The relationship I have with my parents moved from eighteen years of constant face-to-face communication to instant computer-mediated communication last year. The transition was rocky at first, but through combining several mediums it became stable again. The new laptop I bought for school had a webcam, which made me think that this may be a great new way to communicate with my parents. I thought I might be able to set up a time where we could we could all be at a computer at the same time just to say hi and catch up for a few minutes, so I bought my mom a webcam for her old computer. This form of communication failed; she never even figured out how to install it. Even if technicalities weren’t the first issue, I’m sure I would have begun to regret the gift.
Now into my second year at Cornell, I have pretty much mastered the ways in which to communicate with my parents. The most important thing is the medium in which I choose to talk to them. Usually when I’m having a great day, I will pick up the phone and call them. If they’re lucky, maybe I will even leave a cheery voicemail. On the other hand, if I am avoiding the issue of my latest pre-lim grade, I tend to revert to text message to lighten the blow. This selective self-presentation is represented by Interactional Control in McKenna’s Relationship Facilitation Factors. In choosing my medium, I am better able to control the outcome or mood of the conversation. E-mails are also a great choice that I often resort to instead of a phone call. I recently began attaching pictures from selective weekend excursions, just to enhance the medium.
In addition to Interactional Control, I found that the factor Connecting to Similar Others also applies to my mediated relationship with my parents. Because I had already established a good relationship with my parents before I moved across the country for school, it made the transition much easier. They understand that I tend to get overwhelmed balancing academics and sports, so they don’t get too upset if I forget to call or if I can’t talk for long. This type of relationship would be hard to maintain if we had not had eighteen years to establish this “common ground,” that is emphasized by McKenna’s Relationship Facilitation Factors.
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2 comments:
Jenny
I have also found that it has been difficult to communicate with my parents after moving so far away from home. I find that my parents are slightly old-fashioned too - I've tried trying to get them to communicate through MSN's audio feature but we never managed to make it work. So I've found that it's easiest to stick with the basic IM, email and weekly phone call or something like that. This is certainly a case where common ground comes into play, since our interests are so similar. Obviously, when we talk with our family, we have an innate interest in how the others are doing, life that's going on at home for them, and how our school and social lives are carrying out while we're in college. I feel like in these circumstances, a lot of the relationship factors are formed in advance however, which makes it a slight contrast to the other kinds of relationships that we form in class, and I think it's interseting and important to see how relationships continue to develop when we meet face-to-face first and then transition to relationships online (much like when we have to communicate with our parents after moving away from home).
Good post - that's a very important idea that you brought up here.
Ashish
Interesting post, Jenny. I suppose we also have to consider the generational differences here. Your parents' experience with computer mediated communication probably pales in comparison to your own. This really amplifies the Interactional Control factor from McKenna. Not only do you get to better control the conversation based on desired outcome, you have the advantage of being able to more effectively communicate in the chosen mode, and potentially manipulate the interaction accordingly. I'd be interested to know how a webcam situation would have turned out. Sounds dangerous -- if my own mother were able to figure out videoconferencing I'd be in trouble!
Perhaps you could have elaborated a bit on the factors to which you are connecting your experience. What exactly does Interactional Control mean? What is Connecting to Similar Others? For someone not in the class, this might not be entirely clear.
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