Social Information Processing

Social Information Processing – Joe Walther

• Opening Question:
  • What have we heard about how scary and bad the internet is?
• They Say:
  • Social presence theory
  • Media richness theory
    • People are fundamentally alone in communication because there is no physical relationship, no physical interaction.
    • Things are filtered out of your talk, you might be sighing, etc. communication is different, physical expressions are filtered out
• Walther (& SIP) says…
  • People adapt
    • People are intelligent and they can adapt to changes….
    • You can adapt to different communications medias
  • F2F & CMC are equally useful for developing personal relationships
  • • You can build a friendship online the same way as you will F2F
    • He’s not saying that bad things don’t happen online, he’s also saying that good things happen as well
  • F2F is like a gulp, while online-communication is a sip.
• 2 Features of CMC
  • Verbal Cues
    • You may describe how you feel instead of expressing how you feeling. We use words to describe, instead of actions/behaviours
  • Extended Time
    • Takes more time to build online friendships than face-to-face relationships, 4 times as much.
  • Is this true?
    • Experiments confirm theory people perceived same emotional tone.
• Verbal Cues: Warmth (use words to show emotion)
  • Self-Disclosure
  • Praise
  • Explicit statements of affection
• Verbal Cues: Managing Differences
  • Indirect agreement
  • Change of subject
  • Compliments offered while proposing a contrasting idea
• Time and CMC
  • Extended: Theory predicts slower relationship development (Some studies disagree)
  • Anticipated future interaction
  • Asynchronous (out of synch, not at the same time, but the message is received as well)
    • People can take time to response
    • ?n F2F communication, the little pauses mean a lot and therefore you must respond quickly.
• Scope
  • (Mainly) positive communication
  • NOT: Conflict and Troubles
  • NOT: Task communication
  • NOT: “mixed” relationships
  • CMC-made relationships are as finely developed as the ones in F2F communication

Category: Communications Theories