Interpersonal CMC: Socioemotional and Relational Communication

There has been some debate over the extent to which CMC affords socioemotional and relational discourse. Theories which assert that CMC enables very limited socioemotional and relational communication, compared with face-to face (FTF) communication have collectively been referred to as the "cues-filtered-out" approach (Culnan & Markus, 1987). A framework which argues that text-based CMC can carry such content is Walther's (1992) social information processing theory.

Cues-filtered-out theories (e.g., Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976; Kiesler, Siegel, & McGuire, 1984) characterize CMC as less personal, lacking "social presence" and "social context cues" in comparison with FTF communication. Social presence, a media characteristic, is reflected in the extent to which communicators feel that other actors are jointly involved in communicative interaction (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976; cited in Walther, 1992). Social presence theory states that the fewer channels or codes available within a medium, the less attention will be paid by users to the presence of other social participants. Accordingly, Kiesler et al. (1984) describe CMC as a channel which "depersonalizes" communicants since they cannot exchange paraverbal cues, such as facial expression or vocal pitch. The authors assert that there is a resulting social anonymity around which communicators must imagine their audience. Furthermore, nonverbal indicators of vertical hierarchy, status, and power, including seating positions and dress, cannot be transmitted via text. These factors have been theorized to reduce inhibition and constraints of etiquette, reduced socioemotional content, and a "democratizing" effect in which hierarchical differences in status are less apparent than in FTF contexts.

Contrary to the cues-filtered-out approaches, Rafaeli (1986) asserts that electronic bulletin boards can be very intimate or anonymous, depending on the purposes of each individual user. Chesebro (1985) found that 32% of the messages from 14 public computer bulletin boards (CBBs) were interpersonal in nature. Meyers (1985) analyzed two CBBs and found that 39% of messages of the systems were personal information. Foulger (1990) reported that experienced computer users rated several text-based media such as email and computer conferencing "as rich" or "richer" than face-to-face conversation and telephone conversations. Several case studies of CMC conferences have found the development of numerous personal relationships via CMC (e.g. Johansen, DeGrasse, & Wilson, 1978). Gladys We (1993) argues that people become "highly emotionally involved in their on-line interactions." Some people fall in love on-line, while some people exchange angry postings. The research of Rice and Love (1987) led to their conclusion that "CMC systems can support socioemotional communication and the communication reflects the inherent communication traits of the users..." This observation contrasts with the cues-filtered-out perspective. Accounting for this important discrepancy, Walther's (1992) social information processing perspective asserts that users adapt existing communicative cues, within constraints of language and textual display, to serve processes of relational management. This approach is also supported by research (Sherbloom, 1988) suggesting that communicators adapt computer-generated textual signals for specific relational purposes.

A major, axiomatic assumption of social information processing is that actors in CMC are affected by the same internal drive of "affiliation," i.e., interaction with other humans, as actors in other communicative contexts. Affiliative communication use, and its constituent messages, constitute relational communication. A second assumption is that the development of an interpersonal impression of another person is based on the information one gets via nonverbal or verbal-textual channels over the course of several interactions. A third assumption of this perspective is that in CMC, messages take longer to process than do those sent FTF. One conclusion of these assumptions, and of the research which challenged their pertinent hypotheses, is that CMC can be just as deeply relational as FTF communication if sufficient time and message exchange is allowed for message volume to generate a relationship. The presumption of a drive for affiliation helps explain why conference participants would express supporting references despite a lack of familiarity with co-participants.

Walther (1992), asserts that social presence theory is not sufficiently defined; rather than being a defining attribute of a medium, social presence is likely a subjective perception of a medium's characteristics and capabilities. Earlier work (Donohue, Diez, Stahle, & Burgoon, 1983) points out that although nonverbal cues have been "implicitly seen as natural or even 'sole' carriers of relational information, subtle verbal variations that also carry relational information have been neglected." Language choice has been credited with forming attributions about "social and professional status, background and education and even intent of communication" (Burgoon & Miller, 1987). Variation in verbal language has been found to be as potent as nonverbal information in influencing affective processes such as interpersonal attraction (Byrne and Clore, 1966, cited in Walther, 1992).

CMC users have developed an electronic "paralanguage" (Carey, 1980, cited in Walther, 1992), to express affective and socioemotional information. These informal codes, which we call "emotext," may include intentional misspelling, lexical surrogates for vocal segregates, grammatical markers, strategic capitalization, and visual arrangements of text characters into "emoticons." Intentional misspelling often includes the repetition of a vowel or consonant to represent the accentuation of a word or phrase for affect, as in the phrase, "sssoooooo good!" Lexical surrogates function as parenthetical metalinguistic cues, as "hmmm" might represent a paraverbal expression of thoughtfulness or "yuk yuk" might express self-deprecating laughter. Grammatical markers include gratuitous capitalization as well as repeated exclamation points and question marks to add affective emphasis. Emoticons refer to short combinations of textual characters which, if turned clockwise, resemble various facial expressions.

                 

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Whereas the cues-filtered-out approach provides insight into some of the pragmatic functions of CMC, the social information processing theory explains and predicts the occurrence of socioemotional and relational discourse on that medium (Walther, 1992; Walther & Burgoon, 1992). We, therefore, consider CMC to be a suitable context for examining how pseudonym use affects socioemotional and relational communication across gender.