Communication Technology, Design, and Availability Management.
Communication Technology and Availability Management
Competing Goals and Stakeholders in Communication Technology
Communication technology (e.g., mobile phones) has competing goals: It does not serve a single person or task but must manage multiple stakeholders and their diverse objectives.
Stakeholders and their goals for mobile phones in the classroom include:
Students: Communication, learning, entertainment, social bonding.
Teachers: Facilitate learning, maintain order, prevent distraction.
Parents: Safety, communication with their children.
Friends: Social messaging and connection.
Taxpayers: Efficient use of educational resources.
Tech companies: Profit, user engagement, data collection.
Creators/Influencers: Engagement with their content.
Problems Associated with Mobile Phones in Schools
Bullying: Some administrators and policymakers argue that reducing young people's access to phones will decrease digital bullying.
Mental Health: Some psychologists suggest social media exposure contributes to declines in mental health. However, population-level arguments are highly disputed and remain an open question in psychology, despite clear individual cases of severe harm.
Distraction: Teachers frequently report students paying attention to phones instead of class content.
Limited randomized trials indicate that students without phone access:
Scored much higher grades.
Remembered course material significantly better.
Proposed Interventions for Mobile Phone Use in Schools
Option: Add "School Mode" to receiver's phones
Goal: Disable messaging and entertainment for all student phones in school while permitting other legitimate uses.
Who implements: Tech companies and schools.
Who pays: Tech companies (and schools to some extent).
Option: Confiscate phones
Goal: State government requires school administrators to securely confiscate student phones during class and return them afterwards.
Who implements: State government and schools.
Who pays: Schools.
Option: Tax app-makers for youth attention
Goal: State government taxes companies for student attention occupied during school and homework, funding programs that support youth flourishing.
Who implements: State government.
Who pays: Tech companies, app makers, media producers.
The Role of Psychology in Design
Assumptions and Backfiring: All design proposals make assumptions about how people and organizations will behave in response. These assumptions can often backfire, leading to unintended consequences.
Availability Management
Technological Mediation Creates Uncertainty: As per Aoki & Woodruff (2005), communication technologies introduce ambiguity in personal communication.
Core Questions of Availability Management:
Is a person available for social interaction?
Do they have your attention?
Would they be willing/want to grant you their attention?
Historical Context: For most of human history, availability was governed by co-presence, meaning physical proximity.
Rituals and routines for co-presence were arranged.
Behaviors were adopted to manage what others thought about one's availability.
Example: The traditional role of a butler in a household managing access to residents.
Impact of Technology: Technology expands the set of people who might be available but also hides or disguises clues about their true availability.
Example: Lyla and Miguel's relationship in "Into the Spiderverse" illustrates remote connection.
Student reflection (Cameron Pien): Instagram DMs with read receipts lead to avoiding opening messages when busy to manage expectations. This highlights a societal shift devaluing solitude and promoting constant connection.
Availability as Expectation:
Relationships carry specific availability expectations (i.e., situations when one is supposed to be available and attentive to fulfill the relationship).
Interpersonal examples:
Calling on birthdays.
Listening when a person is upset.
Professional examples:
Showing up on time.
Responding to emails within a specific timeframe.
Accounts
Definition: In relationships, an account is an explanation provided for a relational failure (e.g., not meeting an availability expectation).
Purpose: An account reconciles two claims:
"I violated your expectations."
"I care/am trustworthy/am competent enough to continue to make this relationship worthwhile."
Presentation: Accounts are generally presented through stories rather than formal arguments (Garfinkel, 1967).
Function: Accounts provide a plausible, mutually agreeable narrative that saves face for both parties.
Examples: "I'm sorry I missed your birthday, my phone broke." or "I realize I didn't call you back but this has been a crazy day!!"
Plausibility: Based on typical behavior (for the individual, in the culture) and the evidence hidden by mediating technology.
Availability Management Strategies: Butler Messages and Lies
Constant Connectivity: Technology forces us to manage availability as constant connectivity is often expected, requiring us to account for unavailability.
Butler Message:
Definition: A verbal message sent to manage one's availability or unavailability.
Analogy: Like a real butler, the technology "buffers" or mediates between you and the recipient.
Student reflection: Butler messages highlight how people manage social boundaries politely, often delaying interaction in digital communication.
Active (Technological) Mediation: Features of a technical system that suggest or contradict particular accounts for availability (Aoki & Woodruff, 2005).
Butler Lie:
Definition: A deceptive butler message; a knowingly false verbal message.
What they do: Account for various states of unavailability:
Having been unavailable in the past: "I’m sorry I missed your call, [LIE]" or "I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you, [LIE]".
Being unavailable now: "Gotta run now, [LIE]".
Being unavailable in the future: "I won’t be able to come next weekend, [LIE]".
Being "available" when it might otherwise be embarrassing: "I just happened to be here at the same time as you."
Student examples:
Using a butler lie to decline overtime work to maintain future job opportunities.
Using a butler lie to prioritize intimate relationships over casual acquaintances when asked to hang out.
How they work: They exploit two sources of ambiguity:
Technological mediation.
Unclear norms of response and duration for many mediating technologies.
Conversational Ambiguity: When it is not clear whether a conversation is ongoing or has ended.
Reynolds et al. (2013) Study: Butler Lies in Texting
Research Questions:
What are the actual rates of lying in text messaging?
What are the perceived rates of lying in text messages?
How accurate are receivers when detecting which messages are deceptive?
What is the emotional impact of telling and being told butler lies?
Research Design: Utilized a "Messages From Both Sides" approach, gathering data from both senders and receivers.
Message Categorization ("Quad Chart"):
Deceptive Butler Content: Butler Lie
Non-Deceptive Butler Content: Butler Message
Deceptive No Butler Content: Other Lie
Non-Deceptive No Butler Content: Other Message
RQ1: Actual Rate of Lies (Senders):
Butler messages had a significantly higher deception rate than general messages. For senders, the average percentage of deceptive messages was roughly between and for butler messages, compared to under for general messages.
RQ2: Perceived Rate of Lies (Receivers vs. Senders):
Senders admitted to lying more in butler messages than receivers perceived lies in other messages.
Specifically, senders' reported deception rate for butler messages was higher than their general message deception rate and also higher than receivers' perceived deception rate for other messages.
RQ3: Emotional Impact (for detected lies):
For detected lies, butler lies had a lower emotional impact rating (closer to on a scale) than other types of lies (closer to on the same scale) for both senders and receivers.
Reducing Butler Lies with Design
Change the availability user experience (Design):
Utilize "Do Not Disturb" features (though users may forget to turn them off).
Publish auto-replies to emails.
Give people a limited number of contacts, requiring them to offer accounts for who is on or off the list.
Turn off the phone (though this prevents learning of emergencies).
Change the structure of who's available (Sociology):
Reduce the size of the Cornell student body (though this would diminish what makes Cornell special).
Recruit capable TAs to field student questions.
Change people's expectations (Psychology):
Change society to be more understanding about delayed responses.
Become more accepting that a functioning society depends on some amount of untruth.
Professor Matias's Account Management
Personal Example: Cycling is part of Professor Matias's availability management; he cannot answer emails from the middle of the forest.
Annual Cornell Outdoor Air Quality Index (AQI) for an academic term:
Mean AQI:
Days over AQI:
Weekdays over AQI: ()
Weekends over AQI:
Highlights the challenge of account management with a disability.
Next Steps and Opportunities
Assignments: Read Przybylski, A. K., & Weinstein for Thursday; essay assignments due Thursday.
Voting: Register to vote by October at www.cornellvotes.org.
SONA Opportunities: Virtual Reality Interaction study offering CASH / SONA Credits (contact ktm62@cornell.edu for more info).