There
are two primary themes in my research program, the study of computer-mediated
communication systems and developing a general theoretical perspective, rooted
in my research in CMC, that attempts to explicate the processes of media invention
and evolution.
Much
of my recent effort in CMC has focused around Wiki collaborative composition systems
and instant messaging, as featured in "Practical Telepresence and the Online
Office" (ICA, 2003) and "Time in Interpersonal Media" (NCA, 2003).
Other recent work has proposed new ways of testing the efficacy of ethics instruction
using "intelligent" online testing systems ("Measuring Complex
Ethical Decision Making", 2003). My 1996 study of computer conferencing with
Phillip A. Thompsen, "Effects of Pictographs and Quoting on Flaming in Computer
Media" (Published in Computers in Human Behavior) continues to be widely
cited, and was recently treated at length in the book "The Psychology of
the Internet" (Patricia Wallace, 2001). My 1990 dissertation study of computer
conferencing has also been widely cited, most prominently, perhaps, in the latest
edition of "The Network Nation" (Roxanne Starr Hiltz and Murray Turoff,
1991).
Other recent research has treated computer mediated as a group.
The papers "The Cliff and the Continuum: Defining the Digital Divide"
and "Seven Bridges Over the Global Digital Divide" take a hard look
at the obstacles to overcoming the digital divide. In the latter study, path analysis
is applied to an archival data set of "digital readiness" indicators
for over 190 countries. The results suggest a simple formula which predicts, with
considerable accuracy, the extent to which the general population of various countries
has been able to take advantage of computer technology and the Internet. The formula
also suggests that systematic improvements in literacy and infrastructure provide
the best path to overcoming the global digital divides. The former study, a reaction
paper written in response to one of the primary questions to emerge from the conference
at which the latter was first presented, uses that same data set to illustrate
two very different versions of digital divide. Both papers are currently proposed
as a part of a book coming out of that 2001 conference.
Another recent
paper, "Relationship Equals Sum Media", explores the ways in which people
are using media, including computer media, in combination to build relationships.
It proposes that a relationship can be usefully viewed as an ecology of the different
media which the relational partners use to interact with each other, and that
one of the ways in which we enrich our relationships is to add new ways of sharing
information with and interacting with each other. This ecological view of our
use of media within our relationships is made obvious by our use of computer-mediated
communication systems to build and manage long distance relationships. The paper
demonstrates, however, that use of multiple media to build relationships is nothing
new. Our shared media grow as our relationships grow. Our shared media decline
as our relationships decline. The nature of our relationship determines, to some
extent, what media we use. The media we use determine to some extent, the nature
of our relationships.
The notion that media combine to form ecologies
is one that I continue to explore. I have started to explore the ways in which
organizations and communities are built and maintained in the intersection of
multiple media. The presentations "Communication Technologies, Relationships
and Communities" (University of Texas at San Antonio, 2003) and "Communities
As Ecologies Of Media Use" (SUNY Oswego, 2003), start to examine questions
of how adding new interactive media to a community strengthens that community,
how the decline of shared media within a community weakens that community. Students
in my Organizational Communication classes have been applying this concept to
the study of organizations with excellent results. Students in my Communication
Relationships and Communities class have applied it to the study of communities
with fascinating results.
It is no surprise that my students found
that a range of media, including interpersonal, mass, and other media variations,
were used in different communities and organizations. It should be no surprise
that different media were used to reach different stakeholders. What has surprising
is the revolution that new media are enabling in some organizations. The most
extreme case my students looked at, Universal Music Group, has leveraged a variety
of new media, including e-mail, federal express, conference calls, and web sites,
to shift their day to day business almost entirely to distributed teams that often
work together without ever meeting face-to-face. While it is hardly the first
organization I am aware of that has turned face-to-face interaction and proximate
group meetings into secondary media, it is both the largest and most extreme case
that I know of. If an organization is, as I hypothesize, characterized by the
sum of its media, the experience of working at Universal Music Group is very different
than it used to be.
These studies explore the details of my larger theoretical research
program, which is currently focused around the production of at least two books
(both of which are fully outlined). The theoretical perspective posits that media
are invented users in five interrelated spheres of invention. The first book,
"Characteristics of Media: the message beneath", explores one of these
spheres, the attributes (following Simon's "The Sciences of the Artificial")
or characteristics that emerge from the way technologies are combined to create
the medium. The book explicitly attempts to explore the ways in which these attributes
create the message within the medium (following McLuhan's vocabulary from "Understanding
Media". Characteristics, within my theoretical perspective, are a fundamental
statement of a medium's potential; of the kinds of things that a medium can be
used for. In "Characteristics of Media", 207 characteristics of media
are operationalized and used to compare and analyze relationships among 167 media.
These characteristics emerge from within a variety of perspectives within which
media can be usefully viewed. The families of characteristics within which characteristics
have been identified included sensory and extended modalities, user interfaces,
common media building blocks, the role participants that enable messages within
a medium, and a variety of storage, transmission, performance, production, and
edition characteristics. Each family of characteristics has value in its own right,
providing another way in which we can think of media as a part of continuum of
communication systems. Among the more interesting results that have already emerged
in this work:
A
second book I have planned and outlined, "Building time, space and scale
machines: the invention and evolution of media", expands on these themes.
Characteristics are only one of five sphere of invention within which we create,
use, and evolve media. This second book paints this broader canvas, detailing
the workings and interrelationships of these five spheres. My NCA paper this year,
"The Invention and Evolution of Media", is a précis of my book
outline that focuses on the relationship of these spheres to existing theories
of communication within a variety of perspectives: It shows connections between
uses and gratifications approaches in mass media and ethnographic studies of practice
within interpersonal contexts; the path by which systems theory translates into
uses of media, the path through which effects change our media practices, and
sometimes the structure of media. It connects genre theory in art, music, and
literature to stakeholder theories and the coordinated management of meaning.
One
of these spheres of invention, mediators, is the domain of systems theory, information
theory, and design engineering. The characteristics of media, which emerge from
the way a medium is engineered, are a second. These characteristics enable a set
of uses. These uses inevitably entail a set of effects. We react to these effects
through our practices of message building within the medium. A medium evolves
as we use, are effected by, and use best practices within that medium. Most of
this evolution occurs within a cycle of genre that primarily involves reciprocal
invention within the spheres of uses, effects, and practice. Some of this evolution
occurs, especially in the early history of a medium, within a cycle of media in
which all of the spheres of invention vary. Recent extensions of this work have
looked at the problem of bridging the digital divide and some of the thornier
issues associated with software development.
This theoretical research program is not constrained to writing books. Recent papers that are directly associated with this research program include "Roles in Media" (NCA Summer Conference, 2001), "Emergent Role Structure in Media" (Submitted to ICA, 2004), and "The Invention and Evolution of Media" (NCA, 2002). Recent papers that extend this perspective as they explore computer media include "Relationship Equals Sum Media" (ICA, 2003), and "Time in Interpersonal Media" (NCA, 2003). The competitively selected panel "Borderlands in Communication Theory: Crossing The Boundary Between Personal And Mass Communication" (ICA, 2003) also falls within this research tradition. So does my widely cited "Bridging Media: Computers and Human Communication" (Published in Visions of the Future, edited by Cliff Pickover, 1992).