v-Fluence Blog

Quality of Online Interactions

The other day, I was watching Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting, and the scene in which Robin Williams describes his wife’s nocturnal “habit” hit home for me. He explains, “She’s been dead for two years, and that’s the [stuff] I remember. Those are the things I miss the most. The little idiosyncrasies that only I know about. That’s what made her my wife.”

In this piece of dialogue, Williams (who is absolutely phenomenal in this role) does a great job conveying the importance of learning and appreciating “imperfections” in others. In asynchronous computer-mediated communications (CMC), we are generally perfect. We have the time to think about what we are saying and how we are phrasing it. If we are upset at something someone has written to us via e-mail, we can go for a walk and calm down before responding. Although this allows us to be far more diplomatic and calculating, there may be something lost in the process that detracts from the cultivation of social capital.

In Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone: The Crumbling and Revival of American Community, he describes what he perceives as a decline in social capital in the United States, evident in declining political and civic participation, social interactions, and a number of other indicators. He associates this trend to a number of factors including increased suburbanization and shifting usage of media technologies, particularly the television. For Putnam, there is no definitive conclusion to be drawn regarding the effects of the Internet and CMC on social capital. On the one hand, the Internet can be a powerful facilitator of social capital. It provides individuals with the ability to engage in social interactions regardless of spatial and temporal constraints, creating the possibility for new forms of engagement to occur. On the other hand, the overall quality of this engagement is a key issue.

A number of social scientists have studied the impact of the Internet and computer-mediated communications for social capital, with mixed results. A study by Kraut et al. (1998) seemed to indicate an association between Internet usage and declining social involvement and psychological well-being. These findings were contradicted by a more recent study by Kraut et al. (2002), which did not detect any negative effects from Internet usage. A review of research findings by Cummings et al. (2002) provides additional insight into the topic. They conclude that CMC is less valuable for the cultivation of social capital than face-to-face contact and telephone conversations, but they point out the importance of distinguishing whether the Internet is used to support offline interaction; or to replace offline interaction, in assessing its relative worth. I think these studies need to be supported with more qualitative evidence, which asks the question, “Why is CMC less valuable for developing social capital?”

I think there is something to be said for the loss of imperfection in CMC. CMC certainly can help us accomplish many different functions, but if CMC becomes our primary mode of socialization, then we risk losing sight of the humanistic elements of communication. We can never come to appreciate the way one of our colleagues might grimace if we mention a distasteful topic; or never enjoy the bright red flush on a new employee’s face when he is called “cabin boy” for the first time (I know this from personal experience.) Robin Williams puts it best: “People call these things imperfections, but they’re not. That’s the good stuff.”

References

Cummings, J & Butler, B & Kraut, R (2002), ‘The Quality of Online Social Relationships’, Communications of the ACM, volume 45, number 7, pp. 103-108.

Kraut, R & Patterson, M & Lundmark, V & Kiesler, S & Mukhopadhyay, T & Scherlis, W (1998), ‘Internet paradox: A social technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being?”, American Psychologist, volume 53, issue 8, pp. 1017-1032.

Kraut, R & Kiesler, S & Boneva, B & Cummings, J & Helgeson, V & Crawford, A (2002), ‘Internet Paradox Revisited’, Journal of Social Issues, volume 58, number 1, pp. 49-74.

Putnam, R (2000), Bowling Alone: The Crumbling and Revival of American Community, Simon and Schuster, New York.