Transcript slides - Courses

Computer-Mediated
Communication
Experiments in CMC
and Media Richness
Coye Cheshire & Andrew Fiore
// April 11, 2016
Experiments in CMC
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Experimentation vs. Observation
 What’s the key difference?
 Assignment of treatment (or condition)
 Consider the effect of smoking:
 How would you study it experimentally?
 How would you study it observationally?
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Putting Experimental Work in Context
 Selection of subjects
(i.e., what do they value?)
 Task length and learning
 Accounting for time in statistical
analyses
 Do not assume that an
experiment is even trying to
‘recreate’ a specific real-life
situation unless they explicitly
say so.
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Validity in Experiments
Internal
Validity
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External
Validity
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Internal validity:
Linking causes to effects
Manipulation
Hand out chocolate
in class
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Effect
?
Students will sit in
different seats
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External validity:
Generalizing from experiments
?
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Ecological validity:
Approximation of real-life activity
Yamagishi et al.
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Resnick et al.
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Media Richness
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“
The sensorial parsimony of plain text
tends to entice users into engaging their
imaginations to fill in missing details while,
comparatively speaking, the richness of
stimuli in fancy [systems] has an opposite
tendency, pushing users’ imaginations
into a more passive role.
— Curtis (1992)
”
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Rich
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Lean
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A plausible ranking?
Richer
Face-to-face
Synchronous video
Synchronous audio / asynch. video
Synchronous text / asynch. audio
Asynchronous text
Leaner
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Media choice vs. media use
Types of tasks
 “Uncertain” — missing information
 “Equivocal” — ambiguous interpretations
“Best” medium for an (un)equivocal task
 What do managers choose?
 What yields the best performance?
P.S.: What is “best performance”?
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Multiplicity of cues
Verbal
Non-verbal
Beyond FTF?
Textual
 Production cost to encode
meaning equivalent to FTF in text
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Feedback
 Type
 Acknowledgment — understanding (+/–)
 Repair — correction or clarification
 Proxy — completion
 Immediacy — more immediate = richer
 Concurrent: synchronous nods, mm-hmms
 a.k.a. backchannel
 Sequential: brief interjection
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Social presence and processing
 Sense of communicating with a real person
 Social Identity Deindividuation Effects
 Also: Social Information Processing
 Adaptation to the medium
 Salience of small cues
 What about time?
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The role of time
 Affiliation: a slower process
in leaner media?
 Expected future interactions —
commitment over time
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Hyperpersonal communication
 Receivers overattribute from limited cues
 Assume similarity based on group affiliation
 Senders maintain tight control over cues
 Selective self-presentation —
Little “given off” in text CMC
 Bottom line: Exceptionally favorable
perception in the face of limited information
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Mean decision time (D&K)
Task
High cues (AV)
Low cues (CMC)
Immed. Delayed Immed. Delayed
Low equiv.
12.21
17.00
26.29
31.53
High equiv.
13.14
14.35
18.71
23.71
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Social affinity
Long-term, no photos
Long-term, photos
Short-term, photos
Short-term, no photos
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