By: Vivian Nwaocha
It has often been said that computer-mediated communication alters the social norms governing conversation by removing elements of emotion and social control. At the same time, it has also been understood, that this mode of communication provides the possibility of more equal participation by obscuring the visual and verbal distinctions of status that give high-ranking or aggressive people an advantage in face-to-face speech.
There are times when less interpersonal or socio-emotional communication could be beneficial: to facilitate brainstorming, to encourage equal participation, or for criticism blind to status. In this sense, if computer-mediated communication fosters less personal interaction than the unmediated communication, it might be advantageous. In fact, through the specification of factors conducive to more interpersonal computer-mediated communication, methods for purposefully impersonalizing interaction via computer-mediated communication have been suggested. Socio-technical circumstances may be contrived, including reduced periods for discussion, anonymous interaction, obviated floor-sharing or turn-taking procedures, and ad-hoc teams with no anticipation of future interaction, all of which seem to contribute to a stronger task focus and potentially more productive work.
The inherence of impersonalizing effects in computer-mediated communication has been doubted upon later examination. For example, the initial absence and subsequent reconstruction of social context is a fundamental that chat enthusiasts use to build their subculture. Without facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, clothing, shared physical environment, or any other contextual cues that signal the physical presence of participants in a social group, chat participants use words alone to reconstruct contexts in their own image as meta-descriptions to the running dialogue. These virtual actions are typographically set apart from words meant as a straight dialogue. These actions are the same as "poses" or "emoting", and serve a similar purpose. They add a modifier to the strict definitions of words, indicating intentions, mood, or other contextual cues.
Participants in computer-mediated communication in pairs and group—even those who have never met before—use cues available to them to manage relational development in normal (or perhaps even supernormal) fashion. The circumstances of their media may add some hitherto unexplored dimensions but not an enduring dampening of interpersonal affect. In short, the negative effects of computer-based communication—loss of face-to-face contact and a reduction in normative social control—are balanced by the possibilities for social integration in communities formed around electronic networks.
Social Interaction
Recent surveys have revealed a great deal of social interaction in some computer conferences and bulletin board systems. Several case studies show the development of numerous personal relationships and socio-emotional behavior in computer-mediated communication. Consequently, some recent writings have summarily dismissed the cues-filtered-out theories and the results behind them as research artifacts.
Why did computer-mediated communication appear impersonal in some research and not elsewhere, and what accounts for the difference? Can we predict and control these impersonal outcomes within computer-mediated communication at such times as would be useful? One answer to the first question is that the medium alone is not an adequate predictor of interpersonal tone. Researchers have found that by extending the time span of studies comparing computer-mediated communication with face-to-face conversations, the relational patterns in the different settings become more similar. This indicates that the critical difference between computer-mediated communication and face-to-face conversations lies in the rate of message exchange, and that, given time, computer-mediated communication participants develop interpersonal relationships closely matching those found in face-to-face situations.
Context, in this view, is not dependent upon the physical co-presence of other people but is mainly social. Users learn to adapt their verbal behavior to the restrictions of the textual medium; over time, such interaction may adapt to more customary interpersonal levels. Context constantly supplies actors with values, goals, and projects which orient them in shaping self-images, referring to particular physical or ideal groups, choosing a course of action in everyday situations. It is not enough to be physically alone in a room to be outside the social context. Social context not only surrounds people but also resides within them as an essential part of their very identity.
It is quite obvious that many of the social cues occurring in face-to-face conversation are missing in computer-mediated communication, but this does not mean that social context is absent. Social context is present in computer-mediated communication because powerful social processes are at work in it: categorization of the self, of other people, of one's reference group, of the current situation. People are connected by what they know of the current social situation and by what they guess about the interpretation that other actors give of it. They are connected also by what they know about their own purposes, what they can guess about other people's intentions, and by social norms governing their interaction and making it mutually understandable.
Computer-mediated communication does not lack social context, provided we know where to look for it, that is, in the normative social processes. Cultural social context, rather that physical co-presence itself, makes possible everyday communication, cooperation, and the very existence of complex organizations, which are made more of abstract relationships of power, authority, and coordination governing actors' strategies, alliances, and negotiation than face-to-face interactions. Thus, conflict can be anticipated and managed and differences between actors come to be negotiated.
Hyper-personal and beyond
The poverty of the interpersonal relational framework in computer-mediated communication may, under certain conditions, even amplify the influence of the normative aspects of the context resulting from processes of membership and identification. Combinations of media attributes, social phenomena, and social-psychological processes may lead to computer-mediated communication becoming "hyper-personal," that is, actually exceeding face-to-face communication in certain interpersonal aspects.
In computer-mediated communication, the influence of social context may be even stronger than in face-to-face conversation, depending upon which aspects of personal and social identity are made salient by the specific situation. This would also explain the strong group polarization found in computer-mediated communication—a typical effect of social influence—which is surprisingly high precisely in decision-making processes within networked groups. Social contexts may function even more strongly on the basis of pure symbols of power, status, authority, and so on, when these social cues are not mitigated by interpersonal signals such as a friendly expression, an irritated tone, or a casual gesture betraying tiredness. Whereas behavioral confirmation has important effects in face-to-face communication, they seem to be magnified in minimal-cue interaction.
A fully integrated view of computer-mediated communication takes into account the sender, receiver, channel, and feedback as each contributes to hyper-personal interaction in computer-mediated communication. At the level of the sender, computer-mediated communication partners may select and express communication behaviors that are more stereotypically desirable in achieving their social goals and transmit messages free of the noise that otherwise comes with unintended appearance or behavior features. At the other end, the receiver takes in these stylized messages, construct idealized images of the partner and the relationship, and, through reciprocation, confirms them.
These processes may be further enhanced when the minimal-cue interaction is also asynchronous; freed from communicating in real time, users are released from the pressure to meet and the stress of including both task and social issues in limited time intervals typically allowed in face-to-face interaction. These effects also enhance the normal impression management processes among work teams and organizational associates. In fact, in the research field of computer-mediated cooperative work, the ambition is to create a group process that is actually better than face-to-face group communications.
Post-symbolic communication
Perhaps an even more radical approach to the potential transcendence of communication made possible by new technologies is that of post-symbolic communication. In this view, the codes of interpersonal communication are very limited, compared to what may soon be possible. Participants in face-to-face conversation are limited to the codes they can use to communicate and transfer information from one person to another—language, gestures, and so on. In virtual reality—as opposed to purely textual (or even audiovisual) modes of communication—all those codes are retained, but there is the potential for adding quite a few codes for signaling mood and meaning.
In virtual reality many things are potentially changing at a very, very rapid rate. All kinds of codes can be devised. But what is interesting is that there is something even beyond the ability to have a flexibility of creating codes. There is also the ability of communicating without codes. In the physical world, the most fundamental fact of life is that we are very limited in our power, so that we have to accept the content of the physical world as given, and we can only change it in very limited ways and very slowly. This is why symbols and signs exist. They let us refer to contingencies by a code that we cannot actually realize in the physical world.
By applying virtual reality techniques, it is possible to imagine a future culture of use in which people would improvise realities together as a means of communicating. If you make a house in virtual reality, and there is another person there in the virtual space with you, you have not created a symbol for a house or a code for a house. You have actually made a house. It is that direct creation of reality that is called post-symbolic communication.
All in all, there is a growing consensus that we should dismiss the view that computer-mediated communication necessarily lacks adequate social cues and fosters impulsive behavior. Cognitive processes such as categorization, stereotype construction, and social identification can make electronic environments even more strongly sensible to social norms than face-to-face communication.
About the Author
This writer is committed to making effective contributions towards ethical, professional and social development. Her main research interests are network security, artificial intelligence, mobile learning and assistive technologies. A good number of research papers authored by Vivian have been published in various local and international journals. Vivian has equally written a number of books which are accessible online. She has participated in several community and service development projects in Nigeria and beyond. Vivian is a member of Computer Professionals Registration Council of Nigeria, Nigeria Computer Society, Prolearn Academy, elearning Europe, IAENG society of Computer Science, IAENG society of Artificial Intelligence, IAENG society of Bioinformatics and several online social networking communities.
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