Reflections on Computer Mediated Communication

We live in an age of information and technological the age in which the Internet and computer programs are so essential in our lives such that we would somehow feel 'empty' or 'missing out' if we do not have access to the Internet or going online to interact and catch up with our friends on programs such as MSN messenger and Facebook. For instance, such computer mediated communications are a necessity and of great importance especially in the professional sphere of the workplace. This is because it is the main tool that people working in the offices, professionals such as business men, insurance agents, bankers, and the like use as a platform to reach out to clients, communicate with other business corporations and organisations to maximise their clientele, seal deals and maximise profits. Indeed I can't imagine the ramifications and implications to businesses all around the world should there be a case of a global information and technological shutdown! Another example closer to home would be in universities such as NUS and other tertiary and education institutions in which online forums, learning portals etc perform an important and core function in which lecturers and students use to submit their assignments, have discussions, view web-cast lectures and the like.

During today's class, we learnt about the various types of computer mediated communication (CMC) tools. These include email, chatrooms, discussion forums, web blogs, distribution lists, instant messenger programs such as MSN messenger, video conferencing, audio chats, Internet/web-chat and SMS/MMS etc. We also learnt that these CMC tools exists in a continuum of ranging from speech like forms to text like forms.

In addition, we also had an interesting discussion on the ways in which I.T and CMC affects the ways people express themselves. It is interesting to note that when people interact via CMC tools, they can hide their gender such that both parties involved in the online chat may not even know the gender of each other. Hence there is a possibility and in some sense privilege of anonymity in using CMC tools to interact with each other. We also learnt about the differences in which men and women express themselves in their use of CMC tools. Men are more inclined to adopt a more adversarial style of communicating and involve more factual information during their online chats. Conversely, women tend to be more supportive and affiliation/relationship oriented in their online behaviour. that men take less turns to close online conversations as compared to women who take longer turns to close conversations. On this note, another interesting fact is that in online chats, men tend to use more emoticons than females; i.e 76% compared to 24%. I would like to suggest a possible explanation for this that it could be because guys may find it relatively more difficult to express themselves in words; hence they may us emoticons as an alternative/substitute means to express how they feel.

In conclusion, I think that CMC is also a part of cross cultural communication. This is because there are many different ways in which people from different cultures communicate and interact with each other via CMC tools. Furthermore, the way in which a person behaves and communicates online may be very different than a face to face situation. On top of this, the context and topic of communication may also influence how people interact and communicate via CMC tools. Thus there is still a need for us to be sensitive and understanding to such communication differences across people and cultures so that our experience in using CMC tools will be an enjoyable one. : )