I grew up in an extremely dysfunctional family, overflowing with alcohol and drug abuse. Conflict was something that I experienced, or at least caught a glimpse of, daily. Sometimes the conflict was between my parents or with any of my six siblings. Sometimes it wasn’t something I was directly involved in, but something I merely observed. It could be at home, at school, at the bowling alley my parents managed, at the grocery store, at the softball fields, really anywhere at all.
I start my story with this information because I want to you to understand the conflict that was my life was a good thing. At the time I didn’t realize it, but the tension that surrounded me taught me something. It taught me that the most important thing I could do in life was learn to communicate.
Maybe it sounds arrogant, but I actually pride myself in communicating well, regardless of the type of person I am dealing with or the arena I’m communicating in. Because of the exploits I’ve had in life, I learned a long time ago that everything that happens to you is an opportunity to learn, grow and improve. Moreover, you have the ability to find a way to better communicate through what happens.
I’ve also had the occasion through my forty-five years of life to experience changes in technology that sometimes are mind-numbing. As a child I watched George Jetson video chat with his daughter Judy, and never even imagined I would be Skyping with my own daughter some day. My father was in the Navy, so we moved around a lot. Each time we went to a new town I struggled with writing letters to old friends in order to try and keep touch. Between the effort it took to legibly hand-write letters, and the (perceived) long delays between sending and receiving the letters, it seemed difficult to keep up-to-date with people, and often those relationships waned. Today, thanks to the Internet, Instant Messaging, Facebook, and email, I know almost instantaneously when a grade school friend is online, and I can see pictures of her granddaughter just minutes after the child is born.
I honestly love the advantages we have today because of technological advances. I constantly benefit in my personal and my professional lives because of computer mediated communication (CMC). What I don’t love is the negativity that CMC seems to foster.
One of the questions we have been asked this week in Social Dynamics of Communication and Technology is if it our experience that emails tend to be angrier than other forms of communication. One of the models that is discussed in our textbook is the Reduced Social Cues (RSC) approach (Thurlow, Lengel, & Tomic, 2004). The RSC approach focuses on the idea that the loss of social cues in CMC adversely affect a group’s ability to communication. While the authors agree that communicating without non-verbal cues is more difficult, the argument they make to discredit the RCS model is that, “even though CMC may well be less information-rich or efficient than face-to-face (FtF) communication, it can’t account for the fact that much more impoverished forms of communication such as letter–writing don’t evoke extreme, aggressive or otherwise inappropriate behavior.” (Thurlow, 2004, p. 61). I completely disagree with the authors in this regard.
In today’s technology age, I would equate emails with letter writing. In my experience - both personally and professionally - people are definitely less inhibited, not only when they are online, but when they are emailing someone. In fact, I think “flaming,” or, “aggressive interactions online,” (Thurlow, 2004, p. 69), happens so often in social media forums and in email, that it’s almost acceptable. CMC empowers people, through the identity they are able to create, but at the same through the lack of FtF interaction, to say things they never would consider mentioning in person. I have experienced this first hand within my own family, and in my team at work.
After my mother passed away and my father was left in the family home all to himself, he began to do that we called, “the drop and run.” He would send emails to me, my brothers and my sisters, and vent. In these emails my father would voice his disappointment in the kids and complain about everything we had done in our lives to disrespect him. He would say things in an email that he would never had said to our faces. Once he hit send, he would hide. It would be days before he answered the phone, and if we mentioned his email, he would hang up on us. Granted, as I’ve mentioned, I have a very dysfunctional family, but my father felt entitled to use email to chastise us and then not have to be accountable for his words. I have worked with people who do the same thing. Email allows them to say whatever it is they are thinking, not have to consider using any tact, and then just move on like it never happened. Another issue with "flaming" and emails is that the sender believes that they will never have to deal with the person they "flamed" face-to-face, and will only have to deal with emails, which is actually easy compared to FtF conflict.
I think most everyone has experienced these types of events, and almost expect them on social networking sites like Facebook. But when you look at any CMC that allows for social interaction, we’re seeing more and more of this type of behavior. Because of the facelessness of it, “less information-rich or efficient than face-to-face (FtF) communication,” (Thurlow, 2004, p. 61), sometimes evokes more emotion and aggressiveness than if people took the time to sit down and talk to each other, even about the most controversial subjects.
CMC is channel of communication that is here to stay, and evolving technologies are going to allow us to communicate in ways we never imagined possible. It’s going to be up to each one of us to be responsible and accountable for our actions, and ensure we are as respectful with people through CMC as would be with them FtF.
References
Thurlow, C., Lengel, L., Tomic, A. (2004). Computer mediated communication: social interaction and the internet. London, England: Sage Publishing.
