Computer Mediated Communication Timeline

Encyclopedia of Communication Theory

Computer-Mediated Communication

Contributors: Author:David Holmes

Edited by: Stephen W. Littlejohn & Karen A. Foss

Book Title: Encyclopedia of Communication Theory

Chapter Title: "Computer-Mediated Communication"

Pub. Date: 2009

Access Date: February 23, 2021

Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.

City: Thousand Oaks

Print ISBN: 9781412959377

Online ISBN: 9781412959384

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412959384.n64

Print pages: 162-164

© 2009 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of the online

version will vary from the pagination of the print book.

In the broadest sense, computer-mediated communication (CMC) can be any form of communication that is mediated by digital technology. Thus, a telephone conversation can be said to be computer mediated if each speech act is converted into digital code, transmitted, and then decoded for the listener.

In relation to the speech acts themselves, such a conversation is no different from that mediated by an analogue or human-operated telephone exchange. However, when the conversation is converted into a form that is managed by computing systems, the spatial, temporal, and social contexts of telephony can be radically transformed. Speech acts can be digitally recorded and digitally recognized in ways that are storable and exchangeable with other digital information. Calls can be screened, forwarded, and blocked, and conversations can be timed in ways that are linked to billing; all these properties impact how people use the telephone, whether they use it at all, and how long they use it.

While CMC can take in the study of telephony and interactivity in any computer-mediated form, the most common meaning of it is related to the direct use of personal computers for communication, to the point that today, CMC is often used interchangeably with online Internet communication. Thus e-mail, chat rooms, bulletin boards, and simulated worlds are all forms of CMC. But the distinguishing feature here is that what is being mediated is communication—not information or entertainment. Browsing the World Wide Web and downloading information—the primary activity of Web 1.0 (the original use of the Internet)—are not examples of CMC. Rather, communication between individuals, whether one-to-one or many-to-many, sharing text, sounds, and images in Web 2.0, and interacting in next-generation environments are examples. However, the most common forms of CMC are e-mail, with its very low bandwidth, or the broader-banded online social networking outlets, in which users can post images or music. But in each case, text predominates.

A further division here is between synchronous and asynchronous CMC. Many chat sites, such as the early Internet Relay Chat and “I seek you,” Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) and MUDs object oriented (MOOs), and today's Second Life are in real time. The bulk of CMC, however, is asynchronous, with e-mail and online social networking offering the convenience of communication that can be stored in a threaded conversation.

The fact that there are several varieties of CMC, according to temporal and bandwidth qualities, has led some researchers to problematize the status and nature of interactivity in CMC.

Interactivity

Founder of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Sheizaf Rafaeli is a key theorist who can assist in understanding interaction within CMC. In an important 1988 article, Rafaeli distinguishes between connectivity, reactivity, and interactivity. Networks must have a human interface, but they must also have an architecture that makes interactivity possible. Such interactive networks, once established, take on a history of their own, and through such a history, relationships are formed. Two-way communication does not, in itself, guarantee interactivity. Rather, an exchange or action-reaction must develop into a relationship in which one utterance becomes a context for another. Without this form of connectivity, relationships become either circular or solipsistic.

Rafaeli also wants to abandon the dyadic model that is applied to most CMC. Online interactivity is distributed across a network and cannot be reduced to the sum of a point-to-point exchange. Every message takes into account preceding messages, as well as the ways in which previous messages react to one another. This view of interactivity suggests that the actual use of CMC is seldom interactive, particularly in cases of anonymity in CMC discussion groups. For this reason, a fundamental distinction needs to be made between CMC users and groups that have other outside relationships and those that do not.

Computer-Mediated Communication Research Directions

This distinction corresponds to two dominant directions in CMC research—the cues-filter ed-out approach, which focuses research on users, and avatar research. When CMC is experienced as an extension of interpersonal or institutional relationships online, interlocutors are generally referred to as users. When

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interlocutors have no off-line relationship and identities exist only online, they are referred to as avatars.

Cues-Filtered-Out Approach

Research into users is distinctively concerned with the way computer-extended communication mediates face-to-face forms of communication. The face-to-face becomes an analogue and benchmark for measuring the “success” of CMC, which is viewed as substituting for the face-to-face. It is known as a cues-filtered-out approach because it examines which cues of nonverbal communication are missing in the communication event and how they are put “back in.” Particularly important to this perspective, then, is the study of emoticons, the symbols used in e-mail to denote facial expressions, and netiquette, the ways that cyberspace demands the forms of polite protocol expected in embodied life.

Nancy Baym argues that in computer-mediated interaction, people are not able to see, hear, or feel one another, which eliminates their ability to use context cues. This leaves them in a kind of social vacuum that is different from face-to-face talk. Because of this, CMC participants typically find ways of “putting back in” the cues that are lost from external contexts. Therefore, much effort goes into bringing these external contexts into the content of interaction.

Baym also identifies five different sources of impact on CMC: (1) external contexts, in which the use of CMC is set (language, city); (2) the temporal structure of the group (synchronistic or asynchronistic); (3) the infrastructure of the computer system (speed, number of computers, capacity for anonymity, user- friendliness); (4) the purposes for which the CMC is used (interest oriented, uses and gratifications); and (5) the characteristics of the group and its members (group size, educational level of participants).

Avatar Research

The second direction of CMC research—avatar research—which was very popular in the late 1990s, champions the exclusion of external contexts of CMC. This research argues that online identities, or avatars, enjoy a neutral space of interaction. Because there are no cues that can spontaneously signify an interlocutor's appearance, gender, class, and ethnicity, avatars are seen to communicate on an equal footing, without any of the social discrimination that accompanies the above categories. An avatar can exist in a number of CMC environments. The avatar's identity may be limited to textual representation, or in the case of many synchronous forms of simulated CMC—such as MUDs, MOOs, and Second Life—an avatar can take on a visual form and adopt voices and behavior that are constructed online. The avatar does not have an identity or a history other than what is formed online.

In the 1990s, the question of online identity represented by the avatar was a major source of fascination for CMC scholars. Social-psychological and psychoanalytic frameworks have been used to understand virtual identity as a unique form of self-identity without the social inhibitions that exist in real life. The notion of cyberpsychology emerged, and new journals, such as Cyber-Psychology & Behavior, were established. Much of the work in this approach sought to analyze the way CMC relationships might deviate from real-life relationships with respect to honesty, morality, and empathy. Other writers, such as Sherry Turkle, saw CMC as emancipatory because it allowed people to explore their identity in a socially and physically safe simulated reality.

The euphoria that characterized the social psychology of CMC that was popular in the 1990s came under attack from a number of writers who argued that it ignored empirical research showing that CMC is one medium among many by which the same people interact. The concept of the avatar makes sense only if too sharp a distinction is drawn between the virtual life and real life. However, a series of everyday-life types of empirical studies in the late 1990s showed this approach to be unhelpful in explaining why some people spent a great deal of time online while for others, CMC represented a minor part of their communication practices. Moreover, at its height, avatar research could hardly lay claim to providing a representation of some kind of neutral, asocial human nature when it is considered that CMC in the mid-1990s was very much dominated by North American upper-middle-class professionals who shared similar interests.

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In recent years, the interest in the avatar has waned and is of little interest to the net generation of young people who are born as “digital natives” and have not faced the novelty of having to migrate to digital culture. As Susan Herring has noted, the net generation does not relate well to the utopian speculations or the debates about online democracy, identity, and virtuality of earlier decades.

• avatars • interactivity • cues • computer-mediated communication • speech acts • computers • telephony

David Holmes http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412959384.n64 See also

• Digital Cultures • Media Equation Theory • Network Society • New Media Theory • Presence Theory

Further Readings

Baym, N.(1998).The emergence of online community. In S.Jones (Ed.), Cybersociety: Computer-mediated communication and community (pp. 138–163). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Haythornthwaite, C., & Wellman, B.(2002).The Internet and everyday life: An introduction. In B.Wellman, & C.Haythornthwaite (Eds.), The Internet and everyday life (pp. 3–41). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Herring, S.Slouching towards the ordinary: Current trends in computer-mediated communication.New Media and Society6(2004).26–36.http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461444804039906 Nancy, J.-L.(1991).The Inoperative Community (ed. P.Connor; trans. PeterConnor, LisaGarbus, MichaelHilland, and SimonaSawhney). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rafaeli, S.(1988).Interactivity: From new media to communication. In R. P.Hawkins, J. M.Wiemann, & S.Pingree (Eds.), Sage annual review of communication research: Advancing communication science, Vol. 16 (pp. 10–134). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Rafaeli, S., and Sudweeks, F.Networked interactivity.Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication2(4)(1997).Retrieved February 11, 2009, from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/v012/issue4/ rafaeli.sudweeks.html Riva, G., and Galimberti, C.Computer-mediated communication: Identity and social interaction in an electronic environment.Genetic, Social and General Psychology Monographs124(1998).434–464. Turkle, S.(1995).Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the Internet.New York: Simon & Schuster. Wellman, B., & Gulia, M.(1999).Virtual communities as communities: Net surfers don't ride alone. In M.Smith, & P.Kollock (Eds.), Communities in cyberspace (pp. 167–194). London: Routledge. Whitty, M.Liar, liar! An examination of how open, supportive and honest people are in chat rooms.Computers in Human Behaviour18(2002).343–352.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0747-5632%2801%2900059-0 Whitty, M., and Gavin, J.Age/sex/location: Uncovering the social cues in the development of online relationships.CyberPsychology and Behaviour4(2001).623–630.http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/ 109493101753235223

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