Fluent Essays

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” ... Baym, Nancy K. (2015). Personal connections in the digital age (2nd Ed.). Cambridge, UK: Polity. Personal Connections in the Digital Age 2002; Humphreys, 2005; Ling, 2004). The first perspective forms a necessary backdrop for contextualizing and making sense of the second, but the emphasis in this book is on the mundane and the everyday, on how people incorporate digital media into their routine practices of relating and with what consequences. Plan of the book In the remainder of this chapter I identify a set of key concepts that can be used to differentiate digital media, and which influence how people use them and with what effects. I then offer a very brief over- view of the media discussed in this book and a discussion of who does and who doesnt make use of them. Chapter 2 is an orientation to the major perspectives used to understand the interrelationships between communicatioH technology and society, and an exploration of the major themes in popular rhetorics about digital media and personal connection. Chapter 3 7xamines what happens to messages, both verbal and nonverbal, in me,diated contexts. Chapter 4 addresses the group contexts in which online interaction often happens , includ- ing communities and social networks. The remaining two chapters explore dyadic relationships. Chapter 5 shows how people present themselves to others and first get to know each other online. Chapter 6looks at how people use new media to build and maintain their rela- tionships. Finally, the conclusion returns to the question of sorting myths from reality, arguing against the notion of a cyberspace that can be understood apart from the mundane realities of everyday life, and for the n otion that online and offline flow together in the life- worlds of contemporary relationships. Seven key concepts If we want to build a rich understanding of how media influence relationships , we need to stop talking about media in overly simplistic terms. We cant talk about consequences if we cant articulate capa- bilities. What is it about these media that changes interaction and, potentially, relationships? We need conceptual tools to differentiate media from one another and from face-to-face (or, as Fortunati, 2005, New forms of personal connection more aptly termed it, body-to-body) communication. We also need concepts to help us recognize the diversity amongst what may seem to be just one technology. The mobile phone, for instance, is used for voice, texting, picture and video exchange, gaming, and, with the new dominance of sma1tphones, nearly endless other applications . The internet includes interaction platforms as diverse as YouTube, product reviews on shopping sites, email, and Instant Messaging (IM), which differ from one another in many ways. Seven concepts that can be used to productively compare different media to one another as well as to face-to-face communication are interactivity, temporal structure, social cues, storage, replicability, reach , and mobility. The many modes of communication on the internet and mobile phone vary in the degrees and kinds of interactivity they offer. Consider, for instance, the difference between using your phone to select a new ringtone and using that phone to argue with a romantic partner, or using a website to buy new shoes rather than to discuss current events. Fornas and his co-authors (2002: 23) distinguish several meanings of interactivity. Social interactivity, the ability of a medium to enable social interaction between groups or individuals , is what we are most interested in here. Other kinds include technical interactivity, a mediums capability of letting human users manipulate the machine via its interface, and textual interactivity, the creative and interpre- tive interaction between users (readers, viewers , listeners) and texts . Unlike television, writes Laura Gural< (2oor : 44), online commu- nication technologies allow you to talk back You can talk back to the big company or you can talk back to individual citizens. Indeed, these days customers often expect that, when they talk back, companies will respond swiftly. The social media marketing site Convince and Conve1t (2012) reports on a survey finding that everyone who contacts a brand, product, or company through social media expects a reply within a few days , and a third expect a response within half an hour. Rafaeli and Sudweeks (19 97) posit that we should see interactivity as a continuum enacted by people using technology, rather than a technological con- dition. As we will see in chapters to come, the fact that the internet enables interactivity gives rise to n ew possibilities- for instance, we can meet new people and remain close to those who h ave moved away- as well as old concerns that people may be flirting with danger. Baym, Nancy K. (2015). Personal connections in the digital age (2nd Ed.). Cambridge, UK: Polity. Personal Connections in the Digital Age The temporal structure of a communication medium is also impor- tant. Synchronous communication, such as is found in face-to-face conversations, phone calls, and instant messages , occurs in real time. Asynchronous communication media, such as email and voice mail, have time delays between messages. In practice, the distinction cannot always be tied to specific media. Poor connections may lead to time delays in a seemingly synchronous online medium such as Instant Messaging. Text m essaging via the telephone is often asyn- chronous , but neednt be. Twitter can function both ways. Ostensibly asynchronous email may be sent and received so rapidly that it func- tions as a synchronous mode of communication. Sites like Facebook may seem to be a single medium, but offer both asynchronous modes of interaction such as wall posts and messaging, and synchronous chat, and it is not unheard of for people to use comments on wall posts as a real-time chat medium. The beauty of synchronous media is that they allow for the very rapid transmission of messages , even across distance. As we will see, synchronicity can sense of placelessness that digital media can encourage and make people feel more together when they are apart (Baron, 1998; Carnevale & Probst, 1997; McKenna & Bargh, 1998). Synchronicity can make messages feel more immedi- ate and personal (OSullivan, Hunt, & Lippert, 2004) and encourage playfulness in interaction (Danet, 2oor). The price of synchronicity, however , is that interactants must be able to align their schedules in order to be simultaneously engaged. Real-time media are also poorly suited to hosting interaction in large groups, as the rapid-fire succes- sion of messages that comes from having many people involved is nearly impossible to sort through and comprehend, let alone answer. There is a reason that dinner parties are generally kept to a small collection of people, and guests at large functions are usually seated at tables that accommodate fewer than a dozen. Accordingly, most online chat rooms and other real-time forums have limits on how many can participate at one time. With asynchronous media, the costs and benefits are reversed. Asynchronous communication allows very large groups to sustain interaction, as seen in the social network sites and online groups like fan forums , support groups, and hobbyist communities addressed New forms of personal connection in chapter 4· Asynchronicity also gives people time to manage their self-presentations more strategically. However, word may filter more slowly through such groups and amongst individuals. We can place fewer demands on others time by leaving asynchronous messages for people to reply to when they like, but we may end up waiting longer than wed hoped, or receive no reply at all. One of the biggest changes wrought by digital media is that even asynchronous communication can happen faster than before. Time lags are created by the time it takes a person to check for new messages and respond, not by the time messages spend in transit. In comparison to postal mail, the internet can shave weeks off interactions. Most of the questions surrounding the personal connections people form and maintain through digital media derive from the sparse social cues that are available to provide further information regarding context, the meanings of messages, and the identities of the people interacting. As chapter 3 will address in more detail, rich media provide a full range of cues, while leaner media provide fewer. Body-to-body, people have a full range of communicative resources available to them. They share a physical context, which they can refer to nonverbally as well as verbally (for instance, by pointing to a chair) . They are subject to the same environmental influences and distrac- tions. They can see one anothers body movements, including the facial expressions through which so much meaning is conveyed. They can use each others eye gaze to gauge attention. They can see one anothers appearance . They can also hear the sound of one anothers voice. All of these cues - contextual, visual, and auditory- are impor- tant to interpreting messages and creating a social context within which messages are meaningful. To varying degrees , digital media provide fewer social cues . In mobile and online interactions, we may have few if any cues to our partners location. This is no doubt why so many mobile phone calls begin with the question Where are you? and also helps to explain some peoples desire to share GPS positioning via mobile applications. The lack of shared physical context does not mean that interactants have no shared contexts. People communicating in per- sonal relationships share relational contexts, knowledge , and some history. People in online groups often develop rich in-group social Baym, Nancy K. (2015). Personal connections in the digital age (2nd Ed.). Cambridge, UK: Polity. • environments that those whove patticipated for any length of time will recognize. 11wugh, as we will address in more depth in chapter 6, much of our mediated interaction is with people we know face·to ·face, some media convey very little information about the identities of those with whom we are communicating. In some circumstances, this renders people anonymous, leading to both opportunity and terror. In lean media, people have more ability to expand, manipulate, multiply, and distort the identities they present to others. The paucity of personal and social identity cues can also make people feel safer, and thus create an environment in which they are more honest. Chapter 5 examines these identity issues. Media also differ in the extent to which their messages endure. Storage, the maintenance of messages on servers or harddrives over time, and, relatedly, replicability, the ability to make copies of mes- sages, are highly consequential. Unless one makes an audio or video recording of telephone and face ; to-face conversations (activities with laws governing acceptable ptlc;:tice), for the interactants they are gone as soon as they are said. l!Iuman memory for conversation is notoriously poor. To varying degrees , digital media may be stored on devices, websites, and company backups where they may be repli- cated, retrieved at later dates, and edited prior to sending (Carnevale & Probst, 1997; Cherny, 1999; Culnan & Markus , 1987; Walther, 1996). Synchronous forms like IM and Skype require logging programs that most users are not likely to have. Those that are asynchronous can be easily saved, replicated, and redistributed to others. They can also be archived for search. Government agencies, such as the United States National Security Administration, may capture and save data and metadata from enormous amounts of internet and mobile phone traffic. Despite this, online messages may feel ephemeral, and, indeed, websites may be there one day and different or gone the next. The popular photosharing application Snapchat found its niche by emphasizing the ephemerality of its photos which, much like the mission instructions in Mission Impossible, self-destruct soon after viewing (although what actually happens is that the file extension changes and the photo remains cached). Media also vary in the size of an audience they can attain or ersonal connection support, or reach. Gurak (2oor: 30) describes reach as the partner of speed, noting that digitized discourse travels quickly, but it also travels widely ... One single keystroke can send a message to thou- sands of people. Face-to-face communication is inherently limited to those who can fit in the same space. Even when amplified (a form of mediation in itself), physical space and human sensory constraints limit how many can see or hear a message as its delivered . The telephone allows for group calls, but the upper limit on how many a group can admit or maintain is small. In contrast, many forms of digital communication can be seen by any internet user (as in the case of websites) or can be sent and, thanks to replicability, resent to enormous audiences. Messages can reach audiences both local and global. This is a powerful subversion of the elitism of mass media, within which a very small number of broadcasters could engage in one-to-many communication, usually within regional or geographic boundaries. The gatekeeping function of mass media is challenged as individuals use digital media to spread messages much farther and more widely than was ever historically possible (Gurak, 2001). Future chapters will address how enhanced reach allows people to form new communities of interest and new relationships. Finally, media vary in their mobility, or extent to which they are portable - enabling people to send and receive messages regardless of location - or stationary - requiring that people be in specific loca- tions in order to interact. The mobile phone represents the paradigm case of mobility, mal<ing person-to-person communication possible regardless of location. The trend toward mobile devices is further enhanced by the rise of tablets and phablets as well as the increas- ing preference for laptops over clunky personal computers tied to desks and landline phones . In addition to offering spatial mobility, some digital media allow us to move between times and interpersonal contexts (Ishii , 2oo6). Mobile media offer the promise that we need never be out of touch with our loved ones, no matter how long the traffic jam in which we find ourselves . When stuck with our families, we may import our friends through our mobile devices. As well see in chapter 6, mobile media give rise to microcoordination (Ling, 2004) in which people check in with one another to provide brief updates or quickly arrange meetings and errands. However, more Baym, Nancy K. (2015). Personal connections in the digital age (2nd Ed.). Cambridge, UK: Polity. Personal Connections in the Digital Age than other personal media, mobile phones threaten autonomy, as we may become accountable to others at all times . Schegloff (2002), one of the fir st to study telephone-mediated interaction, suggests mobile media dont create perpetual contact so much as offer the perpetual possibility of making contact, a distinction some exploit by strategi- cally limiting their availability (Licoppe & Heurtin, 2002). These seven concepts help us begin to understand the similarities and differences between face-to-face communication and mediated interaction, as well as the variation amongst different kinds of digital interactions , even on the same web platform. Face-to-face commu- nication, like all the forms of digital media we will be discussing, is interactive. People can respond to one another in message exchanges . Face-to-face communication is synchronous. It is also loaded with social cues that make one anothers identities and many elements of social and physical context apparent (although, as we will return to in chapter 5. this does not guarantee honesty). Face-to-face conversations cannot be stored, nor can they be replicated. Even when recorded and, for example, broadcast, the loses many elements of the context that make face -to-face e<:>mmunication what it is. As discussed above, face-to-face communication has low reach, limiting how many can be involved and how far messages can spread. Face-to-face com- munication may be mobile , but only as long as the interactants are moving through space together. This combination of qualities grants face-to-face a sort of specialness. The full range of cues, the irreplica- bility, and the need to be there in shared place and time with the other all contribute to the sense that face-to -face communication is authen- tic, putting the communion in communication. In contrast, some forms of mediated interaction are asynchronous , enabling more message planning and wider reach, but a potentially lower sense of connection. Media such as Skype or other video chat technologies offer many social cues - voice, facial expression, a window into the physical surroundings - but lack critical intimacy cues including touch and smell. Most digital media have fewer social cues than that, limiting interaction to sounds or even just words. By virtue of their conversion into electronic signals, all digital media can be stored, and often are even when individuals delete them (Facebook, for instance, saves drafts of messages that were never posted) . Even New forms of personal connection when conversations and messages are not stored, however, they may leave traces such as records of which phone numbers called which other ones, which IP addresses visited which websites , or how many tweets a person has tweeted. Digital messages are easily replicated if they are asynchronous , but less so if they are synchronous. The reach of digital media can vary tremendously depending on the medium. A phone call generally remains a one-to-one encounter, as does much instant messaging and chat, but social network sites, emails, mailing lists, discussion groups, and websites are among the digital modes that can have extraordinary reach. Digital media are becoming increasingly mobile as the internet and mobile phone converge into single devices , meaning that these technologies make communica- tion possible in places where it wasnt before, but also that they can intrude into face-to-face conversations where they never could before. As a result, people can have very different experiences with different media, yet none may seem to offer the potential for intimacy and connection that being face-to-face does . These distinctions and con- vergences all bring with them important potential social shifts, which the remainder ofthis book will address. Digital media Just as its important to clarify core concepts that may shape mediated social interaction, its h elpful to walk through the media in question. Its also important to recognize that the media we use today have historical precedents whose traces may have been as disruptive in their own time and traces linger today. Tom Standages 2013 book Writing on the Wall: Social Media- The First 2, ooo Years offers a lively walk through such precedents, including literal writing on walls in ancient Rome, as does William Powerss (2oro) Hamlets Blackberry. Asa Briggs and Peter Burkes (2009) A Social History of the Media demonstrates the precedents of earlier technologies, and also the con- tinuities between old and new media. Such books reveal that many of the phenomena and concerns associated with new media began long before electricity, let alone digital media- a topic the next chapter will address. I assume readers are familiar with the mobil e phone, so I focus Baym, Nancy K. (2015). Personal connections in the digital age (2nd Ed.). Cambridge, UK: Polity. Personal Connections in the Digital Age below on a brief historical overview of the internet. I emphasize the extent to which the interpersonal appeal of digital media shaped their development. Unlike the mobile phone, the internet was not built as a personal communication medium, let alone a way for fans to connect around their objects of pleasure, for people to find potential romantic partners, for employers to find or investigate potential hires, or any such social processes. It was developed to safeguard military knowl- edge. When the first internet connection was made in 1969 through what was then called ARPANET, funded by the US Department of Defense, no one envisioned that an interpersonal communication medium had been launched. However, what became the internet was not the only networked computing system being built at that time. Hobbyists built dial-in bulletin board systems for interactive file exchange, interaction, and games. Universities developed computer networks such as PLATO. Indeed, as a child in Urbana, Illinois, home of the University of Illinois where PLATO was developed , in the mid 1970s I used to stay after school to read jokes, play games, and chat with anonymous PLATO us e/s1 in other locations (little did my class- mates and I realize how ahead lof our time we were!). In those same early years, bulletin board systems users dialed into servers in peo· ple s homes to chat. As Kevin Driscoll has written (2014) , the received history of the internet as h aving begun with ARPANET, covered in detail in Janet Abbates (1999) history, is one of several origin stories that could be told about the internet. It is beyond the scope of this book to cover either the technological or social development of the internet. First, though, a disclaimer: trying to list specific types of digital media is frustrating at best. Between this writing and your reading there will be new developments , and things popular as I write will drop from vogue . Let this be a reminder to us of the importance of remaining focused on specific capabilities and consequences rather than the media themselves . The textual intemet For its first quarter-century, the internet was text-only. With its limited social cues, it seemed a poor match for personal interaction. Yet it took mere months for its developers (who were also its primary users) New forms of personal connection to realize the mediums utility for personal communication. Within three years of the first login, email was in use, and within four years, three-quarters of online traffic was email (Anderson, 2005 ). By 2000, the ability to use email was a significant reason that people first got online and one of the main reasons that those already online stayed online (Kraut, Mukhopadhyay, Szczypula, Kiesler, & Scherlis, 2000). Synchronous person-to-person and small-group communication also developed early in the internets history. Talk was an early synchronous internet communication genre. When using Talk, a horizontal line divided the top and lower halves of the screen, each half showing messages from one interactant. It was as minimal- ist and purely textual as a communication medium could be. Talk remained in regular usage into the early 1990s. When I began using the internet in 1990, I used it almost daily to tell my then-boyfriend that dinner was ready - I couldnt call since his phone line was tied up with his modems internet connection. Talk provided a convenient work-around. Tall< was followed by Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and, later, chat rooms that allowed distributed groups to converse in real- time. Instant Messaging, developed in the 1990s, can be seen as an advanced version of Talk. A person-to-person medium, IM was distinctive in its use of a buddy list and provision of continual infor- mation about who on that list was online and available for contact. Not long after email, mailing lists were developed, in which a single email could be sent to a large group of subscribers, all of whom would receive it and (usually) be able to respond. Although the technological specifications of email and mailing lists are the same, there are some important differences. Specifically, on mailing lists, senders may very well not know most (or any) of the recipients. Mailing lists are often large. For instance, the Association of Internet Researchers mailing list, AIR-L, has approximately s,ooo subscribers in many nations. In contrast, others are small private lists of family and friends . A colleague of mine, faced with a family members cancer, created a mailing list of family members so that they could all share news with a single message. Private mailing lists may also be made up of school friends who have graduated or other such small groups of people seeking to stay in touch as a group. In the early 198os, another means of asynchronous group Baym, Nancy K. (2015). Personal connections in the digital age (2nd Ed.). Cambridge, UK: Polity. Personal Connections in the Digital Age discus sion with wide reach developed. Usenet newsgroups are asyn- chronous topic-based discussion forums distributed across multiple servers. Although these groups have become magnets for spam, they continue to house discussion. Originally, one read newsgroups through newsreaders built into Unix operating systems. This later developed into stand-alone newsreaders. Now most people access Usenet through the web, most notably through Google groups , where they may well not recognize them as Usenet newsgroups. These provided an early model for the topical web boards and social media groups so common now. They were also my own entree into online group communication and the subject of my earliest work on online communication. On some early sites, developers and participants used words and code to create a rich geographical context for synchronous interac- tions, and a highly de11:eloped range of characters . In the late 1970S, Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw developed MUDr , an interactive online role-playing game. Aroynd the same time, Alan Klietz inde- pendently developed Sceptre Of Goth, a MUD game (Bartle, 2004) . Readers who play World ofWartraft or related massively multiplayer online role-playing games will recognize MUDs as their precedent. MUD stands for either Multi-User Domain or the less antiseptic Multi-User Dungeon, which better captures the phenomenons origin in the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons. Many MUDs offered predetermined categories by which to define ones character. People might choose their sex (often from a list with more than two choices) and race . Depending on the MUD, people might choose to be elves, fairies, cats, dragons, trolls, vampires, and other fantasy creatures. Lambda MOO (Multi-User Domain Object-Oriented, a distinc- tion that is of minimal importance here) and other MUDs, MOOs , MUCKs, MUSHes , and other oddly acronymed parallel sites followed, many of which were simply creative environments in which fictional rooms and landscapes served as spaces for social interaction, not games. Though MUDs and MOOs have always been obscure uses of the internet (unlike the later graphical games they inspired) , they were the object of an inordinate amount of early research about the internet. New forms of personal connection The World Wide Web m, jor transformation in digital communication occurred in the os when a group of physicists led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee at the , wis ·physics laboratory CERN developed the World Wide Web. This he r, lcled a shift from communication that was purely text-based to lliUltimedia communication, and gave rise to more new forms of 111 ·el i a ted interaction than I can cover here. These include web boards, I I s, wikis, social network sites, video and photosharing sites , and •ra phi cally intensive virtual worlds . In the 1990s, web boards took up where the promise of U senet left IT, facilitating asynchronous topic-based group interaction amongst p opl e who did not need prior connections. Blogs, authored by either s ingle people or collectives, are websites in which recent updates appear above previous updates, creating a reverse chronology of mes- sages . Their content may be personal, political, or anything else, and th ir audiences may be anything from zero to millions. By convention , n d design, blogs almost always include a list of hyperlinks to other blogs (a blog roll) , which serves to create connections and drive traffic amongst blogs. Groups of bloggers may read one another and omment on each others blogs, creating communities oflike-minded individuals and semi-organized grassroots social movements. Also during this time, websites such as Active Worlds began to develop graphically rich environments. These have exploded in the early 2000s, in the form of massively multi player online role-playing games (MMORPGs- an acronym usually pronounced more pigs), such as World ofWarcraft, League of Legends , and non-game spaces such as Second Life. The 2ooos brought what has been called Web 2.0, the hallmark of which is often taken to be user-generated content. But, having been through the paragraphs just above, one must wonder what content on the textual internet and much …