Blackwell Reference Online

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Mediated social interaction refers to the interaction between two or more individuals, normally separated in time and/or space, enabled by various communication technologies. Mediated social interaction may take many different forms, depending on how many people are involved in message construction and reception (e.g., one-to-one vs one-to-many); whether participating individuals are required to be present at the time of message transfer (e.g., synchronous vs asynchronous); what kinds of modalities are being used (e.g., text vs full motion video); and so forth. Technology-mediated communication has been with us for many years. However, it is the proliferation of personal computers and the Internet that has spawned considerable research on mediated social interaction. Not only has computer-based communication created unprecedented opportunities to form, develop, and maintain interpersonal relationships, but it has also altered the ways in which people collaborate in work groups. Thus, the following sections are devoted to computer-mediated communication (CMC), and especially how it differs from face-to-face (FtF) interaction in terms of communication processes and outcomes. Although recent technological advancements support a wide array of communication modalities beyond the exchange of simple texts, the most common form of CMC is still text-based. Thus, compared to FtF interaction, ... log in or subscribe to read full text