13.1: CMC, New Media, and Masspersonal Communication
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- 90735
LEARNING OUTCOMES
- Relay pertinent key terms that help explain the emergence of masspersonal communication.
- Distinguish between mass media and new media
- Bridge the conceptual gap between the theories presented earlier in the book, and those presented in the next module by providing some context on what a new media environment means for interpersonal communication.
CMC, NEW MEDIA, AND MASSPERSONAL COMMUNICATION
It may be surprising, but the rise of the internet did not happen all at once, the way it is sometimes depicted. Relatively speaking, the adoption of internet-based technologies was quick, but it still happened in stages.
In the mid-nineties, most people in the United States were not using the internet at home, and it was not until the late nineties that personal email accounts became common (Manovitch, 2001). A few years later, the internet became a sharing platform where media content was being uploaded and downloaded, often illegally (Jones & Lenhart, 2004). In 2007, the first iPhone was released for sale only a few months after a website called Facebook opened its membership to everyone, setting off a whole new trend in how people use the internet (Jones et al., 2009). By the early 2010s, the use of video streaming technologies featuring original user-generated content had gained popularity. It birthed a new generation of self-made celebrities who attracted fans and enabled fandom to be expressed in newer and more elaborate ways in online forums and fan-generated sites (Marwick, 2015).
Each of these new stages in the function and functionality of the internet created questions for communication scholars interested in studying the ways that our social interactions online compared to the social interactions we have offline. Those scholars who had mainly focused on interpersonal communication in the last decades of the twentieth century engaged in the study of what was then known as computer-mediated communication. It refers to the interactions that take place between people who are using computers to communicate. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) regularly occurs today. However, at the turn of the twenty-first century, it was only just emerging as a natural form of interaction between people outside of the workplace. What interested these scholars about CMC was whether it afforded the same kind of interpersonal experience that people have when they communicate face-to-face (Daft & Lengel, 1984; 1986; Walther, 1996; 2012).
Their research developed many theories, but one key concept underlined most of them, which was media richness. Media richness refers to how closely a specific media channel can replicate the interaction of an in-person face to face encounter. Rich media afford us as much sensory data as possible (Manovitch, 2001). On Skype, for example, I can not only hear someone but also see them. Skype is much richer than a medium like text messaging, where I can neither see nor hear the recipient, but only text-based messages that they send.
Overall, the theories surrounding CMC and interpersonal communication found that media richness was itself hard to define because the technologies being studied changed so much during that period. In some ways, digital technologies limit our abilities to establish intimacy, interpret non-verbal cues, and establish competency. In other ways, the studies found that digital technologies had created new modalities for interpersonal exchange that required new research (Short, et al., 1976; Daft & Lengel, 1984; 1986; Fulk, et al., 1987; Carlson & Zmud, 1994; Walther, 1996; 2012).
As noted at the beginning of this chapter, these theories were put forth prior to the emergence of what is today known as new media. New media is the evolution of media from the form we used to know as mass media to a more dynamic model.
Before the internet connected our digital devices through a giant network that spans the globe, media production was limited to only those who had access to the physical equipment needed to make and distribute messages to an audience of more than just a few people. This distribution model was the era of mass media, a time when a small group of media producers delivered content to a broad mass audience of people through the television networks, radio stations, and publishing companies that controlled what content was made public.
Thanks to the internet, we are now living in the era of new media, a time when a person can communicate to either a small group or a large audience of people just by posting something online using their cell phone (Marwick, 2015; Campbell, et al., 2018). The mass media of television, radio, print, and film still exist today, but they now have to compete with the new media that are produced and consumed online (O’Sullivan & Carr, 2018).
YouTubers, who now sometimes command audiences of tens of millions while broadcasting from their bedrooms (Marwick, 2015), are a perfect example of the difference between new media and mass media. In the mass media, the only way to reach an audience of a million people was to have the message vetted by a series of gatekeepers who controlled the television networks, newspapers, magazines, radio stations, or book publications that delivered content on a mass scale to the public at large. During this time, media producers strictly controlled and censored content in order to ensure the broadest possible appeal (Manovitch, 2001).
As O’ Sullivan and Carr (2018) note, this new media dynamic is of particular interest to the study of interpersonal communication because it allows users to realize their communication potential in new ways. Primarily, it blends the practices of interpersonal communication with practices that were formerly thought of as being presentational. The dynamic affordances of new media defy the distinctions that used to be made between mediated and interpersonal communication.
Because of this shift, O’Sullivan and Carr (2018) call the communication that takes place through new media outlets, masspersonal communication to reflect the meshing practices of traditional mass media with the practices of interpersonal communication.
In the next module, we’ll explore some of the ways that masspersonal communication manifests itself into common communication practices today.
LEARNING ACTIVITIES
Activity 1: Device Check
Partner the students in groups of three and instruct them to list out loud all of the different networked digital devices that each one owns including phones, tablets, computers, mp3 players, etc. Once they have done this, they must each walk back through their day and remember each interaction they have had that day so far that did not involve the use of one of those devices in any way.
Once they have done this they should then do the opposite and count each separate communication (every text is a distinct interaction) that they have had using their devices that day. Once the groups have shared in discussion, open the floor to a larger group discussion on what the students learned.
Activity 2: Eiza AI Interaction
Using Eiza, the digital interface developed by MIT, and that some argue is the first AI, try out the Turing Test for your students, and explain to them how the very concept of AI depends on a computer’s ability to competently perform interpersonal communication with a person.
REFERENCES
Campbell, R., Martin, C., & Fabos, B. (2018). Media essentials: A brief introduction. Bedford/St. Martin's.
Carlson, J. R., & Zmud, R. W. (1994, August). Channel expansion theory: A dynamic view of medial and information richness perceptions. In Academy of management proceedings (Vol. 1994, No. 1, pp. 280-284). Briarcliff Manor, NY: Academy of Management.
Daft, R. L., & Lengel, R. H. (1984). Information richness: A new approach to managerial information processing. Research in organizational behavior, 6, 191-233.
Daft, R. L., & Lengel, R. H. (1986). Organizational information requirements, media richness and structural design. Management science, 32(5), 554-571.
Fulk, J., Steinfeld, C.W., Schmitz, J., & Power, J. G. (1987): A social information processing model of media use in organizations. Communication Research 14, 529-552.
Jones, S., & Lenhart, A. (2004). Music downloading and listening: findings from the pew Internet and American life project. Popular Music and Society, 27(2), 185-199.
Jones, S., Johnson-Yale, C., Millermaier, S., & Perez, F. S. (2009). Everyday life, online: US college students’ use of the Internet. First Monday, 14(10).
Manovich, L. (2001). The language of new media. MIT press.
Marwick, A. E. (2015). You May Know Me from YouTube:(Micro‐) Celebrity in Social Media. A Companion to Celebrity, 333-350.
O’Sullivan, P. B., & Carr, C. T. (2018). Masspersonal communication: A model bridging the mass-interpersonal divide. New Media & Society, 20(3), 1161-1180.
Short, J., Williams, E., & Christie, B. (1976). The social psychology of telecommunications. John Wiley & Sons.
Walther, J. B. (1996). Computer-mediated communication: Impersonal, interpersonal, and hyperpersonal interaction. Communication research, 23(1), 3-43.
Walther, J. B. (2012). Interaction through technological lenses: Computer-mediated communication and language. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 31(4), 397-41.
GLOSSARY
Computer-Mediated Communication: Communication that takes place using computers.
New Media: Internet-based media that is produced and consumed by online users.
Mass Media: Media that is controlled by producers and distributed to a mass audience.
Masspersonal Communication: Communication that bridges the dynamics of interpersonal communication and mass media communication using new media technologies.
MEDIA
1. The Today Show Discussion
Flashback to the early days of the internet- the mid-nineties- with this video showing the first ever discussion of the web on the Today Show. See it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95-yZ-31j9A
2. Old School Internet Instruction
This is a demonstration video from 1995 teaching us how to use the internet via Prodigy. See it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1tr5LjhfqQ
3. Internet Log-in Session (Mid 90s)
If you’re really interested in showing what the early internet was like, you can follow this video prompt showing what it was like to log on to the internet in 1996, and to browse web content. The video is annotated with commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojT0gQHeyJQ