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Social Media Research
Communication technology and theory: Research into the interpersonal and social interface

Summary: We tend to view communication using social media, online tools and web sites, IM, chat, SMS, and so literally. Messages have authors, what they seem to be saying is what they in fact mean to say, and so on. The reader is the interpreter of what's communicated. But the medium not only transmits and enables talk by capturing communication on web pages, in chat and IMs, in emails, blog posts, and comments. It also produces the author: as an appearance or effect of the medium. This is enough to go on in most cases, but it does have implications. We do not "exist" online any more than a Second Life avatar exists in the real world. These are media of production. Presence, talk, intent, motive, character, personality.... all these are manufactured by the social media that are their means of production. HCI and human factors research has a deep field of study in social media.

Interactionism and framing the encounter: synchronous media

Because synchronous technologies permit us to negotiate interactions in real-time, we can play more with the context of an interaction than we can when using asynchronous technologies. Phone calls have more presence, and their immediacy connects users in a more binding fashion to a kind of virtual co-location. This shared context may place constraints on us (to respect each other's physical location, for example), but in providing more to work with, it also allows us a greater range of performance. Joking, commenting, remarking, and other kinds of verbal play are much easier to conduct over synchronous connections than over asynchronous ones.

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