In courses on computer-mediated communication, students probe the appeal of online support groups, work in virtual groups, and explore how people reveal themselves through the anonymity of the Internet.
Log on to the Internet any day of the week, any time of the day, and you'll find people-thousands of them-pouring their hearts out to perfect strangers. There are too many online support groups to count, one or more for every imaginable trouble from divorce and obesity to loneliness and psoriasis. Some, like the one for hemophiliacs living in rural Ohio, are astonishingly specific.
Turning to others about whom we know nothing, to people we can't see, hear, or touch-certainly never intend to meet-for solace, advice, and reliable information about issues closest to our hearts defies conventional predictions of social science research, says Joe Walther, an expert in computer-mediated communication.
Joe Walther
"All previous research on social support says that you go to people who you know on more than one basis to discuss personal issues," says Walther, an associate professor and chair of the Department of Communication. "But the Internet has changed all that."
The popularity of online support groups is amazing when you consider that the general public only gained access to the Internet, and all the communication formats that go with it, just nine years ago. Today, we take these avenues of communication for granted. We use them without even thinking about it, even when doing so defies human nature, as we know it.
What's going on here?
That's the question that Walther's courses on computer-mediated communication set out to explore.
We live in an exciting age where part of growing up, becoming educated, and developing competence as a communicator is learning a sense of the most effective channel of communication at the most opportune moment for the goals we need to achieve, Walther says. The catch is, we are often so entranced by the latest novelty that we don't take time out to think about what's really useful to us.
"Because communication is second nature to us, when a new communication technology comes along, we intuitively use it based on its resemblance to more familiar media. This can be misleading," Walther explains.
Take corporate videoconferencing as an example, where all too commonly individuals who have formerly communicated in print-by letter or e-mail-hold meetings with their heads down reading from a piece of paper into the camera! Not only is nothing gained, but much is lost. "People feel that the more they can see, the better things will be-even when they would really be better off sharing notes and a phone call instead of sharing faces. That makes communication science exciting-systematically examining the unquestioned social behaviors that seem natural to people, but sometimes work against them," Walther points out.
What is the appeal of video cameras mounted on personal computers? Some people say the visual image of the other person helps them know whether they can trust each other, or they feel they can better tell what others think, neither of which holds much water.
"The truth is we can't figure out our obsession with the visual," Walther says. "Everybody has an answer but none are truly compelling."
By contrast, online support groups with invisible participants work beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Why?
In Walther's courses, students have examined this question through e-mail surveys and found there were four reasons. First, online support groups offer a high degree of social distance-that is, the people you interact with for support online are different from the people otherwise involved in your life. This means that there are scores of people (some online support groups have upward of 20,000 participants!) who have expertise on the subject at hand, so there's a higher probability that you'll find an answer to your question or problem. And, because you won't run into them at the watercooler or the dorm room, you safely can reveal personal issues.
"Very positive things happen in online support groups precisely because these people are never going to bump into each other; and even if they did they wouldn't know it anyway," Walther says.
A close second to social distance is anonymity. Anonymity can be fully guaranteed by fake online names, alternative Internet accounts, and anonymous e-mail systems, or "re-senders" that conceal the source of a message. Then there's the high degree of communication management available online. Unlike face-to-face or telephone communication, where once something is said it can't be taken back, online communication can be written and rewritten to get just the right tone, just the right message. People can reveal only as much as they wish about themselves and conceal the rest. This is the same dynamic that makes online flirtation appealing to many.
"Very selective self-presentation and reciprocation of idealized messages leads to the kind of romantic relationships that often don't stand up under the light of day," Walther says.
On the other hand, because communication can be so precise, it can be very pleasant for people to work together online if everyone does the work.
The other plus to communication management in online support groups is that once a person is finished asking others for help, he or she can disappear. In traditional friendships, reciprocity is expected. Friends are expected to come through for each other in kind even when they don't feel knowledgeable or able. There's no such burden online: you need only respond if you wish.
Ease of access is another reason why online support groups are so popular.
"Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, there is a vibrant community waiting to act," Walther says.
In addition to studying the latest theories about computer-mediated communication (CMC), Walther's students get to test them out, even contribute original research to the field by working in virtual groups with students at Cornell and from another university (last year it was Rutgers).
Students earn 90 percent of their grade participating in electronic partnerships that write reviews, critiques, and synopses of assigned readings; generate reports on CMC topics; and prepare term papers summarizing existing literature and proposing future research on issues including online support groups, videoconferencing and desktop video systems, virtual teamwork in distributed communication among offices in distributed enterprises, and communication systems for community organizations and how the technology would help fulfill the organization's mission.
In these activities, students use the very CMC technologies that they are reading about-e-mail, lists, Web bulletin boards, and chat rooms. All communication among the participants is recorded and preserved for analysis to monitor students' participation and examine communication patterns among them. While working in their groups, the students also act as research subjects for examining the usefulness of what Walther laughingly dubbed "Walther's Rules for Virtual Groups."
In the 12 years Walther has taught courses on CMC, he's found seven worthwhile rules: get started right away, communicate with each other often, multitask getting organized and doing substantive work simultaneously, set deadlines and stick to them, do not over-rely on real-time chat, be explicit, and overtly acknowledge you've read one another's messages. Regarding the last rule, Walther says that when you don't acknowledge others' messages, the message sender doesn't know whether you never saw it, you saw it and disagreed, you saw it and totally agreed, the network is dead, or you are dead.
In online groups, "people can evade our physical detection, so we find new ways to cajole, coerce, connive, or otherwise coax our work partners into doing what we think they ought to do," Walther says.
By examining the students' online communication and analyzing their responses to questionnaires, Walther found that those rules made a lot of difference in building trust among students and their liking each other, in addition to how well their papers turned out. Maybe too much difference.
"For years I've been developing these rules, so last semester it was time to test whether they were worth the electronic bits they're written on." he says. "But the data are suggesting it may be rule following, not the rules per se, that seems to engender trust and help performance."
In the end, what Walther and his students are looking for isn't an understanding of electronic software or hardware but rather enduring principles of communication: Does following rules for the sake of following rules build trust? Do people really want to reveal everything about themselves or do they prefer to share some things and not others? Is it true that people like to see, but not to be seen? Under what conditions can the creative use of language in online interaction, sans appearance and sound, actually lead us to become more articulate, precise, and even better-looking (in the mind's eye at least), than we can in face-to-face settings?
"These are profound questions, and the answers reveal enduring principles and give us glimpses into the human condition," Walther says. "We might not have seen them without the vantage points that the new technologies we often take for granted have afforded us."
Stereotyping Online
"Those people don't know how to write," Walther's students complained of their counterparts at Rutgers. Funny, the Rutgers students thought the same thing.
Making stereotypical judgments is part and parcel of working in online groups, says Walther, whose classes have collaborated with students in other parts of the United States as well as in England and Europe.
When Walther probed his students a bit further, they confessed to thinking the Rutgers students wrote "too succinctly and didn't elaborate their sentences." The Rutgers students, on the other hand, thought Cornell students used "all those big words, were too wordy and verbose."
Breaking such stereotypes doesn't happen quickly. It takes a lot of interaction for stereotypes to break down. In online communication everything takes more time. An hour's face-to-face conversation takes three hours on the net.
- Metta Winter