Assignment 11 - a fresh look at CMC

My uncle Larry is a radiologist who uses cutting edge technology to aid both other doctors and patients in diagnosing diseases. Recently, there has been a huge technological shift within this profession. Radiologists, for the most part, no longer use printed hard copies of X-rays, CAT scans, and MRI’s, rather they are digitally viewed over the internet. This allows my uncle to view a radiological image of a patient either in the room next door or in a country on the other side of the world. Today, my uncle, for example, views a cross section of a patient’s abdomen electronically via the internet along with a brief medical history of this person. It is only days or weeks later that he sometimes meets the patient when they come to the office, as opposed to the typical doctor who examines/converses with a patient in person then thinks about the diagnosis. My uncle begins his “relationship” with the patient online and then carries it out in the “real world.”

This type of interaction proves to be interesting, since this type of computer mediated communicated is not typical. My uncle receives all the information he needs to make a diagnoses through the internet. My uncle has no interest in whether a patient is in a relationship or has lots of friends. This type of information is deliberately filtered out. As a result, Social Information Processing theory (SIP) (Walther, 1993) is valid, for the most part. SIP rejected the view that the absence of nonverbal cues restricts the capability to exchange social information. Clearly, my uncle gathers all the necessary information to make a diagnosis without any nonverbal cues. Where Walther’s theory deviates from the case of my uncle is in the part which states that, the transition of information takes longer in CMC. The shift in technology to an online medium as opposed to a patient interaction first then diagnosis later medium was directly implemented to speed up the transition of information. When dealing with life or death matters as radiologists often do, speed is of the utmost importance. For this reason, there was a shift from the print medium to the online medium.

Next I looked at the Hyperpersonal Model (Walther, 1996) in regard to radiologists today. Walther claims that after an initial interaction, say the first time a radiologist “interacts” or looks at the information presented by a patient there will be reduced breadth and increased intensity. Reduced breadth refers to rating a CMC partner (think: patient) on fewer characteristics. Increased intensity refers to having more intense/exaggerated impressions of the CMC partner (think: patient). This is completely valid for the interaction which takes place between a radiologist and a patient, today. As a result of no nonverbal cues and an inability for the patient to state unnecessary information such as how many friends they have, it’s only natural that the radiologist will rate the patient on fewer characteristics. Additionally, because of the nature of medicine, the doctor, of course, makes a strong and intense impression and decision based on what information he has. After all, nobody wants a doctor who is not confident in their decision and diagnosis.