[Air-l] Computer-Mediated-Communication

[E. Sean Rintel]

Hi all,

Sandeep Krishnamurthy asked about the use of the term computer-mediated 
communication. First, in response to your friend's suggestions:

>screen-mediated-communication

The screen on any device is not the system that controls the mediation - 
the 'computer' and,software do that, while is where the mediated
interaction occurs. To call CMC 'screen-mediated-communication' might be 
akin to calling letter writing 'page-mediated-interaction' - it doesn't 
really get to the sense of the mediation. To continue with that analogy, 
'pen and paper-mediated-interaction' might be better for letter-writing - 
if one writes in pen, but what if one writes a letter on a computer, prints 
it out and sends it? 'page-mediated-communication' brings us, ironically, 
closer to a generalized representation of the literal 'display of 
mediation' , but in fact it still does not really get to what the mediation 
is. We 'writing a letter' is a gloss for a form of mediated interaction 
between (at least) two people that involves one doing some kind of writing 
'onto' (we can include printing) some kind of physical paper, then physical 
postage of the physical paper in such a way as the written material 
produced in one time is physically made available to another person. So I 
think the lesson from that is that the 'name' of any medium somehow 
captures the 'sense of interaction' of the medium...

>device-mediated communication?

This is probably too general - a telephone could be device-mediated, as 
could, indeed, face-to-face interaction (the device being organic but a 
mechanical contrivance of a sort).

So, on to CMC. Like, 'device', 'computer' has certainly become a term that 
is now almost too general. However, by the same token most 'CMC systems', 
or 'CMC media' have their own names - 'email', IRC' etc. So in some ways it 
doesn't matter that 'computer' is so general because (a) we have specific 
names when we need them and (b) CMC is a good enough superordinate category 
to differentiate it from at least face-to-face interaction, letter writing 
and telephone interaction in the sense that we understand those as not 
involving computers as we now know them. On the other hand, when the actual 
stuff occuring via CMC systems is discussed, it is referred to by names 
that are more general, and different, than the names of the CMC system. So, 
people talk about 'interaction' in chat rooms, or 'reading' a web page. 
What I am very confusingly getting at is that the term 'CMC' is situated 
within realm of discourse about communication, and that it, at least, 
fulfils a task of differentiation from some other forms of communication. 
It is not necessary for it to do duty on every level, though, hence other 
names.

This brings me to your point:

>me.  I argued that, starting with the Internet, connectivity with others (or
>community, if you like) had to be a component of CMC, but not other forms of
>screen-based-communication.  By this standard, communicating through PDAs or
>e-mail devices such as Blackberry was, indeed, CMC.  But, checking out the
>weather on a kiosk was not.
>
>What do you think?  Is the term CMC too restrictive?

I would disagree that CMC actually has to involve interaction at all. To me 
CMC could be a checking out the weather on a kiosk webpage because CMC 
covers the notion that I'm looking at communication on a computer. If I 
want to talk about some kind of interaction happening via a computer, I 
could also use CMC. But, as I said above, CMC doesn't have to do the duty 
of specifically referring to every possible form of CMC. Checking out the 
weather on a kiosk is patently not the same kind of interactive 
communication as talking about the weather via email, but to differentiate 
those we would want other terms anyway. If we were serious about 
delineating interaction systems withing CMC, we might alter the *last* term 
to make the kind of communication more specific, e.g. 'Computer-Mediated 
Interaction' or 'Computer-Mediated Webcasting' etc.

On a practical level, CMC has also served very nicely to indicate what many 
people are researching, and there is something to be said for that, too. 
Then again, people have mooted lots of other terms to more specifically 
delineate what they are doing, such as 'online-ethnography' or 
'cyber-sociology'.

I wish my computer had mediated this email to improve its intelligability. ;)

Until anon,

Sean

--

E. Sean Rintel
Communication Department
University at Albany
State University of New York
1400 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY, USA, 12222-0001
http://www.albany.edu/~er8430/