Mediated Interpersonal Communication

Elly A. Konijn, Sonja Utz, Martin Tanis, Susan B. Barnes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781135592639
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Mediated interpersonal communication is one of the most dynamic areas in communication studies, reflecting how individuals utilize technology more and more often in their personal interactions. Organizations also rely increasingly on mediated interaction for their communications. Responding to this evolution in communication, this collection explores how existing and new personal communication technologies facilitate and change interpersonal interactions. Chapters offer in-depth examinations of mediated interpersonal communication in various contexts and applications. Contributions come from well-known scholars based around the world, reflecting the strong international interest and work in the area.

Part I
Bridging the disciplines

Chapter 1
Introduction

How technology affects human interaction

Elly A.Konijn, Sonja Utz, Martin Tanis, and Susan B.Barnes

Communicating with friends and family members via the (cell) phone or email, working in a virtual team, seeking a partner on an online dating site, looking for support in an online social support group, interacting with an automated speech system while booking a flight, getting help from an avatar while visiting an online store, watching “Sex and the City,” and perceiving the girls as friends, or spending some time in Second Life—activities like these have become part of everyday life for many people.

A great deal of interpersonal communication is now mediated by technology, but computer-mediated technologies (e.g., sms, chat rooms, msn, email, virtual group work, weblogs, mobile social software) can sometimes facilitate or impede communication and can alter interpersonal interactions. The primary focus of this edited volume, Mediated Interpersonal Communication, is on the impact of communication media on interpersonal communication. The book covers a wide range of communication media as well as contexts. The chapters range from private contexts such as communication with family and friends via the cell phone or online dating via recreational contexts such as playing games and parasocial interactions with (new) media characters to professional contexts such as virtual collaboration practices. The chapters deal with more traditional media such as TV, newsgroups, and email, discuss newer trends such as mobile social media, and provide examples of technologies in development such as touch in computer-mediated communication.

Much attention is paid to how new technologies challenge the more traditional definitions of interpersonal communication. Recent trends in mass communication (such as the personalization of messages) and interpersonal communication (such as the increasing use of technical devices to communicate interpersonally) have blurred the boundaries between the two fields, forcing us to develop more sophisticated theories and models. New technologies can be seen as relationship enablers—they not only add new forms of interpersonal communication, but they fundamentally change how individuals interact (e.g. communication with avatars, para-social interactions).

Despite the widespread everyday use of such media for interpersonal communication, the literature often falls short in discussing the interpersonal value of recent developments in communication technology. Moreover, theory building lags behind the rapid development and adoption of new technologies. Although empirical studies have been conducted in various disciplines, their results have not been integrated into a larger framework. For example, books on interpersonal communication often focus heavily on face-to-face communication, and many scholars in the field see new communication technology as a threat to the discipline of interpersonal communication. Books on computer-mediated communication and human-computer interaction seem to overlook the theories of interpersonal communication. Moreover, the shifting borders between mass communication and interpersonal communication are hardly ever addressed. Thus far, the disciplines of computer-mediated communication (CMC), human-computer interaction (HCI), traditional interpersonal communication, and mass communication have evolved separately. In this book, we aim to bridge the various disciplines that study mediated interpersonal interaction.

Our approach is explicitly multidisciplinary, demonstrating how the integration of disciplines can enrich our insights in the field and provide a solid basis for studying the newest trends. Authors included in the present volume have been selected on the basis of their specific expertise in one of the domains covered by mediated interpersonal communication. The book brings together authors from various disciplines such as communication sciences, (social) psychology, and computer sciences. Many of the authors work at the edges of disciplines, and are often transdisciplinary in their approach. We have included both established scholars and promising young scholars with a bright and innovative vision on their topic of interest, each bringing a unique view from his/her own background.

The goal of the book is to integrate these unique views. On a general theoretical level, it proposes a new definition of interpersonal communication and presents new understandings of the concepts of sender and receiver. As Polkosky (Chapter 3) convincingly shows, traditional definitions of interpersonal communication no longer encompass all instances of the field. For example, the assumption that both interaction partners have to be humans is challenged—by research on virtual humans, but also by research on parasocial interaction. The book covers new forms of mediated interpersonal communication on various levels. Overarching theoretical chapters provide a framework for studying mediated interpersonal communication or suggest new definitions and key concepts. Several chapters deal with more specific aspects, such as communication with avatars or parasocial interactions.

Overview

The book has 18 chapters, divided into three parts. Part I (Bridging the disciplines) deals with the general question of how internet and electronic communication devices challenge and change our definition and conception of interpersonal communication. Chapters in Part II (Technology as relationship enable?) emphasize how particular characteristics of technology may facilitate interpersonal communication in various forms. Many of these chapters deal with the role of nonverbal communication in interpersonal relationships—more specifically, with how nonverbal communication can be displayed or even transformed in mediated communication. The focus is on communication between two or more people as well as on communication between people and virtual humans. Another chapter focuses on a form of relationship only possible in mediated communication: the parasocial relationship. The last chapter in this section takes a look at the less desirable phenomena found in mediated communication: antisocial communication. Part III (The appeal of communicating through technology) further explores what motivates people to interact in a mediated environment and how this may lead users to new ways of interacting and creating social networks. The chapters cover a wide range of mediated environments, from online communities and online dating through multi-player video games to cell phones.

Part I: Bridging the disciplines

After the introductory Chapter 1, Susan B.Barnes explains in Chapter 2, “Understanding social media from the media ecological perspective,” how the media ecological perspective can be used to analyze the effects of social media. Social media are the latest craze on the internet and have become increasingly popular in recent years. The “umbrella concept” describes applications that enable people to interact with each other and build social networks that increase their social capital. Social media include photo sharing sites such as Flickr, social network sites such as meetup. com, collaborative writing as in Wikipedia, or weblogs. Media ecology examines how changes in media forms influence human behavior and cognition. Barnes focuses on the changed conditions of attendance and addresses directional, spatial, social, and political biases. Mediated interpersonal communication introduces new conditions of attendance. People no longer have to be in the same room to communicate. This characteristic of mediated communication influences issues such as presence or the development of trust. Mediated communication is also not bounded by national borders. This can affect politics, for example: people can now organize themselves around certain political topics. Barnes demonstrates, on the basis of several new technologies and a wide area of issues, how the media ecological perspective can aid in understanding the effects of the technological changes.

In Chapter 3, “Machines as mediators: the challenge of technology for interpersonal communication theory and research,” Melanie D.Polkosky takes a different perspective. She emphasizes the fact that new technologies challenge our definition of interpersonal communication. The chapter identifies three applied, interdisciplinary fields (computer-mediated communication, augmentative and alternative communication, and speech user interface design) concerned with technology, communication, and social interaction. CMC is the field in which most empirical studies have been carried out. The relative lack of nonverbal cues has been a central issue in many of these studies; and how CMC affects self and other perception and relationships has been examined. Augmentative and alternative communication is a field that has received less attention. This transdisciplinary field uses technology to assist people with a range of disabilities that impair their communication abilities. Research on this topic has mainly focused on how technology improves the lives of these people, but also their relationships with a partner or other people in their social environment such as in school. Speech user interface systems on the other hand fully replace a human partner, mainly in business and customer service applications. In this field, the effects of technology on the relationship with customers have mainly been studied. Polkosky argues that these three fields have much in common, but that they also challenge traditional definitions of interpersonal communication such as the assumption that both partners have to be humans, that interpersonal communication can be clearly separated from other forms of communication (e.g. mass communication), and that the primary goal is relationship building or maintenance. In her chapter, Polkosky addresses these three assumptions and concludes that interpersonal communication should embrace a broader range of communicative partners, interaction types, theoretical approaches, and methodologies.

Shyam Sundar takes yet another perspective in Chapter 4. In his chapter “Self as source: agency and customization in interactive media” he offers a new vision for approaching new media from the point of view of the user. He criticizes the so-called face-to-face (ftf) fallacy—the assumption implicit in many studies that ftf communication is the gold standard against which CMC has to be compared and which it has to live up to. Instead, he argues that agency is the key variable that determines the efficacy. Agency means that the user feels relevant as an actor. Customization allows the individual user to feel unique and distinct. According to Sundar, customization is the most seductive aspect of modern online media because it is always related to an aspect of the self. Relating to the self makes users feel important and valued. The final level of customization is reached when the receiver is the source of communication. The theoretical implications of such a move towards “self as source” are explored from two perspectives—technological and psychological. Several studies are reviewed to assess the psychological impact of imbuing agency in the receiver. Positive as well as negative effects are discussed. Finally, an agency model of customization is presented and directions for future research are suggested.

Part II: Technology as relationship enabler

The chapters in part II focus on aspects of technology that facilitate or change relationships. The first three chapters are closely interrelated; they focus on avatar-mediated communication and discuss how the (transformed) display of nonverbal behavior and emotions influences communication and relationships.

In their chapter “Transformed social interaction in mediated interpersonal communication” Jeremy Bailenson, Nick Yee, Jim Blascovich, and Rosanna E.Guadagno show how nonverbal communication and in turn social interaction can be transformed in avatar-mediated communication. They present studies conducted in collaborative virtual environments (CVEs). CVEs are systems which track verbal and nonverbal signals of multiple interactants and render those signals onto avatars—three-dimensional, digital representations of people in a shared digital space. The authors explore the manners in which CVEs can qualitatively change the nature of remote communication. Interactants in CVEs have the ability to utilize Transformed Social Interaction, systematically filtering the physical appearance and behavioral actions of their avatars, amplifying or suppressing features and nonverbal signals in real time for strategic purposes. For example, a person in a CVE can look directly into the eyes of more than one person at once (augmented gaze), can change his avatar’s facial structure to morph features of other interactants into his face (identity capture), and can automatically mimic the nonverbal behaviors of other avatars (digital chameleons). Avatars cannot only transform the presentation of the self but also the sensory abilities of the user. People can take multilateral perspectives, or behavior of communication partners can be displayed explicitly in behavioral flags. Moreover, avatar-mediated communication transforms the situational context (e.g. transformed conformity). Up to now, transformations of the self have received the most attention in empirical studies. The authors describe several of these studies and show that these transformations can have a drastic impact on interactants’ persuasive and instructional abilities.

Chapter 6, “Emotions in mediated interpersonal communication: toward modeling emotion in virtual humans” by Elly A.Konijn and Henriette C.Van Vugt, starts with a concise overview of contemporary views in emotion psychology, revealing the complexity of defining emotion. This complexity is partly due...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• PART I Bridging the disciplines
• PART II Technology as relationship enabler
• PART III The appeal of communicating through technology