On Friday, I decided to iChat with one of my best friends from Syracuse in order to tell her that some of my friends and I were going to make a trip the following week to visit her. I could have just as easily called or instant messaged her via AOL Instant Messenger, but I decided to go with the most personal form of Computer Mediated Communication. I chose this form of internet because I thought that she would be thrilled to hear that we were coming to visit her. I felt we could share our excitement via visual cues as well as verbal cues with iChat. I chose iChat because I feel most connected to her when I see her face. Last year, when my friends and I went away to college for the first time, iChat really helped us all remain close. Seeing each others’ faces was much more enjoyable and personal than just a plain instant message. Therefore, I felt in this situation that iChat was most beneficial.
On the other side of the spectrum, I decided to instant message my mom today to inform her of some less pleasant news. I had to tell her that something was wrong with my Cornell registration, and that she would have to pay a late fee if it wasn’t sorted out by Thursday. When I came back from class today, I noticed that she was online. I decided to instant message her with the news. I chose to do this because if I called her, I would have had to deal with her condescending tone of voice. I didn’t want to iChat with her for similar reasons. I also knew that she was a slow typist, so she would probably get frustrated early in the conversation and give up trying to have a longer conversation with me. With the relatively bad news I had to deliver to my mom, my expectations that a negative reaction would occur led me to chose a less personal, instant message interaction.
My two choices of media selection were in line with O’Sullivan’s model. I chose to iChat with my friend because I felt that she would react positively to the good news I was going to deliver. In addition, I felt very confident that she would react in this way; I did not feel that my expectations were threatened. Therefore, I chose the most personal form of media I had at my disposal. My interaction with my mother is in line with O’Sullivan’s model as well. I had to deliver bad news, so I knew her reaction would not be positive. By calling her or iChatting with her, I would have had to deal with her yelling at me and/or giving me her “evil eye”, which is never a good thing for me or my siblings. I expected a negative reaction, so I selected my media source carefully. I chose to instant message her because I would not have to deal with the visual and verbal cues that a phone call or iChat would have provided.
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2 comments:
That't true, when I have some bad news, I don't want to tell my mother, especially with a camera. I sometime even choose not to tell her, but if I must tell, I choose instant message or email but a video or a phone call.
Jacob, good job in picking a unique CMC method to analyze. To the best of my knowledge iChat also is a text based instant messenger so videoconference or video chat would be the proper method to describe your communication channel. What do you think are the biggest differences between Ftf and video chat? Though you have access to a much larger set of cues there are still many limitations. One large limitation are technological boundaries like lag in refresh rates which greatly inhibits a natural conversation. While you said that your first experience was in line with O’Sullivan’s model, do you think that Media Richness Theory also played a part given that video chat would be more efficient in conveying emotion? The second experience falls directly in line with a locus of another person and a negative valence. If I were in your situation I would have done the same thing to avoid a lengthy interrogation from my own mother.
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