Bonus Blog: Predictions for the Future

After learning about the Psychology of Social Computing this past semester, it is evident that many of the theories/phenomena we discussed will remain relevant in years to come while others will need to be altered as rapid changes in technology occur.

The Media Richness Theory is one theory that I think will hold true. According to the Media Richness Theory, people use richer media (FTF) for more equivocal tasks and leaner media for less equivocal tasks (CMC). I think that this theory will remain true because in time, the focus on efficiency has increased. If you think about society today people rarely use the phone anymore (a richer media) for quick questions. Instead, there is text messaging and even blackberries have made it possible to send quick emails. In time, I predict the focus on efficiency will only increase and CMC communication will be utilized even more often for unequivocal tasks.

The phenomena of online social networks will also hold true. Haythornwaite explains that online communities are like one big in-group. Gemeinschaft or a community is based on strong interpersonal ties, shared focus or purpose and common language identity. I think as technology increases, online communities will become even stronger and greater. People will be able to connect with similar others despite location differences. Especially with our generation and the use of facebook, keeping in touch with people from the same school is now possible as a result of CMC. Even moving out of the transfer center sophomore year, I was able to stay in touch with many of my friends and make plans to see them face to face through social networking. As more people log online and more online networks are created, I think that technology will play a large role in connecting people of similar interests around the world. I think social support groups will also increase in time as more people become familiar with the internet.

My prediction is that as our society becomes more technologically advanced, the hyperpersonal model will not be as relevant. The hyperpersonal model predicts that after an initial interaction in CMC, a person will rate their CMC partner on fewer characteristics and these ratings will be more intense or exaggerated. As skpe, youtube and other video sites become more popular, I think chatrooms, instant messages, facebook will begin to apply this technology and as a result the difference between FTF and CMC impression formation will decrease. The basis behind the hyperpersonal model is that there are “limited social and interpersonal cues” in CMC. However, if real-time video use increases, social and interpersonal cues will be more recognizable over CMC. Selective self presentation will be more difficult because now you will be able to see the person and the ability to mask your negative traits and nonverbal cues will not be as easy.

I also think that the use of CMC for digital deception will change as a result of an increase in technology. People use CMC for digital deception because there are less cues, users can take more time and edit remarks before sending. I think that message and identity deception will decrease because using CMC will become more similar to interacting FTF. As I explained before, the use of video will make deception more difficult. I also predict that the use of the internet will become more synchronous in all respects. Instant feedback has become a necessity in society and this makes it harder to deceive another online.

The use of video technology will need to be addressed. When it is appropriate to have an online FTF interaction and when is it not necessary is certainly an issue. I could see instant messaging in the future turning into some kind of FTF video interaction but I do not think this may be necessary for changing email or facebook. Also, as CMC is used more often, an issue that must be addressed is assuring FTF interaction does not decline. As kids spend more and more time on the internet instant messaging and playing games, society needs to make sure this does not take away from everyday social activities.

I thoroughly enjoyed COMM245 and I think that what we learned about is very relevant to society today. Currently, I am writing a thesis on the use of facebook and social network sites by employers and I would be interested to know the extent that these sites are being used to find out more information about potential and current employees. Overall, thanks for a great semester!

Bonus Blog: The Future of Psychology of Social Computing

With the rapid rate at which technology is growing and changing today, it is hard to predict what will happen in the future. Although, it seems like most of the aspects of the hyperpersonal model will continue to hold. This model has been consistently referred to in our Comm 245 class. The hyperpersonal model utilizes the technological aspect of computer-mediated communication to assist in forming relationships and impression management. One aspect from the hyperpersonal model that will be continually used in the future is selective self-presentation. Individuals will intentionally select positive and desirable cues to present while minimizing physical and behavioral cues. This makes sense because people strive to be liked so we want to present positive features about ourselves rather than negative ones. In addition, the Media Richness Theory will continue to exist since people will seek to find the optimal match between equivocality of a communication task and the richness of the medium. Although there may be some exceptional cases, in general, lean media is good for unequivocal tasks. Media richness theory says that sometimes lean media, where there are reduced cues, is better in certain situations and in other situations, a richer media is better. Depending on what we aim to accomplish, we will use certain media over others.

In the future, I think the use of videoconferencing and audio chatting will become more popular and our technological (CMC) world will be more and more similar to our FtF world. The lack of visual cues and vocal cues that CMC has today will be greatly reduced. With this in mind, I think that CFO is one of the theories that will cease to exist in the future. We have continually come across examples that disprove the cues-filtered-out perspective in class. CFO says that the reduction of social cues produces negative outcomes but we have found examples where people have developed positive, intimate relationships. In addition, I think one of the dimensions of psychological spaces, anonymity, will be reduced with the increase in social networking sites and the possible increase of videoconferencing and audio chatting. In class, we learned that anonymity is the degree to which the space reveals participant identities with sub-dimensions, which include visibility, audibility, and self-expression. In the past 20 years, we have already developed many ways to reduce the anonymity dimension online, such as social networking sites, and it only seems reasonable to assume that it will be continually reduced with more advanced technology that can allow for more social interaction.

I think that as technology continues to rapidly increase, we will have more cases of problematic internet usage. When I looked for articles about internet addictions, I found the following describing the current issues with Internet usage. “More psychologists are plunging into Internet addiction research, fascinated by its emotional, psychological and social implications. In their work, they are finding a subset of people who spend so much time online, especially in sexual encounters, that they report problems in their marriages, families and work.” People’s internet lives are greatly affecting their FtF lives and their relationships with others. This may become more of a problem in the future.

In addition, issues regarding social network websites like Facebook will need to be addressed as it is becoming more popular. Employers have already developed ways to look at interviewees’ (college students) profiles and their backgrounds. However, students do not create their Facebook profiles knowing their potential employer will see it but for other students to see.

One issue that I think should be discussed in Comm 245 is illegal downloading of music, movies, tv shows, etc. Among Cornell students, it is very frequent for students to go to DC++ to download songs they want or a new episode of some tv show they like to watch. In addition, it would be interesting in the future to talk about the growing popularity of iPhones and Blackberry and how they affect social interaction and relationships.

Article quoted: http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr00/addiction.html

12: The Decline of Anonymity

Eight years after Patricia Wallace’s book, The Psychology of the Internet, was first published, the students of COMM245 considered Wallace’s ideas as we studied the psychology of social computing throughout this semester. Since the Internet is a rapidly changing space, we found that some of Wallace’s ideas were no longer as relevant (e.g. emphasizing MUDs) and there were other Internet spaces that she did not anticipate (e.g. social networking sites). Similarly, as our use of the Internet continues to change, certain theories and phenomena we have learned about will hold true while others will need to be altered.

Anonymity, or the degree to which the space reveals participant identities, is an important dimension of various spaces on the Internet. This dimension can be influenced by visibility, audibility, and self-expression. I believe that CMC will become less and less anonymous over time. Perhaps the use of video conferencing and audio chat will become more widely utilized as CMC becomes a primary means of communication rather than a compliment or prerequisite to other mediums. I’ve recently noticed some small changes that show hints of individuals opening up online, such as adding a picture of themselves as their buddy icon. Maybe in the future it will become more acceptable to align face-to-face and CMC even more—and therefore have less emphasis on anonymity. As the Internet becomes less anonymous, various communication theories that relate to anonymity (SIDE, etc.) will need to be adapted.

Aside from how we are visibly seen and audibly heard through CMC, I believe our identities will be kept less anonymous on the Internet due to the increasing amount of information becoming available online. One of McKenna’s (2007) relationship facilitation factors referred to as “getting the goods” discusses the ability to get information about others online through areas such as Google, Facebook, etc. prior to meeting face-to-face. The more information that individuals are able to find out about others—the less control individuals will have over how they present themselves while communicating online.

Selective self-representation, an attribute of Walther’s (1996) Hyperpersonal Model entails that various spaces on the Internet allow individuals to control which of their personal characteristics are expressed to others and have the ability to emphasize their desirable characteristics while hiding others. Selective self-presentation may become less applicable in the future since we may people will be able to find out a great deal about us through the Internet. This aspect can be tied into theories relating to online attraction, digital deception, and social associations.

I believe that in the future there will be more emphasis on synchronicity online, leading individuals to be expected to interact in real time and therefore have less time to carefully craft their representations—further mimicking face-to-face interactions. I believe technology will keep changing to further replicate the face-to-face environment, eventually leading theories such as the Social Information Processing Theory to fade out, since individuals will truly be getting to know someone online in the same way as they would face-to-face.

In addition to revising theories as our use of the Internet changes, there will be new topics that will need to be addressed. As PDAs become even more widely used, I believe this technology will need to be addressed in COMM245. It would be interesting to apply the concept of Internet addiction to this area. Another important aspect to look at would be the consumption of various forms of news and information online. What sort of news or other information do individuals seek online rather than other mediums, and why? Furthermore, with the constant customization of websites to individual’s own tastes it would be interesting to look at social computing from a company’s perspective. What sort of tactics do they use to ensure that individuals will continue going back to their site?

Although I can’t be sure that any of my predictions will hold to be true in the future, I am sure of one thing—the social computing theories that I’ve learned in COMM245 will definitely change my view of my personal experiences using the Internet in the present and the future.

Extra Blog

Learning more and more about CMC communication and online interactions it is becoming more and interesting to me to see how people are using the technology we have today because it is so much more vast an area than I ever thought. This makes be a little scared for the future, however. Seeing how technology is changing and growing in leaps and bound makes me fearful of a world where face to face interactions are at a minimum and your avatar interacts with more people than you do on a daily basis.
There are many theories that we learned about in 245 that I think will hold true in the future. This is because even as CMC technology changes it will not change the way people think or interact. Human nature will not be changing any time soon. Impression management will always be applicable because people will always desire to make themselves appear the way they want to appear and make the best impression possible. In the future there will probably be even more ways to selectively self present yourself. For example, not so long ago the idea of online dating profiles and avatars were unheard of let alone common. I believe that digital deception will still be a part of CMC because it is human nature to lie and the increase in the amount of communicating we do via CMC and the inevitable new ways will only make digital deception easier to pull off.
Media richness theory I believe will also still be applicable in the future because we ill never stop wanting to find the best, most efficient, and face saving means of communicating our message. It was probable even become more and more prevalent because efficiency becomes so much more important to us it seems as we find newer more efficient medium. For example, text messaging has increased the efficiency with which I communicate so much that I feel I am even becoming spoiled, wanting even more efficient media. Maybe telepathy will go mainstream soon, who knows.
I also think that the hyperpersonal model will continue to hold true. I think that as more and more people use online communication there will be a greater likelihood in your mind that you are talking to a normal person just like you and not a pedophile or thirty year old in his parents’ basement. Not only will it be human nature to make immediate judgments, the decrease in skepticism will cause more over attribution in those judgments.
I think that the CFO theory will probably become obsolete. CFO states that CMC communication leads to poor and negative impressions because of fewer cues. However, as we use CMC more and more a new set of cues will be emerging that our generation and future generations will be able to pick up as easily and with as much accuracy as we do in FtF interactions. Even take emoticons for example. Emoticons are relatively new but are already easily recognized and universally understood.
I believe that there will be a huge increase in technology and the amount that people communicate using CMC as well as more ways in which to do so. Being in the same place at the same time will most likely become less and less necessary. Businesses will surely find ways of using technology to their advantage. For example video conferencing is just one thing that is widely used now but not so long ago seemed like something out of the Jetson’s. Education will surely find new ways to utilize technology. I for one never thought that I would be doing homework assignments and posting them on an online blog for everyone to read. This course has made me curious as to how people will continue to communicate in the future and how we will use technology to make our lives easier.

12: The Future

This course has shown me that the communication mediums and the internet are constantly evolving. The theories, psychological spaces, and systems set up today, will most likely be different in the future. Many of the thoeries we've learned throughout this semester will apply and adapt to the new mediums that we will have. However, there will also be some that I can not see lasting very long.

As long as there are channels which limit the amount of non-verbal cues, I believe that the Social Information Processing theory will hold true. The idea that over time, non-verbal cues will be adapted into the verbal channel can really be applied to any leaner medium in my opinion. Also, there will always be some forms of selective self presentation. I also feel that SIDE will still be able to be applied in many areas. However, visual anonymity will be a lot rarer in the future. As social presence theory states, greater bandwith allows for more cues. Since bandwith can only go up from here, and it is already getting quite large, visual anonymity will play less importance into a lot of things. Many of the communication theories that existed before CMC was a part of this area of study will come back into play simply because the amount of cues available through CMC in the future will be drastically larger. This will also render the hyperpersonal model less effective, since this increase in non-verbal cues available in CMC will result in an increased breadth of our CMC partners. I feel that we will still form our impressions with increased intensity, but over time, as SIP states, this will sort itself out. The amount of time this takes will be much smaller as well with the richer forms of CMC that will be available in the future.

I predict instant messaging will evolve into almost the equivalent of FtF, and computers will become even more widely used in the future. Online social spaces. As such, I also believe that from a very young age people will start to be more accustomed with a computer-mediated form of communication with a large number of non-verbal cues. This will make deception harder, and CMC will most likely be close to as commonly used as FtF. The feature-based model of deception should still hold true, but will have to be adapted since the mediums will evolve.

As technology advances, I believe that more portable forms of computers will become available, making CMC something possible from any location. This will infuse it into our daily lives, and need to be taken into account in this field of study.

This was an interesting course that was a great introduction into the psychology of social computing. I feel that this field will become more and more prevalent as computers continue to evolve and become an everyday part of our lives. This course did a great job of exploring many theories/research, both old and new. However, I feel that it would have been nice to explore the application of many of these theories in the business world. There is undoubtly a large use of these studies by corporations and companies to try to achieve success. Also, I believe that as this blog is asking us to do, some class discussions on the future of CMC would also have been very beneficial. As phones become more and more advanced, I wonder if they will finally become as advanced as our desktop PCs. With the release of the iPhone, and google's new Android platform, they're already well on their way. I feel that this means of being connected with the internet wherever you go will have to be addressed in Comm245 in the future. Overall, the class did a great job of introducing us to this area of study, but as computers and CMC continually evolve, so will the subjects discussed in this course be forced to.

12 EXTRA BLOG

During this semester in COMM 245, we have discussed numerous theories, some that I predict will hold in the future and some that I predict will change in the future. The Hyperpersonal Theory states that in CMC there is a reduction in breadth (rate a CMC partner on fewer characteristics) and an increase in intensity (more intense/exaggerated ratings of a CMC partner). In the future, people will talk more and more through CMC and become better at judging the person on the other computer. Therefore, people will not over-attribute others or give really intense ratings of a CMC partner; in the future, people will know better. Using the reasoning that people will talk more and more online and learn how to better judge a CMC partner, the Social Information Processing Theory will change as well. The Media Richness Theory states that communication media differ in the richness of the information processed, and efficiency equals the optimal match between equivocality of a communication task and the richness of the medium. I predict that the Media Richness Theory will hold true in the future and expand to new communication technologies. I predict that some theories we discussed in class will completely hold in the future. For example, the Social Distance Theory (which states that lying is uncomfortable and people use the most socially distant, or leanest, media to lie in, will remain unchanged in the future. This theory deals with human nature, and no matter what technologies are invented or what other theories are invented; this quality of people will remain unchanged and cause this theory to remain unchanged. In the future, gender signals during CMC will remain unchanged as well. Once again, these are human traits that will never change in the future. I also believe that the Caplan Model will become even more intense in the future. With new and more addicting technologies being created, people who have social problems in FtF communication will become more and more addicted to CMC with the creation of more addicting technologies.

There are a few new technologies that will need to be addressed in the future. The first one being Internet on your phone. Having Internet on your phone is like having Internet everywhere you go, and Internet on your phone is wireless. Another technology that goes along with this is instant message on your phone, such as Blackberry Messaging. I also think video-conferencing is another form of technology that needs to be addressed. For example, one of my lectures at Cornell had two professors. One of the professors lectured in the classroom, while the other one lectured through videoconferencing. He lived in New York City. Essentially, a professor who was not on the Cornell campus, but hundreds of miles away, was lecturing to the class.

COMM 245 did a wonderful job of teaching us how we communicate using different CMC technologies compared to FtF communication. The class allowed us to participate in what we were learning about by blogging online for our weekly assignments. I would have liked to learn more about the start of Internet. I also would have liked to know how the Internet has affected the economy; such as which jobs were lost because of the Internet and which jobs were gained. In conclusion, COMM 245 was a very interesting and informative class!

12 - Bloggerama

What is it that we really like about blogs? It is because we finally get that chance to be that newspaper columnist that everyone listens to for advice? On the other hand, maybe it is because we finally get a chance to share our true feelings with hopes that someone will listen. Whatever the reason, it all comes back to the fact that bloggers want to be heard. Therefore, what is the future of blogs? It’s simple, as technology grows, so will the aspects of blogs including how we express our feelings or opinions online. With more pictures and simpler ways to make blogs and change the fonts and colors, blogs will become more personalized to the writer. Just look at how our class blog has tremendously expanded throughout the course in a span of only 4 months. Can you imagine what the future holds?

As a result, this will have an immense impact on some of the aspects of the theories that hold true today. For instance, the Social Presence Theory and Reduced Social Context Theory both address that CMC predominantly causes poorly developed, impoverished and even negative impression formation. However, with increased fonts and pictures, blogs will say more about the person than ever, making the impressions less impoverished than they are now. Whether or not the impressions are negative will vary, but more clues can do as much good as bad, telling more about the person and speeding up the slower impression formation in CMC that the SIP theory states.

As a result, this class will have to start teaching new ways to evaluate and get to know people online. For example, what the font size or color says not only about their gender or age, but also about their personality. Just like how people can read body language and tell a lot about a person’s character by their handwriting, a new book of decoding will have to be written for blogs. Currently, the class teaches about how a person’s language in emails can give clues to their gender, but what will be discovered about the visual clues in blogs revealing personality clues are limitless and fascinating.

Nevertheless, the aspect of anonymity is undeniably one of the most attractive incentives of the Internet. Therefore, there will always have to be a cap as to how much a blog really will tell about a person. Things might still develop slower than they will in FtF, but the future holds cooler blogs than ever, which means we will just have to become just as cool and step up to the plate to tackle the blogs of our future.

Bonus Blog Assignment: Show Me The Money

As much as technology and social norms change, the theories we have learned will stay pretty much how they are. These same theories and phenomena might be applied differently as the Internet changes and grows, but they’re fundamental ideas and concepts will remain the same. This is because the basics of Internet interaction will never change drastically.

For instance, the CFO perspective, the Hyperpersonal model, and SIDE all deal with impression formation and relationship development. These concepts will always be relevant in their current forms because there will always be Internet users meeting new people. No matter what new technologies arise, or what new uses for the internet develop, people will always be interacting on the web. Thus, such theories will still apply.

Likewise, people will always need social support, there will always be two genders, and there will always be internet users who take their relationships and interactions offline, into reality. Most, if not all, of the theories we learned are broad enough, commenting on the entire Internet or general psychological spaces, that these elements of human nature, and thus the net, will continue to exist and be important.

One aspect of the Internet that will be explored heavily in coming years, and that this class did not cover, is commerce. There are so many people buying, selling, promoting, and researching on the Internet that it would be unwise for communication researchers to ignore this area of the Internet. How do people make financial decisions on the Internet, and is the process different that at physical stores? There is such a variety of commercial activity on the Internet that the opportunities for research and observation are almost limitless. Not only are new companies establishing themselves on the net, but also reputable businesses are expanding to include websites. Some companies use the Internet simply to promote their products and services, while others offer ways to make actual purchases.

Internet promotion takes many forms on the Internet. Vendors send emails to promote sales and new products, film studios release trailers on YouTube and similar sites, and small advertisements cover web pages of almost every kind.
The issue of Internet commerce, whether it differs from traditional purchasing activities, and if so, how, will become increasingly important in the years and decades to come. As the Internet, along with its number of users, grows, more will be possible on the Internet, especially in this area. This Internet space will be the subject of much future research.


Comments:

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/12/12-decline-of-anonymity.html


http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/12/extra-blog.html

Bonus: Change by New Technology

One of the theories that we learned in class that will always hold is the Media Richness Theory. Daft and Lengel (‘84) state that efficiency of communication will dictate which media people will use. With this fast pace society where productivity and work load have been increasing, efficiency is a huge part of life. Therefore, people will want to get that optimal match between equivocality and communication and will want to be efficient with their time. Furthermore, with new media of communications increasing to pop up in our society, such as the Blackberry and the iPhone, people will be able to even more efficient.

However, with the introduction of new software and technology, we will have to alter some theories as well. Some of these theories that will need to be changed are the CFO perspective, the Hyperpersonal model and the SIP theory. All these theories deal with impression management over CMC and the ambiguousness of the internet. However, with tools such as Facebook, Youtube and video chat/conferencing, where people are able to perceive Ftf cues, many of these theories will need to be changed. The CFO theory which predicts that communication over CMC will lead to poor and negative impressions will be negated with the introduction of new cues into the internet. Furthermore, the slow impression formation over the CMC that the SIP theory states, will also have to changed since all the impressions will form faster due to more cues. Finally, regarding the Hyperpersonal model, the breath of impression formation will increase due to more cues and, therefore, the intensity of the impressions will decrease over CMC.

Technologies that I mentioned above are revolutionizing not only the work place, but also the academic society. Now due to video conferencing, students in Qatar can listen to a Psych 101 lecture held in Bailey Hall. Now due to the blackberries and the iPhones, businessmen can work on deals any time and any where. New graduates just entering the work field are greeted with Blackberries and laptops so that the companies can be more efficient and productive. Issues such as these are very interesting and it would be great to learn how people are dealing with this fast pace environment.

Moreover, with this addition of new technology come issues such as Problematic Internet Use and internet addiction. More and more people are getting addicted to online games and sites such as Second Life. Being a premed major, it would be really interesting to learn new treatments or drugs that are provided for these new types of disabilities.

All in all, this class gave a great insight into the psychology of the internet and how people are getting affected by it. The social theories and guidelines that were taught were fascinating to learn about. It would have been great if we studied more about digital deception and the new threats out there in this field. Furthermore, I would have loved to learn more about how the advancement of new internet technology has affected our behaviors and attitudes online.

12: Predicting the Future

The theories we studied will always be evolving and new theories will be developed as technology affects our interactions. However, impression formation and impression management are a phenomena that will always be studied because it is how we first act when we put ourselves online and how we react to others online. In particular, the Hyperpersonal Model has been applied in the beginning when people were simply chatting online through text to now, as people, along with online chatting, use profiles to interact through social network sites. Although we do not hear much about online social support in the news, its success in helping others has proven that it will probably be around for awhile. The internet’s characteristics, including 24/7 access, anonymity, social distance, and interaction management, allow people to self-disclose more and truly receive the help they cannot get in an FtF environment. Digital deception has been a particularly interesting topic that will also always hold because it deals with human behavior when presented with various media to lie in. Since lying is something we do on a daily bases, the Social Distance Theory and Media Richness Theory will always be applied to these situations.

I think the theories relating to leaving virtuality will change as more relationships incorporate mixed modality in their interaction. Some of the theories do not entirely relate for relationships that went from talking online, to talking on the phone, to talking in person. Predictions were mostly negative for relationships that went strictly from CMC to FtF, but when other media are involved, it helps each party to validate and redistribute their impressions so that the FtF meeting is more “natural”.

New issues regarding privacy and rights will need to be addressed as internet offenses increase. Many of the news articles we heard about in lecture were dealing with whether people should be accounted for the wrongs they perform online and how they should be punished. However, there is also the issue of whether it would be considered as invading privacy because what they do in CMC is their business. Will it be necessary to have some for of online law enforcement to monitor virtuality? I noticed from our blogs about the virtual self that most people were not impressed with Second Life. It would be interesting to study why our generation was indifferent to Second Life; yet, large companies are investing so much in it and its popularity is growing worldwide.

Predictions from the KRYSTAL Ball

Based on the theories and phenomenon we learned about this semester I think that although the technological world has changed so dramatically throughout the years, there are still several theories and phenomenon that will continue to apply in the future based on pure human nature. I do not think that people will stop trying to impress others by shaping how others perceive them, thus the impression management model will always hold. Because of people’s desire to be perceived favorably by others, I also think that people will continue choosing a medium that best matches their intentions and gives them the best opportunity for selective self-presentation (Media Richness Theory). They will also continue to choose an appealing virtual self-identity or avatar online whether or not it actually resembles their true selves. Additionally, I think that people will continue trying to immediately form judgments of others by quickly coming to conclusions and thus holding the Hyperpersonal model, CFO perspective, and SIDE theory constant.

On the other hand, I do think that many theories and phenomenon will change based on society’s push for using technology for nearly everything. I do think that with many organizations going global these days and with the costs associated with flying executives into a central location for meetings, technology use for business transactions will increase. I think that businesses will use technology, such as a live virtual environment, to try and keep business transactions similar to FtF interactions. Thus parts of the Media Richness Theory will change as the amount of rich information processed and the associated costs will determine the medium at which transactions may occur. The richest medium companies may end up using could be a live virtual environment to actually see their employees instead of FtF versus using a lean medium like a program similar to IBM’s Second Life where there are avatars. I assume that there will be a bigger push for virtual classroom technologies in the near future.

Overall, I enjoyed this course. However, I wished that we were able to relate the class theories to having the internet accessible in certain organizations based on how it affects worker productivity. I think it would have been beneficial if we applied the class theories to organizations by discussing options companies could take in restricting or allowing internet use by providing some example case studies. This correlation would have directly related to my ILR major and would have significantly increased my interest in the course. I also enjoyed learning how to blog as this was an online technology that I was very unfamiliar with.

11: Strange But True

Something that happened to a stranger a week or so ago is a good example of online-to-FTF interaction.

I was waiting for the TCAT bus at about 8:00PM last week when a girl approached me and asked if I had any money. I thought this was quite strange, and I asked her why she needed it. She began to tell me about an interaction that occurred between her and a student at Cornell. She told me that she was from Michigan and she met a kid on MySpace, and he sent her a bus ticket to come visit him at school. She went on to say that she met him at his frat, but he kicked her out when she refused to have sex with him. She needed money because now she didn't have a way back to Michigan, but unfortunately I was unable to help her, and directed her to the campus police.

This was a very unfortunate occurrence for the girl, but I think she could have used better judgment than to visit a complete stranger hundreds of miles away. She may have felt she knew him better than she did, and that is what led her to believe she could trust him. This goes along with Ramirez and Wang's view that switching from CMC to FTF can result in negative views and disappointment. The male at Cornell obviously had different expectations, and they were clearly violated. The girl's expectations were also violated, as she didn't expect the relationship to be sexual. Ramirez and Wang's ideas were upheld in this situation.

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11. O ... Crap

This semester I met a guy in one of my classes while trying to form a group for our final project. I had one person in my group already and just needed one more person. I got emails from a couple of dudes who still needed a partner for the project but I chose this one dude in particular because he was senior computer science major and the project was a CS project. I corresponded with him very briefly over the course of two days and then we met as a group to discuss the project. I must admit that I was slightly disappointed when I met him. The determining factor for me choosing him to be in my group was that he said he was a senior CS major. A former CS major myself, I know the rigorous workload that professors demand of their CS students. I figured that our project would be a piece of cake for him, a break from his real CS work. I thought he would be a “super-programmer”, someone we could just throw heavy problems at and who would be able to solve them with no problem. After or initial meeting and following work sessions, I realized that he was no more capable to write code and problem solve than anyone else in the group.

I think my reaction could best be described by SIDE. Even though I had never met him, I associated him with the highly intelligent CS majors I have met in the past. This made me build him up to be some sort of programming genius before I met him. I over attributed him as a overly intelligent guy since the only thing I knew about him was that he belonged to that group of smart CS majors.

This contradicts the long-term vs. short-term factor discussed in the Ramirez & Wang paper. The paper predicted that with a short time in CMC only a few expectations could be made so the corresponding FTF would be about “filling in the blanks”, while a long time in CMC would allow for many expectations to be made the corresponding FTF would be disappointing since many of the expectation would probably not be met. The only characteristic that interested me was his programming skills and when they weren’t above average I was disappointed. The theory did not take into account that in certain contexts only a few characteristics would be of importance and even the few expectations that were made could lead to a negative experience.

11 Take me down to disappointment city

For this assignment I decided to look back on an online relationship I formed before coming to Cornell. Like many students in the Facebook-era, I friended various students a few weeks before leaving for orientation that were coming to Cornell from my area, or who would be living in my dorm, or, as in this case, had very similar interests as myself. After we exchanged a few messages, poked each other, and wrote on walls, we had established somewhat of a relationship. And honestly, I liked him. I was really looking forward to this cool, funny guy that had a pretty good taste in movies. A few weeks after I came to Cornell and got settled in, we decided to meet up at Appel for dinner. I was amazed at how different a person can appear online compared to face-to-face. He wasn’t especially awkward or anything, he just had this quality about him that I absolutely can’t stand – he thought he was really funny when he wasn’t. He laughed at his own jokes, which we were constant, and bad at that. On top of that, the couple of favorite movies that we shared, was pretty much it. He hadn’t even heard of The Office, which is pretty much unforgivable in my book. Overall, I was disappointed with our face-to-face meeting based on our online interactions.

I would say that my experience makes a lot of sense in terms of the hyperpersonal model. During our computer-mediated conversations, visual and sound cues are eliminated; thus, I never had to undergo his excessive laughing at his own jokes. Also, he is able to spend more time choosing his words and could steer the conversation away from topics he didn’t know much about, which again affected my opinion of him. I only saw the best of him, resulting in an exaggerated opinion of him. I’m sure I came off similarly to him, and I don’t know if I was as much of a disappointment, but we haven’t really spoken since besides an awkward hello every now and then.

The timing of our relationship played a definite role in the modality switch. I would classify our relationship online as long-term, especially when compared to the brevity of our face-to-face relationship. This makes sense according to Ramirez and Wang’s research results. This study showed that “[p]articipants evaluated the social information more positively and uncertainty-reducing following short-term on-line associations but more negatively and uncertainty-provoking following long-term ones compared to remaining online.” In other words, I spent so long talking to this boy that I formed grossly positive opinions of him. I was almost bound for disappointment, but don’t worry, I haven’t turned my back on Facebook yet.

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11 Playing the Middle Man to Make People Happy

I had a hand to play in helping a relationship leave the CMC world into the FtF world. My friend, whom we shall call Jane, met my other friend, whom we shall call James, through instant messaging before meeting in real life. When Jane was sitting at my computer, I received an instant message from James. Jane thought she would be funny and started talking to James while I was distracted with other things. I returned to my computer to discover that I was now in a homosexual relationship with James. I told Jane to talk to him under her own identity. Afterwards, she Facebooked him and proceeded to communicate with him over her own instant messaging name. Eventually, over the summer break, I organized a get together for James and Jane. When they met, it seemed like a positive experience.

The uncertainty reduction theory predicted this outcome. According to the theory, more information prior to meeting the person FtF leads to more positive outcomes. James and Jane both had access to each other's information through Facebook. They saw their common friends, tagged pictures, and interests. This led to the establishment of common ground and expectations prior to meeting FtF. SIDE theory did not play a role on this occasion due to the lack of desire to keep individualizing characteristics hidden. Both Jane and James put up more personal (less group related) information on their Facebook profiles, maintaining openness in their individual images. The Hyperpersonal model also did not affect the transition of the relationship from online to real life. Since I knew both James and Jane, I corrected any exaggerated images one party might perceive of the other. For example, when Jane noted that James appeared tall in his pics, I explained that he was in fact relatively short. By moderating their impressions, the exaggerated preconception due to online interaction was avoided.

When switching from CMC to FtF, the expectations were not violated. This is contrary to Ramirez and Wang's proposal that the transition may cause unmet expectations that result in a negative outcome. The time between meeting FtF and meeting in CMC was about 7 months, a considerably long term relationship. According to Ramirez and Wang, this long term relationship would have led to a more negative outcome, but James and Jane both had a positive outcome.

Assignment 11: First GF

For this blog I've chosen to discuss my first girlfriend, whom I first interacted with online. It all started when I joined a community based around a fantasy series novel.

I was hanging out in the community's IRC channel and talking random internet small talk with a nice girl on there. After a while we figured out that not only were we both living in the same town, we were also going to the same high school. At this point we had been chatting via the fantasy community for a good 4 months or so and were starting to feel more and more comfortable with each other. From then on the relationship escalated into a more FtF prone relationship.

When the relationship switched from being primarily CMC to primarily FtF, there were not many problems. We met and started dating regularly. Our first FtF meeting was really not very awkward at all. We were well acquainted with one another at that point.

According to Walther’s Social Information Processing(SIP) Theory, the non-verbal cues that are lacking in CMC will be adapted into the verbal channel over time. I believe it is safe to say this is what happened here. As the months passed online, we developed the same types of impressions of one another as we would have FtF, it just happened over an extended period of time as explained in SIP. In fact, several of the ways in which we had used emoticons/actions within the IRC setting translated quite easily in a FtF setting. For example, in IRC using /me [action] makes it appear as though you are performing an action in the channel/query. We had a long tradition of greeting each other with /me tacklehuggleglomps and so on type of string within CMC and when we finally met FtF, it began with a form of “tacklehug.”

In conclusion, as predicted by SIP the switch between CMC and FtF that occurred with my first girlfriend had no adverse effects on our relationship. This is because of the adaptation of non-verbal cues over the verbal channel that occurred over our extended period of CMC. It is interesting to note, however, that at first we did not know that we were communicating with someone whom lived nearby. This could have caused for more use of selective self-presentation, or deception. However, there were no negative effects from this, and we had a very happy few years of high school after the initial FtF meeting.

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Assignment 11: From Facebook to Dating

An example of a relationship that started online and left virtuality is the story of my friend we will call Nancy who began interacting with a person we will call John prior to transferring to Cornell. As I described in Assignment #5, before I transferred, I too joined a facebook group entitled “2005 transfers.” The group was a way to see who else would be living in the transfer center, where people were transferring from, etc. John was also a person transferring to Cornell and their interaction started with the traditional facebook friend request, then led to instant messaging. When John and Nancy arrived at Cornell, they were friends for a few weeks and then started dating.

Nancy and John’s interaction supports Berger and Calabrese’s Uncertainty Reduction Theory. Berger and Calabrese predict a positive outcome for leaving virtuality. According to them, the more information that is disclosed, the greater liking and intimacy. This is true in the case of Nancy and John. Nancy explained to me that when she first talked to John online she thought that he was a nice person but never thought that they would end up dating once arriving at school. As she got to know him better and John disclosed more, she realized that they share a lot in common and once meeting face to face their friendship strengthened and later turned into dating. Clearly their progression shows that as they disclosed more about one another and got to know each other better, attraction and intimacy increased.

Nancy and John’s interaction fits with the factors discussed in the Ramirez & Wang’s paper. While Nancy and John began instant messaging at the end of the summer, their CMC communication would be considered short term. When meeting face to face, Nancy’s expectations were violated in a positive way. Talking to John online she thought he was nice and would be a good friend but thought that their interests did not align to the point that she would consider dating him. When they met face to face, she realized that they both had a very sarcastic and funny sense of humor that did not shine through online. Interacting face to face, she was able to find out more details about John’s life and realized there was more to John than visible through their CMC communication.

11 cmc leads down a 2 year road

My good buddy in high school started going out with a girl and the relationship started online. It's a pretty convoluted story, but basically the girl was going out with another guy in our high school, and she had seen my buddy from afar, and thought he was "adorable." Those are her words, not mine, and we still give my buddy crap for it to this day. Either way, when she and her then boyfriend broke up, she got my buddy's aim screenname and initiated a relationship that way. There had never been any face to face interaction before, and he actually had no idea who she was before they started interacting on aim. They kept up this aim interaction for a little over a month, and then finally at the beginning of the summer they decided to meet up. In their online interactions they had exchanged pictures of each other (these were the pre-facebook days)and gotten to know each other pretty well, mostly through talking about mutual friends and music. I remember him telling me that when he talked to the girl online, she seemed very funny and sarcastic, and he was also shocked at how she would not use typical short hand IM slang and spelling like wut up or lol, but instead made a point of typing very eloquently. When they met in person, she obviously had a very extensive vocabulary, and was a very smart girl, but didn't come off as pompous and full of herself as he thought she would. Apparently, they hit it off great because they ended up dating for 2 years.

I think this goes against Ramirez and Wang's idea that switching from cmc to ftf can cause negative views of a person because expectations were violated. In this case, the long term interaction was not evaluated negatively, and actually a ftf meeting increased the level of attraction because she was not as pompous as he thought she would be. From everything I've heard, there was little awkwardness even from the beginning. I think this falls further in line with the Uncertainty Reduction Theory from Berger and Calabrese. When they interacted online, they disclosed enough information, and this increased the level of intimacy, which led to an increased level of attraction. The information and high degree of self disclosure online led to a positive interaction and high self disclosure in face to face. It also probably helped that there was not a high level of deception in their photos.

11: Getting a Friendship Out of CMC

During my high school years, I played many computer games with my friends. One of the games was Starcraft, which I played almost every day. At one point, my high school friend introduced me to someone, Pat, who she met through Starcraft. When I first talked to Pat online, we found that we shared a lot in common, such as having similar cultural backgrounds and similar music tastes, and we started to talk to each other online everyday. After a several months, we talked about meeting in person. Then about a year after we first talked online, we decided to move our relationship offline and meet FtF. At first, it felt slightly awkward but within minutes that we started talking to each other, we felt it was the same as talking online.

Our long-term CMC association contradicts Ramirez and Wang’s claim that expectations of someone can be violated by switching from a CMC to FtF setting, causing a negative view of the person. They claim that a long-term association via CMC will be “(a) evaluated more negatively and (b) uncertainty-provoking relative to interacting via CMC.” Although when we first met, it might have felt quite awkward, we were able to pass that feeling when we started to talk to each other. I realized he was the same FtF as he was online and he felt the same way about meeting me. Our awkwardness quickly disappeared and we felt comfortable around each other. I found that meeting in person just verified my impression of Pat that I developed from talking to him online. I did not develop any negative view of him at all, contrary to the results of Ramirez and Wang. In addition, I did not find it hard to move our friendship offline. When we talked online, we did not have a problem self-disclosing information about one another and we grew very comfortable with each other.

Our relationship supports Berger & Calabrese’s Uncertainty Reduction Theory. It predicts a positive outcome when relationships leave virtuality. Pat and I self-disclosed a lot about ourselves online, which led to greater intimacy in our friendship. We developed a strong social attraction with each another and it allowed us to have less uncertainty when we finally met in person. We were able to remove any doubts we may have had about each other by meeting in person. Also, we had visual cues FtF to learn more about how we act and behave.

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11. I don't know who woulda thought of it, but ultimate frisbee and SIP kinda go together

New Note 10

Ahoy.

For this post, I think I'll talk about a friend of mine that I first talked to while I was a senior in high school looking for colleges to apply to. My friend referred me to a friend on the ultimate frisbee team at Tufts because I was curious about what it was like for them. Our communication at first was entirely through email. I made the first contact, sending him a message where I basically introduced myself, telling him about how things were going in high school and what ultimate was like at our school.

At this point, I was very self-conscious of myself and everything I was saying because after all, I was talking to someone 4 years ahead of my in life and I was supposed to be seen as a delusional, overenthusiastic kid in high school at the budding apex of his life where he gets to see what college is really (supposedly) like.

Definitely felt the hyperpersonal theory kicking in, with some potential behavioral confirmation too. I immediately made a bunch of judgemental prejudices about myself and the person that I was talking too, long before I would even receive a reply from him. I thought I was going to be perceived as a weird little kid with no real understanding of what college was like, I was talking to a senior, ripe with almost 4 years of experience at the college level. Contrary to behavioral confirmation, I fought against this and tried to sound as down-to-earth and level-headed as I could.

When he replied, I learned that he was really chill and nonjudgmental. A lot of the perceptions that I feared and tried to fight against beforehand seemed silly at that point. I think this could be considered as a fast-paced SIP reaction. After communicating together a few times, I learned that this other kid wasn't as negative as I thought he could be (CFO too, almost). Our relationship grew more relaxed and I quickly forgot all those stupid predictions that I made. I started acting a little more naturally because I wasn't that worried anymore. This is similar to SIP theory in a way, because I felt coldness towards him at first and then this coldness eventually thawed, or defrosted or something.

When we finally met, our communication through email definitely proved to make things a little closer. We were brought together by ultimate and knowing a little bit about each other beforehand didn't hurt either. We tossed a few times with each other and it was great. I suppose this is a continuation of SIP theory because it was yet another occasion of communicating with each other, this time face to face, and every successive time, it grew friendlier and friendlier. Though we never met to talk too much, our relationship definitely evolved through phases of hyperpersonal and SIP effects.

11: eHarmony and URT

My neighbor, David, and his wife, Amanda, are a good example of a relationship that started online and then left virtual reality. After David got divorced he decided to move to New Jersey, in the house next to mine. He was 32 years old at this time and wanted to start a new life. However, with his new job, he did not have time to meet other women so he decided to join eHarmony.com. After months of searching for the perfect someone, he finally found Amanda’s profile and decided to contact her. They communicated via email for about 2 weeks and then started IM chatting regularly for another 4 weeks. After 6 weeks of this CMC communication, they both decided to meet each other and go on a real date. David was a little hesitant at first since Amanda was a mother of three children, but because he had made such a good connection with her, David decided to stay with her. Finally, after two good years of dating, they decided to take the plunge and marry each other. It has been another two years since they have been married and the couple is happy as ever. They were even asked by eHarmony to be on one of their commercials.

The story of David and Amanda leaving virtuality and becoming closer in reality fits well with Berger and Calabrese’s (1975) Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT). URT predicts that “the uncertainty reduction process leads to affinity or attraction.” Therefore, when couples who meet online and then meet in reality disclose more information about each other, they will show greater liking and intimacy. In David and Amanda’s case, when they both able to see each other and find out more about themselves, they started liking each other more and were able to stay together for a long time. For example, when Amanda told David about her three kids online he was a little scared. However, after meeting Amanda and her kids in person, he was more comfortable and started liking Amanda more. He had always wanted to be a father and Amanda’s kids were a perfect start. Therefore, the more information disclosed by David and Amanda in reality, they were able to understand each other more and were able to form a tight bond.

David and Amanda’s relationship’s positive outcome after leaving virtual reality truly exemplified the URT and the advantage of CMC technology.

Assignment 11

I too was once a pre-frosh checking out the “Class Of 2009” discussion board. However, I was late jumping on that bandwagon so the interactions that I had with a few of the other ‘09-ers could only be categorized as short term. I chatted on the discussion board and briefly in a few instant messenger conversations with some of the students coming from my area. Our conversations were mostly about basic personal information and interests and how excited or nervous we were about starting school. When I met the people I had talked to, most were by coincidence and not a planned meeting. This was actually very positive and the CMC interactions served as an ice breaker and a sort of pre-formed bond that made the face to face encounter more exciting and positive than it may have otherwise been. Being that the CMC interactions that I had with these people were short term, I did not have as much time to build up expectations or get to know them on a deeper level that would possibly have over a longer period of time. I didn’t feel like there was a lot riding on the first meeting and the coincidence factor helped because there was not time to be nervous or think about what they might be like or form expectations.

My experience fit with the factors Ramirez and Wang discussed. The short term contact I had with these students via CMC preceding our face to face interaction lead to a positive evaluation. Most interactions proved to have violated expectations that, in accordance with Ramirez and Wang’s results, were positive violations. For example, one of these students, who is still a good friend, was very nice when we talked online and after our CMC encounter I expected her to be very nice but not much more in person. My expectations of her being a relatively “vanilla” person were violated, in a positive way, when I met her face to face and found that she was extremely funny and animated, a trait that did not translate in CMC. Meeting these students I was able to form reliable impressions based on a greater number of verbal and non verbal cues and make evaluations not tainted by idealized or over attributed expectations. Some of those face to face interactions were so positive that they lead to many subsequent meetings and happily, lasting friendships.

11. This Will Be, An Everlasting Love...in a crack house

Everyone knows the risks with online dating. They know that people can lie and turn out to be the complete opposite of what they expected them to be, but still the hopes that their soul mate is online looking for them is too tempting to turn down. So what happens when you do meet that person that turns out to be that person with a couple of loose screws that everyone warns you about meeting online? Just ask Kman.

Kman saw a woman’s profile and corresponded with her on the phone and Internet for weeks until they finally set a date. Regardless of the danger signs, which now seem obvious to him, like her avoidance of her divorce, how she always sounded drunk on the phone, and her insistence on him spending the night before they even went out, he decided to give her a chance. When he showed up for his date, she, her ten-year-old son, her mom, and her husband’s brother promptly greeted him. But wait, it gets better. They then proceeded to have a photo shoot where everyone got a chance to get a picture with him. Needless to say, the rest of the night did not get any better, after he learned that, yes, she was still married, but her husband was in jail for robbing a bank, twice, for crack money. Lets just say that the date ended early while she made one last attempted by appealing to his… manhood.

Kman should’ve have stuck by the three strikes your out rule. I want to look at the warning signs Kman noticed in relation to some theories. First, the Social Presence Theory and Reduced Social Context theories together state that CMC will lead to impoverished, often negative impression formation. In this case, the limited cues Kman picked up on like how she always sounded drunk and wanted to get to know each other at a tavern turned out to be red flags after all. These were factors that she did not do a good job at hiding from him which leads me to the Hyperpersonal Theory which states that we rate people based on fewer characteristics (breadth) with more intensity. When they finally left the virtual world, these characteristics and warnings were loud and clear. Even though these theories say that we get limited cues in CMC, Kman’s nightmare definitely proved that these limited cues can be all you need to throw someone in the loony bin.


Read his story for a good laugh: http://onlinedatingnightmares.com/datingstories/index.php?PHPSESSID=ba10e45498439976f2c0956690f86c4a&topic=4.0

Assignment 11: FtF Letdown

For this assignment I decided to write about an online relationship that left virtuality that was in the media. I found a website that was all about stories from people who had tried starting a relationship online; some worked out and some did not. http://www.internetdatingstories.com/stories/index.php?id=128&category=3 is the website.

According to Anne, who posted the story, the man she met online contacted her by e-mail, and after a few exchanges they began talking on AIM and the phone, where they clicked, so they arranged to meet. When the man came to pick up Anne, he sped and turned up his ska music way too loud to avoid conversation. The only thing he did say was that ska was the only kind of music that mattered, even though Anne was a music major and he told her that he loved Vivaldi and classic rock as well. The rest of the date when downhill, as he was very rude, which came as a shock to Anne since he spoke so eloquently before they met.

Anne’s experience is similar to what would be predicted by the hyperpersonal model. Based on the eloquent emails this man sent to her and his supposed love of Vivaldi, she probably thought he was very sophisticated and shared her passion for music. When she met him, however, this did not prove to be the case and he turned out to be rude only liked bad music. Although in Anne’s story she didn’t give the exact amount of time they had been talking before meeting FtF, I got the impression that it was in the short-term. For this reason, she was only a little disappointed that this man turned out to be a jerk; she was not heartbroken or anything, and she came to the smart conclusion, "if it seems to good to be true...it probably is."

11 JDate

The only relationship that I personally know of that began online and then eventually met in person (i.e., the relationship left virtuality) is that of my cousin and her husband. My cousin and her husband first communicated online through JDate. JDate is the most popular online Jewish dating community, and to join JDate, all one has to do is post a profile. Once one has a profile, one has the ability to share photos, email, chat, and IM with thousands of single Jews. After communicated through JDate for a week, my cousin and her future husband left the virtual world and met in real life. A year and a half later, they got married and have been married for two years.

In comparing my cousin’s and her husband’s relationship to theories we have studied in class, we find that this relationship is inconsistent with some theories and inconsistent with others. For example, their relationship is inconsistent with the Hyperpersonal Theory. There are five distinct parts of the Hyperpersonal Theory: over-attribution process, developmental aspect, selective self-presentation, re-allocation of cognitive resources, and behavioral confirmation. After an initial interaction, there is a reduction in the breadth (rate a CMC partner on fewer characteristics), but there is an increase in intensity (more intense/exaggerated ratings of the CMC partner). We can more directly see how the Hyperpersonal Theory is inconsistent with my cousin’s and her husband’s relationship. For example, the hyperpersonal model predicts negative outcomes for leaving virtuality (for my cousin this is untrue). The Hyperpersonal Theory states that CMC factors lead to inflated perceptions of partners (over-attribution). Also, the hyperpersonal model state that since one is online, the only information of the other person is what that person chooses to tell the other person, which are only positive traits (selective self-presentation). Connecting the above statements, one over-attributes the only (good) characteristics one knows of the other person. When the two people meet in real life, both parties are disappointed at what the other person is really like. In conclusion, this is a negative outcome. My cousin’s and her husband’s relationship is completely inconsistent with the Hyperpersonal Theory because neither were disappointed when they met in real life and eventually married.

Modality switch, or a shift from online communication to FtF interaction, reveals in some instances relationship-enhancing and in other instances relationship-dampening. In my cousin’s relationship, the modality switch lead to a relationship-enhancing situation.

Ramirez and Wang make the hypothesis: modality switch following a long-term association via CMC will provide social information that will be (a) evaluated more negatively and (b) uncertainty-provoking relative to interaction via CMC. Ramirez and Wang also make the hypothesis: modality switch following a short-term association via CMC will provide social information that will be (a) evaluated more positively and (b) uncertainty-reducing than interaction via CMC. These hypotheses held true when tested. These hypotheses also held true in my cousin’s and her husband’s relationship. They only communicated online for a week before they actually met. Their short-term association via CMC led to a modality switch that was relationship-enhancing.

11: Who's Ani Difranco?

Like many incoming freshman, my friend “Kate” set up her Facebook account the day she accepted to Cornell in December. So excited about her upcoming year, Kate instantly started to search other Cornellians. After carefully reading someone’s profile, she would choose to friend them if they seemed “cool” and enjoyed some of the same things she liked. One of the freshman guys she friended, “Chris,” really caught her eye based on the attractiveness of his profile picture, his favorite music and movies, and that he was on the football team. A few days after Chris accepted her friendship, he apparently found her to be quite interesting too because he instant messaged Kate the next time she was on AIM. Kate did not tell me about her conversations until May when she explained how awesome Facebook was and how she was so excited to meet Chris. After many months of chatting online and with move-in day quickly approaching, Chris and Kate decided to meet when they both got to campus. They exchanged cell phone numbers online but left their interactions strictly text-based when they were figuring out a time and place to meet. They finally met FtF for (a very short) dinner in Appel before classes started. This was the last time Kate would ever meet up with Chris as she was absolutely shocked when physical reality was brought into their relationship. He looked nothing like his attractive Facebook picture and could not carry on a conversation about their shared favorite music (i.e. Ani Difranco).

As Kate and Chris were in contact for about eight months, they had plenty of time to get to know each other past what was listed in their Facebook profiles. With their consistent contacting and increased self-disclosure, Kate began to feel very attracted to Chris. This example most closely aligns with Berger and Calabrese’s Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT) because with the more information she learned about Chris, the more she liked him. Naturally, she was expecting a positive outcome for her FtF meeting after leaving virtuality (as URT predicts) but was unfortunately let down. Based on the amount of information they exchanged about Ani Difranco online and how little Chris was actually able to talk about it in person led Kate to believe that he used search engines to his advantage. Thus, Kate fell victim to the costs of meeting and interacting with a random person online. According to Ramirez and Wang, “The combination of the increased control over message design provided by CMC, opportunity for selective self-presentation, and receiver susceptibility for overattributing characteristics maximize the likelihood of developing heightened expectations and idealized impressions over time.”

Since that one dinner-date freshman year, Kate (now a junior) has been able to successfully avoid Chris in public but she occasionally sees him around campus or at parties.

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11 Freshman FtF

The obvious choice for a discussion on modality-switching in interactions and long- and short-term assessments is that of the interaction with one’s freshman-year roommate before actually arriving on campus. So that’s what I did. When I received my roommate assignment in the mail over two years ago, the first thing I did was look up Andrew on Facebook and friend him, without any hesitation. As it turned out, he wasn’t very big on the whole Facebook phenomenon and so our CMC interaction was somewhat limited, but we did talk enough for me to generate what I felt was an appropriate evaluation of Andrew as a person.

I would estimate that Andrew and I spent about two months prior to freshman year interacting sparsely in the CMC environments of Facebook and, even rarer, instant messaging. Based on this interaction, I had an idea of Andrew as a funny, sarcastic, and for the most part quiet person with the traditional Bostonian passion for the Red Sox. When we finally got to school and had a chance to really get to know each other in person, it turned out that my assessment had been pretty on target, with a few exceptions. He was in fact funny and sarcastic, and he did indeed have Red Sox fever, but what I got completely wrong was how he functioned in a social setting. He was very outgoing, and, despite his occasionally-off sense of humor, made friends very easily. Always eager to strike up a conversation about even the most inane of topics, he was very social and not at all quiet and shy like I had interpreted from our interactions in CMC.

I feel that my assessment’s inaccuracy represents a similar effect to what Ramirez & Wang found. Specifically, it fits with their finding that short-term online associations, when switched to the FtF modality, lead to a more positive evaluation of the social information available. Where before I found my future roommate quiet and somewhat apprehensive/apathetic in a CMC environment, I after found him to be outgoing and energetic, a much more positive evaluation of the social information I had to work with. My uncertainty about what it would be like to live with Andrew was also reduced as per Ramirez & Wang because I had much more reliable information about his personality and behavior from FtF interactions, rather than CMC ones.

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/11-take-me-down-to-disappointment-city.html

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/11-whos-ani-difranco.html

11: Hyper Expectations

Way back in September, for my blog post on McKenna’s relationship factors and Wallace’s attraction factors, I detailed an online relationship with a girl named “Jane”. In my first freshman semester at Cornell, we encountered each other through Facebook (similar music/movie tastes) and started a prolonged (two month long) series of instant-message conversations without ever meeting each other. When we finally had our first FtF encounter, a “date” which consisted of dinner and movie, the experience was pretty much quiet, subdued, and awkward. In my September 25^th blog entry, I attributed this to lack of a romantic “spark” and—to quote my former self—“The Hyperpersonal aspect of each others lives was removed and I guess we just seemed less interesting to one another”. As it turns out, this relationship certainly did follow Walther’s Hyperpersonal model, and additionally, as it was a long-term relationship (two months is longer than Ramirez & Wang’s definition as a period of four-weeks), a disappointment effect was certainly carried out.

The Hyperpersonal element of the relationship existed from the beginning. By Jane’s decision to contact me based on my Facebook profile, she was judging me solely on limited CMC cues—in particular, my carefully selected “Favorite Movies” and “Favorite Music”. This limited perception based on conventional signals which I could potentially embellish and lie about (but I would never, of course…) must have led to an exaggerated, positive view of me. After initial IM contact, I must admit I was guilty of the same Hyperpersonal view. Seeing Jane’s relatable interests and (selectively self-chosen) attractive profile picture—this was before the days of photos on Facebook—I immediately had incentive to reciprocate IM contact.

As we continued to exchange IMs, Hyperpersonal effects increased as we got along very well; disclosing more and more about ourselves. However, as stated above, things were certainly different when we left virtuality. There was no obvious disappointment; but it just seemed that we were not as compatible or as interesting as we were when we chatted through IM. Obviously, I can only provide my side of the story, but Jane was much quieter and she seemed to act in a much more inhibited manner than that of her online self and I’m sure I did not live up to expectations either—via IM, we all have time to be witty and calculating in our interaction. Also, because we were chatting for so long without seeing each other FtF, our expectations were likely too high and so the disappointment factor was increased—just as Ramirez & Wang predicted via their third hypothesis.

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11: From Facebook to Face-to-Face

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that about 2 ½ years ago, I was one of the anxious Cornell pre-frosh who tried to make some new friends a little early on—online that is. In one particular instance, I decided to send a guy “Joe” a Facebook message since it seemed like we had very similar taste in music based on our profiles. Through ongoing messages we spoke about the Dave Matthews Band concerts that we were planning on attending that summer and other music related topics. Although we planned on meeting up at Cornell, our relationship never ended up leaving virtuality until 8 months later—the day before I left to go home for the summer. I went to go say goodbye to a friend, and sitting in her room was a guy that looked strangely familiar. Sure enough, I was introduced to Joe “from the football team.” Although it was clear that we both recognized each other, we both pretended like we never shared our online interactions. In a weird way, I was disappointed by our face-to-face encounter since my online perception of Joe was that he was more interested in music than sports and meanwhile my friend chose to classify him as a football player.

Walther’s (1997) Hyperpersonal Model could be applied to my situation in order to explain why I had a negative face-to-face experience after leaving the virtual world. The Hyperpersonal Model explains how certain aspects of CMC lead us to form exaggerated perceptions of those who we interact with. Within this model, selective self-representation refers to the idea that in CMC individuals are in control over what characteristics they make available to others. Joe’s “favorite music” took up most of his profile, leading me to believe that he had a passion for music and it was one of the main things that defined him as a person. He chose to leave out other aspects of himself, such as his passion for football and his status as a member of a varsity team at Cornell. Furthermore, the over-attribution process refers to the idea that in CMC individuals may form an exaggerated impression of others based on the few things they know about the other individual. The music that Joe listed on his profile and the Facebook groups he decided to join was what lead me to form my impression of Joe: a laid back, friendly, concert enthusiast.

Online, Joe and I were able to carefully choose what we wanted to say to one another and spoke about the music we knew we were both interested in. However, face-to-face we had little to say to one another as two Cornell students who never crossed paths throughout our whole freshman year—especially since the Joe I had anticipated was hidden behind a football jersey.

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#11: How I met your mother

One relationship I can recall that started online and left virtuality is about a friend’s youth pastor. This youth pastor was very into the blogging site xanga.com and would like any another person, click on blogs of friends of friends who commented on each other’s posts. Somewhere down the line he came across his future wife’s xanga site (though he did not know it at the time). He thought her entries were very well written, amusing, and interesting. The youth pastor decided to comment on her post and that was the start of their online relationship. They would frequently read each other’s posts and comment. As time went on, they also started to use other types of CMC such as email and AIM which have more cues. I am not sure how long this online relationship lasted, but it was a significant amount of time. They finally decided to meet FTF after they felt that they had gotten to know each other fairly well. When they met in person, they got along very well and were attracted to each other. Long story short, they ended up getting married and are as of now, living happily ever after.

For this story, I would say that the Uncertainty Reduction Theory applies well. The URT states that the uncertainty reduction process leads to affinity or attraction and predicts positive outcome for leaving virtuality. I do not think there can be a dispute that getting married to a person you met online and ended up marrying that person is not a positive outcome. The couple definitely had plenty of time to exchange information as well as interact through chatting and emails which led to greater intimacy with one another through CMC. When they finally did meet, they felt the attraction just by the sheer fact that they knew so much about each other. They spent a lot of “time” with one another online as well as got to know how the other thought by reading each other’s xanga posts which are essentially journal entries. Because of this, I also believe that SIP could be applied to this relationship though the findings may suggest that SIP is not a good predictor of leaving virtuality. Nevertheless in the above case, SIP did in fact accurately predict that there would be a positive outcome from the online relationship that this married couple had.

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