development of personal relationships will be prevented or very difficult to attain.
Recent author of Silicon Snake Oil, Clifford Stoll questions the validity and permanence of e-mail communication:
Who here reads all their old E-mail? Who here reads letters from friends, relatives, and lovers, years and years later? After they are taken out of the old shoe box?
What does this say about E-mail?.... E-mail is thought of as immediate, therefore you don't have to reflect about the message. Since E-mail destroys meaning and content, it also destroys reflection, at BOTH the SENDING and the RECEIVING end. Most of us have 3 buttons, Return, Delete, Store (Stoll, quoted by Louis Boncek. Jr., notes from Stoll lecture , found at: https://www.oswego.edu/~boncek/Stoll/ lecture.html)
Stoll (1996) asserts that CMC, in this case, e-mail, is taking time away from real-life human interaction, tuning us out of the "real world":
For example, if I want to use email, I know I would have
to invest many hours of my time just to learn how to use it. I have to figure
out how to use a computer. I have to learn how to log in to the Network. I have
to learn what's changed, what's busy, what's novel about things. All of these
things are an investment of my time and energy. I could equally well invest
that time and energy in talking to some friends around a table at the
coffeehouse. I could spend that time and energy fooling around with my cat,
Stoll assumes that to make and have "friends," you must interact in "real-life," and not via CMC. He asserts that, for him, his time is much better invested in being in a "real physical world" where he can "be with people" rather than investing time and effort in "this virtual world called the Internet" (Hart, 1996). The assumption, however, that Stoll makes is that interacting with participants in CMC is not "really" interacting with "people."
Stoll asserts that e-mail communication "denies the sense of who you are and where you are," and that it leaves out the "most important things about you," including appearance, personality. He asks, "Might it be that the nature of electronic mail limits you to only that which you wish to show to other people?"
There can be an ugly side to CMC, including threats, violations of privacy, sexual harassment, even virtual rape. Brenda Danet, Lucia Ruedenberg-Wright, and Yehudit Rosenbaum-Tamari (1997) assert that cyberspace is "by no means wholly benign," and that CMC can release "aggressive, even shockingly malicious behavior, including sexual harassment and racism."
Chuq Von Rospach warns in his "A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community" (1997): "Never forget that the person on the other side is human," asserting that because in CMC you are connecting to a network via computer, it is "easy to forget that there are people 'out there'." CMC, while bringing people from isolated and distant geographic locations together, also can bring a person into contact with bitter, even dangerous people. The very thing that makes it wonderful can also make CMC difficult for some. As one CMC participant notes: "anyone who plans to spend time on-line has to grow a few psychic calluses" to protect against flaming, insults, unwanted sexual advances, and so on (Dery, 1994, 2). The personal relationships one makes may not always be positive, supportive ones.
John Markoff, in "Virtual Death, Death, and
Virtual Funeral" (1990), writes about how e-mail and other forms of CMC
have influenced how we interact and form relationships, including how we die.
He wrote about a
Other examples of hostility, threats, and the darker side of CMC are found in the popular press, including: Chapman (1995) and Dibbell (1994) (see "A Rape," later this section).
When you grab people's attention often, and monopolize the
"public soapbox," the response can be cruel. Like the legendary
audience at the Apollo theater in
Some CMC exchanges take the form of what John Barry (1991) terms a "flame"-an "electronic diatribe" (243). Disputes via CMC can be quite powerful, affecting one's "real life," as Rheingold exemplifies: "...Bandy, one of the WELL's technical staff, quit his job in a dispute over a personal relationship with another online character" (35). Flaming is one the most-explored topics in CMC, including articles by Grant (1995), and Lea, O'Shea, Fung, and Spears (1992).
Mark Dery (1994) defines flame wars as "vitriolic on-line exchanges... often... conducted publicly"(1). Another definition is "sudden, often extended flare-ups of anger, profanity and insult" (Danet, 1997). Less often, "flames" are in the form of "poison pen letters" via e-mail. Dery describes it as follows:
...the wraithlike nature of electronic communication-the flesh become word ... reincarnated as letters floating on a terminal screen-accelerates the escalation of hostilities when tempers flare; disembodied, sometimes pseudonymous combatants tend to feel that they can hurl insults without impunity (1)
Edward Mabry (1997), in "Framing Flames: The Structure of Argumentative Messages on the Net," defines flames as "messages that are precipitate, often personally derogatory, ad hominem attacks directed toward someone due to a position taken in a message distributed (posted) to the group." Mabry studies the CMC use of "framing" strategies within "flames," hypothesizing that "framing strategies are related to the emotional tenor of a disputant's message" and that the emotional involvement would be "curvilinearly related to the appropriation of framing as an argumentative discourse strategy" (Mabry, 1997, abstract). Mabry asserts that the acceptance, and perhaps even "cultivation" of argumentative discourse, such as flaming, in CMC stands in "sharp contrast to the conventions of ordinary social conversation." Imagine attacking someone with the vehemence found in some flames "in real life." One interesting finding of this study is that the communicators seemed to try to "neutralize" effects of negative emotional spirals when they arise.
Sherry Turkle (1996) explains that "virtual rape" can occur within a MUD if one player finds a way to "control the actions of another player's character and thus 'force' that character to have sex" (55). Turkle goes on to ask if a virtual community which exists "entirely in the realm of communication," dare ignore sexual aggression "that takes the form of words"? (55). Julian Dibbell (1994) writes about "A Rape in Cyberspace," in which a "voodoo doll" program was used to force characters in the MUD, Lambda MOO, "a very busy rustic chateau built entirely of words," to do and say things:
They say he raped them that night. They say he did it with a cunning little doll, fashioned in their image and imbued with the power to make them do whatever he desired. They say that by manipulating the doll he forced them to have sex with him, and with each other, and to do horrible, brutal things to their own bodies. And though I wasn't there that night, I think I can assure you that what they say is true, because it all happened right in the living room-right there amid the well-stocked bookcases and the sofas and fireplace-of a house I've come to think of as my second home (237).
While not a "physical" rape, the people behind the characters involved, the other members of LambdaMOO, and other members of the Internet community were very upset by the behavior of "Mr. Bungle," who introduced himself as a "fat, oleaginous, Bisquick-faced clown dressed in cum-stained harlequin garb and girdled with a mistletoe-and-hemlock belt whose buckle bore the quaint inscription "KISS ME UNDER THIS, BITCH!" (Dibbell, 239).
One of the assaulted women, whose character was "legba," a "Haitian trickster spirit," posted a public statement on an in-MOO mailing list called "social-issues," a portion of which follows:
...I'm not calling for policies, trials, or better jails. I'm not sure what I'm calling for. Virtual castration, if I could manage it. Mostly, [this type of thing] doesn't happen here. Mostly, perhaps I thought it wouldn't happen to me. Mostly, I trust people to conduct themselves with some veneer of civility. Mostly, I want his ass (242).
Dibbell writes that this woman confided that as she wrote those words, "posttraumatic tears" streamed down her face, which should serve as a "real-life fact...to prove that the words' emotional content was no mere playacting" (242). People involved in virtual communities are vulnerable to this type of vicious, hurtful behavior, just like in real-life. And, obviously, just because something happens to one's "character" in a MOO, does not keep out emotional investment.
The Bungle Affair shook up the relatively peaceful community of LambdaMOO, bringing the "outside world" and its violence to the forefront, right into the community's "living room," which is where Mr. Bungle chose to place the assaults within the LambaMOO chateau.
The absence of physical and nonverbal cues should not be taken to mean that the computer medium is impersonal or devoid of social cues, or that the cues it transmits lack the subtlety of those communicated face-to-face (Lea & Spears, 1995, 216).
In fact, there is a high degree of socioemotional content observed in CMC (e.g., Rheingold, 1994; Ord, 1989; McCormick & McCormick,,1992; Rice & Love, 1987), even in organizational and task-oriented settings (Lea & Spears, 217). And although there are fewer paralinguistic cues in CMC, there is a learning curve, and people who are "seasoned communicators" in CMC become "adept at using and interpreting textual signs and paralinguistic codes..." Even first-time users form impressions of other communicant's dispositions and personalities based on their "communication style" (217). Thus, CMC does carry emotional and impression-forming content.
Joseph Walther and Lisa Tidwell (1995), argue that CMC often conveys nonverbal cues in terms of chronemics, or "time-related messages." Different uses of time signals in e-mail to affect interpersonal perceptions of CMC correspondents. They assert, with research support, that time is an "intrinsic part" of our social interaction and that time messages in a communication event convey meaning "across multiple levels" (361). Walther and Tidwell state the following about time in our communications:
Time is a resource in our culture, and may be akin to other resources the exchange of which marks more intimate relations. How time is used helps to define the nature and quality of relationships with others (362).
Two variables were used: the time of day message was sent, and the time lag until a reply was received, testing how these time manipulations effected perceptions of intimacy/affection and dominance in CMC messages. Although e-mail is asynchronous, time can be "more directly controlled and manipulated" in computer-mediated interactions (Walther & Tidwell, 1995, 360; Chesebro, 1985). Anyone who has sent an e-mail message and known that the recipient was on their computer reading e-mail, yet was not "answering" the mail knows that how quickly a recipient responds can affect the sender's feelings. If a person receiving e-mail responds right away, it could be perceived that this person is interested in what the sender has to say, if not, the other participant could view the lack of expediency in replying as a snub. Walther and Tidwell look at the "cues-filtered-out" research. They mention the process of "emoting" or "posing," previously mentioned, and assert is use for "re-introducing affective messages in a medium without many of the cues" used in face-to-face interaction (358).
Hypotheses included: (1) time interacts with message content such that a social message sent at night is more intimate/affectionate than a social message sent during the day, and a task message sent at night is less intimate/affectionate than a task message sent during the day and (2) time interacts with message content such that a slow reply to a social message is more intimate/affectionate than a prompt reply to a social message, and a prompt reply to a task request is more intimate/affectionate than a slow reply to a task request (Walther & Tidwell, 364).
Walther (1992) had previously outlined the "social interaction processing" theory in "Interpersonal effects in computer-mediated interaction: A relational perspective," supported by further articles (Walther, 1993; Walther & Burgoon, 1992). Walther (1993) also found evidence, within a "social information processing perspective," that computer-mediated groups gradually increased in impression development to a level "approaching that of face-to-face groups" (381). Social information processing suggests different rates and patterns of impression development using alternative media, such as CMC. Thus, it takes longer to find enough information to be able to form a form impressions via CMC, but that it does happen, according to Walther, and that process by which we form impression is not actually "altered" via CMC, only slowed down.
Lea and Spears assert, based upon recent research by Walther (1994) and others, that personal relationships can and do develop in CMC: "albeit more slowly..." because the lack of cues toward self-disclosure, development of trust, and communication of int imacy, take longer than in face-to-face communication (217). They have found a high degree of "socioemotional communication" observed via CMC, even in task-oriented settings (see also Ord, 1989; Rice & Love, 1987).
Lea and Spears ultimately argue that, by moving current relationship theory away from a dependency on "physical co-presence of individuals" and into a realm where attraction and social dimension are seen as essential components to forming relationships, CMC can be seen as a viable avenue for relationship-development. Lea and Spears (1995) argue that the reduced cues approach is "ill prepared" to account for the development of personal relationships that is occurring currently via CMC, as it relies too heavily on the "physical and spatial aspects of interaction" (220).
The closest thing to a review of literature relating to CMC and relationship development is Lea and Spears (1995), "Love at first byte?" It is, by far, the least biased and most comprehensive, although, due to its publication date, does not include anythi ng published after 1995. Lea and Spears argue that existing communication and personal relationship theories have ignored settings that do not involve frequent face-to-face interaction.
In this article, Lea and Spears outline the "SIDE Theory" which is used to explain how subtle interpersonal cues affect CMC judgments and actions. They predict that the absence of cues and personal knowledge about communication partners causes the few personality cues that appear in CMC to take on great value, leading to an "over-attribution" process, building stereotypical impressions of partners based on language content of CMC messages.
In contrast to the "overwhelmingly negative characterization" of the CMC "social climate," Baym (1995) writes about the "egalitarianism" that many see CMC allowing people-making aspects like appearance mute points and giving everyone who can type an equal chance (140). CMC allows women and minorities to have their voices heard. Walther (1992) sees this as a balancing of participation. However, the very equalizing aspects of CMC that are seen as positive can also, as the reduced-cues perspective points out, can cause problems and miscommunications. Also, the anonymity of CMC, while granting participants more equal status actually "impedes resolution" (Baym, 140).
Wellman and Gulia (1995) ask, "Can people find community on-line in the Internet? Can relationships between people who never see, smell or hear each other be supportive and intimate?" And answer, "yes":
Even when on-line groups are not designed to be supportive, they tend to be. As social beings, those who use the Net seek not only information but also companionship, social support, and a sense of belonging (Wellman & Gulia, 1995).
Emotional support is a non-material social resource that is "relatively easy to provide from the comfort of one's computer," although skeptics question the quality of such support (Wellman & Gulia, 1995). Several articles in the popular press deal with support groups and people finding emotional support within CMC, although rarely with a scholarly focus. Many of the articles in the popular press emphasize ways in which special populations, particularly disabled persons, can use CMC to improve the quality of life and to receive support. These include: De Leon (1994), Bock (1994), and Lewis (1994), and Kanaley (1995). Baym (1995) also deals with this phenomenon, with a more scholarly approach.
Malcolm Parks and Kory Floyd (1996), in "Making Friends in Cyberspace," attempted to study the "relational world actually being created through Internet [sic] newsgroups." Parks and Floyd address these questions:
Parks and Floyd assert from their findings that "high levels of relational development are occurring" via CMC, in the case of their study, through Usenet newsgroups and e-mail. Also, Nancy Baym (1995) uses the example of a Usenet group rec.arts.tv.soaps (r.a.t.s.) to assert that Usenet participants can create a "dynamic and rich community filled with social nuance and emotion," finding a highly social, evolving, and interactive community within Usenet (138).
McCormick and McCormick (1992) also found a surprisingly high amount of what they labelled, "highly intimate content," in their study of e-mail communication at a university. McCormick and McCormick studied the e-mail of approximately 700 undergraduate students with e-mail accounts on the college's super-mini computer. Their findings showed that e-mail served a "purely social function" for most undergraduates in the study. Less than half of the e-mail in the sample addressed work or school-related concerns. Some concerns about the methodology include that users where not informed that electronic mail was being collected for research. Each time users logged on, however, they were notified with a warning: "Electronic mail can be read by anyone."
Wellman and Gulia ask, "Are strong, intimate ties possible on-line?" Personal relationship theorists tell us that strong ties have a number of characteristics, including:
Parks and Floyd (1996), found evidence that
relationships that begin via CMC may not necessarily stay in the CMC realm. I
have had personal experience with a newsgroup, alt.angst in which, apparently,
five "romantic" relationships began within a six-month period in
which I read the newsgroup-and were discussed publicly on the newsgroup. Of these
five relationships, at least three moved to an off-line/real life setting.
Apparently, within Usenet groups, which sometimes are highly interactive, this
is not an uncommon occurrence.
Parks and Floyd (1996) cite a female newsgroup participant, who indicated that
she met a friend via a Usenet support group "because we both found that we
were the only ones on one side of a major debate," and that they later
"got together 'off-line' to compare notes and viewpoints." It is
interesting that people who interact "on-line," often refer to
interactions not via CMC as "off-line," with a slightly
"negative" connotation, perhaps. Although "on-line" and
"off-line" life can be seen as permeable, people do still feel the
need to talk about them differently and to segment their two "lives."
From the way that "meeting on-line" is becoming more accepted, it is
perhaps moving from the exotic to the everyday happening, and this move can be
seen as somehow validating its social acceptance:
... If cyberspace is becoming just another place to meet, we must rethink our image of the relationships formed there as being somehow removed and exotic. The ultimate social impact of cyberspace will not flow from its exotic capabilities, but rather from the fact that people are putting it to ordinary, even mundane, social uses (Parks & Floyd, 1996, found at: https://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol1/issue4/vol1no4.html )
Jill Smolowe (1995) asserts that the vast majority of people surfing the Internet and communication via CMC are there "in search of social interaction, not just sterile information" and that 80 percent are looking for "contact and commonality, companionship and community" (20). Furthermore, Parks and Floyd (1996) showed that personal relationships conducted via CMC are "common," with just over 60% of people in their sample reporting that they have formed a "personal relationship" with someone they had initially contacted through a Usenet newsgroup. I do not see how the results of research and the personal accounts outlined in this literature review can be pushed aside-how anyone can say that a community is not possible via CMC, that personal relationships are not happening. They most certainly are.
In fact, people are intrigued by CMC personal relationships because the technology is still "new." These relationships are entering a realm of curiosity and popularity which is due to the relative "newness" and apparent exotic flavor of the phenomena. It is even pervading our popular fiction. A 1996 novel by Stephanie D. Fletcher, E-Mail: A Love Story, consists of electronic posts sent and received by the protagonist, including "emotionally volatile" ones to electronic lovers: "While these relationships are not real, the consequences are "Who says e-mail is dull?" .
As for the debate over the efficacy of CMC, Wellman and Gulia assert that the "dueling dualists" on opposite sides of the CMC debate are feeding off each other:
...using the unequivocal assertions of the other side as foils for their own arguments. Their statements of enthusiasm or criticism leave little room for the moderate, mixed outcomes that may really be the situation.
CMC is a social phenomena. It is all about people communicating with other people, in any way they can. As Baym (1995) argues: "CMC not only lends itself to social uses but is, in fact, a site for an unusual amount of social creativity .... Social realities are created through interaction as participants draw on language and the resources available to make messages that serve their purposes" (160).
In conclusion, CMC "blurs" traditional boundaries between interpersonal and mass communication, allowing for "new opportunities and risks for the way individuals relate to one another" (Parks and Floyd, 1996; Lea & Spears, 1995). In recent CMC scholarship, this blurring and traversing of boundaries has been debated and misunderstood as a negative phenomenon, concentrating on what CMC does not offer, rather than what it does, and rather than looking at the positive possibilities and outcomes. The "virtual community" is not a mythic land of milk and honey, but neither is it any more dangerous, hostile, or unwelcoming than "real life."
In the end, the argument should not be whether or not -- if -- CMC can properly foster interpersonal relationships. Instead, scholarship can move into the "how" and "why," and beyond the mere "if."
The popular press has given CMC-fostered personal relationships much more attention than have scholars in speech communications, sociology, psychology, and other related fields. Perhaps scholars do not deem the area worthy of scholarly inquiry. I disagree with that assessment, and find it a shame that some of the best details about CMC relationships are found in glossy magazines instead of being studied and written about in prestigious, peer-reviewed, respected journals. I do predict that this will be changing, and that sociology and anthropology in particular will be forced to pay attention to the phenomenon as it becomes more and more common. As of now, it is indeed "understudied," as the Duck (1995) book, Understudied Relationships, asserts.
Further research needs to be conducted in several aspects of CMC and personal relationships. First and foremost, the paucity of data must be overcome. Second, the idea that face-to-face communication is the only "real" and desired form must be overcome. Then, areas of personal relationships and CMC which need expansive exploration include:
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