evaluation of reduced cues and hyperpersonal

CMC non-verbal cues

RCT is incorrect in its suggestion that non-verbal cues are entirely missing from CMC - they are actually different rather than absent

Walther and Tidwell 1995

people in online interactions use other cues e.g. style and timing of messages

taking more time to reply to a message is interpreted as more intimate as more effort has been put into response

too much time could be perceived as a snub

CMC emotional cues

other methods to convey emotions e.g. acronyms and emojis

RCT struggles to explain success of CMC interactions as they are able to express emotional states and be personal

Whitty and Joinson 2009

summarise wealth of evidence supporting basic premise of hyperpersonal model

e.g. questions asked in online discussions tend to be very direct, probing and intimate and responses are likewise

Paine et al.

people SD more in their Facebook status updates than they are willing to in an online e-commerce web form, when they are quite reluctant to disclose info they think is private

online and offline relationships

Walther - any theory seeking to explain CMC needs to accommodate the fact that our relationships are generally conducted online and offline

in social media, people who interact with each other generally have relationships in the offline world

anticipation of future meetings

SD in online dating is reduced because both communicators anticipate future meetings f-f in the offline world

this is a consideration that generally doesn’t exist in chat rooms and on gaming sites, which proves the existence of different types of CMC

McKenna and Bargh 2000

investigated CMC use by lonely and socially anxious people

found they were able to express their true selves more than f-f situations

70% of relationships formed online last more than 2 years which is a higher proportion than offline ones