Sketch of Research on Computer-Mediated Communication: Tool, Place,
Way of Organizing
©Annette N. Markham, Ph. D. All rights reserved, 2003.
Appendix A from doctoral thesis entitled Going Online: An Ethnographic Narrative
Although computer mediated communication is becoming
ubiquitous in many corporate and academic contexts (at least in the
For anyone who uses the Internet in its various forms, online communication no doubt engages us at a number of conceptual levels. At times, it may seem merely a tool to help us communicate with people from around the globe. At other times it may seem a more comfortable and safe neighborhood than the one we encounter in real life. The extent to which people mix metaphors when speaking of computer mediated communication hints at the complexity of the thing. And so, the race is on to entitle it.
Names and definitions for computer mediated communication abound. Through various sets of terms, people are trying to make sense of a new, unique, unfamiliar medium of communicating, way of being with each other, a new tool for managing and organizing, a new workplace, a new way of organizing the workplace, and so on. We all want to know what it means.
Following the evolution of theorizing about computer-mediated communication is like focusing on a moving and unspecified target. As in any growing research area, multiple perspectives inform a variety of studies, with differing outcomes. To complicate this matter, online publishing creates immediate outlets for writers--of all qualities and types--thinking about issues related to computer-mediated communication. The result is a diverse and creative body of literature that is difficult to automatically accept or reject on the grounds that it may or may not appear in a standard academic journal or paper copy of a book. Consequently, research in this area appears in diverse venues, from popular magazines to academic journals to edited anthologies to online journals.
Here, I do not seek to summarize the diversity of research that informs current conceptions of CMC. Rather, I present a range of studies that explore communication technology and organizations to overview the two perspectives that seem to dominate current conceptualizations of CMC: Computer-mediated communication as a tool and computer-mediated communication as a way of organizing.
Computer-mediated communication as a tool
If one perceives organizations, institutions, communities, or cultures as bounded containers (Smith & Turner, 1995) for work, play, schooling, and living, computer-mediated communication becomes something that occurs within these boundaries. This view dominates much of our understanding of communication technology, and informs a body of research that explores CMC as a tool to be examined, utilized, improved, and applied (or thrown away) within various organizational contexts.
Regardless of the specific form CMC takes, it is largely thought of as a networking tool because it can connect people within the organizational structure who might not otherwise be connected because of status, spatial, or temporal separation. It can also be thought of as a means of connecting people to the organizational structure, whether one is in the building or not. As such, CMC becomes a tool for mobilizing (literally) and globalizing workplace and educational institutions.
In the organization, CMC can be in the form of electronic mail, computer video-conferencing, and interactive messaging (Barnes & Greller, 1994). other computer-mediated systems include groupware (software that allows several people to work on a text or design project at the same time from various locations); group decision support systems, which are computer supported environments designed to “combine communication, computer, and decision technologies to support decision-making and related activities of work groups” (Poole & DeSanctis, 1992, p. 8); and media spaces, which can be described as computer-mediated environments that enable geographically dispersed people to see, talk, and work with each other through a computer monitor, (roughly comparable to the way captains on Star Trek vessels communicate with other ships) (see Barnes & Greller, 1994).
A primary focus from this perspective is the efficiency and effectiveness of communication within various organizational structures: Speeding up the transfer of information to expedite the work process; facilitating small group decision making through various computer programs, using CMC to encourage the open flow of communication, and enhancing teamwork by breaking down barriers of hierarchy and distance (see Sproull & Kiesler, 1991, for an overview).
To be effective as a tool, CMC must be as good as or better than face to face communication. Early research seemed to suggest that CMC was depersonalizing because it lacked nonverbal elements, was more “task” versus “socioemotionally” oriented, and would not be able to compensate for the elements of face-to-face communication (Daft & Lengel, 1984). More recently, however, researchers have found that users of CMC generally experience increased self-disclosure through anonymity (Kiesler, Siegal, & McGuire, 1984; Siegel, Dubrovsky, Kiesler, & McGuire, 1986), decreased inhibition (Kiesler, Siegal, & McGuire, 1984), and increased self-awareness (Matheson & Zanna, 1988). Research has also demonstrated that “rather than accepting the filtering out of social cues, CMC users . . . invent new ones” (Baym, 1995) through the use of graphic accents (Witmer & Katzman, in press).
As an innovative tool in the workplace, CMC typically gets positive reviews. Some research in this area focuses on the changes in networking patterns of individuals with the implementation of CMC. In this line of inquiry, researchers have explored the influence of CMC on individual and group communication norms. CMC has been associated with increased participation in groups (Kiesler, Siegal, & McGuire, 1984; Sproull & Kiesler, 1991) and increased employee empowerment (Eisenberg, et al., 1983).
Researchers interested in small group processes have found that CMC tends to enhance group decision making (Smolensky, Carmody, & Halcomb, 1990; Sproull & Kiesler, 1991; Poole & DeSanctis, 1992), but that decisions in computer-mediated group settings tend to take longer (Sproull & Kiesler, 1991) and are associated with less regulated social behavior, due to lack of time-related cues.
These studies of CMC utilize a variety of theories about how we process and make sense of the stimuli of our communicative worlds, including social presence (e.g., Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976), media richness (e.g., Daft & Lengel, 1984), cues filtered out (e.g., Culnan & Markus, 1987), and social information processing (Walther, 1992, 1997). More importantly to my analysis, these studies rely on the underlying conception that organizational contexts are containers within which various tools can enhance, break down, or otherwise alter the way we communicate.
In contrast to this perspective, many users and researchers conceptualize computer-mediated communication as the organizing process itself. Because it seems to transcend traditional notions of space, structure, time, and corporeality, the process of communing or relating with others is not bound by traditional, or embodied ways of “being with.” Let’s face it, getting married to someone you met and knew only online implies something other than a tool two people have used to facilitate their relationship. Indeed, some suggest that we should rethink the very essence of social reality as we witness the growth of such things as online culture, cybersex, and Internet addiction.
Not surprisingly, many writers have been prompted to explore how individual identities, collectives, and cultures are being (or could be) created and maintained simply through communication. And very different issues become salient when we begin to conceptualize online communication as a way of organizing.
Computer-mediated communication as a way of organizing
Communication technology is literally reconfiguring what it means to be engaged in the organizing process. Everywhere you look, communication technology is influencing the process and shape of organizations. And, communication technology itself is a context for organizing.
Through the primary acts of writing text to one or many and responding to responses, identities are created and negotiated and social structures are recursively produced. Interactions among organized online subcultures are based on sets of rules and norms that may or may not correspond to “real life” practices. Yet even as these online communities and cultures defy physicality, they are often thought of as real places where things that happen have genuine consequences for their members.
Because online interaction has the potential to problematize what it means to “be,” what it means to be “with” others, and what it means to be a member of an “organization,” many researchers have explored CMC from meaning-centered perspectives, to focus on the ways meaning structures (such as relationships, organizations, and cultures) are constructed through discursive practices in this new domain. For scholars such as Benedikt (1991), Featherstone & Burrows (1995), Jones (1995a), Rheingold (1993), Shields (1996), and Turkle (1995), online communication “not only structures relations, it is the structure within which the relations occur and the tool that individuals use to enter that space” (Jones, 1995a, p. 16).
Most researchers from this perspective agree that simulated realities such as Cyberspace are very influential mediators/moderators of human experiences. You see, through the control of information in online contexts, personalized worlds can be created, organized, and enacted. Though Cyberspace is comprised of nothing but bits and bytes of yes and no responses--pure Boolean logic--the mapping of those units of information results in dimensioned geographies and perceived physicalities (see Benedikt, 1991, and Shields, 1996, for an excellent series of essays elaborating on these and the following ideas). Interestingly though, while we might have a sense of “being there,” both the “being” and the “there,” Novak points out, are user-controlled variables. Objects and bodies are but “collections of attributes . . . assembled for temporary use, only to be automatically dismantled again when their usefulness is over” (1991, p. 235). In other words, we can create and destroy our various identities and selves at will in Cyberspace; our identities are as malleable as the legendary gollum, and can be likewise given the gift of life or the emptiness of non-existence. They are texts, and we are the authors.
From this perspective, computer-mediated communication is thus both process and product, medium and outcome. Online “cultures” are multitudes of ever-evolving, self-referential sets of texts, influencing and being influenced by readers and writers and the individuals’ willingness to treat these texts and the associated social structure constructs as real. The focus of research from this perspective, therefore, is toward reconsidering and reconceptualizing certain taken-for-granted aspects of being human with others.
Some theorists, drawing much from Baudrillard and his ideas of hyperreality, argue that identity and culture are fragmented and decentered in technologically-mediated contexts (Baudrillard, 1988; Benedikt, 1991; Poster, 1995; Sterling, 1991). Within this work, there is often an utopian celebration of the liberating potential of online communication: to equalize us, perhaps, or to free us from the body to live in the peaceful democratic meetings of multiple minds (Benedikt, 1991, Rheingold, 1993). And on the other side of the spectrum, there are many theorists who critique strongly the dystopian threat that technology will take us away from our centers or our bodies (Robins & Levidow, 1995; Slouka, 1995).
Other theorists are more cautious and suggest that computer mediated contexts draw significantly on real life practices and norms. So although users might create multiple, ad hoc identities and create numerous interest-based enclaves in the hopes of transcending embodied reality, they are either deflecting it (Brook and Boal, 1995; Stoll, 1995) or merely reproducing it in a different context (see for example; Clark, 1995; Kramarae, 1995; Miller, 1995; Robins, 1995; Sobchack, 1995).
For me, the issue is not whether self identity, community, and culture are fragmented or simply mappings of past experiences onto new contexts. Rather, the questions for me are: “How are people making sense of their experiences online?” or, “How are users organizing, through discursive practices, identity, community, and social structure in or with computer-mediated communication?” These questions are asked in many theoretical essays, or discussed as sidelines in empirical studies (see Bromberg, 1996 for a recent exception). I believe these questions merit inductive inquiry, and in effect, these questions are the basis for the preceding ethnography you have just or hopefully will read.