Andre's Final Project

Andre Cedeno
Dr. Adam Johns
Seminar in Composition
December 6, 2008

Communication & Detachment

In Chris Ware’s “Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth” the main character Jimmy Corrigan lives much of his life through the telephone. The consequence of his actions is that he becomes an isolated individual who has no friends and who only talks to his mother. An example of Jimmy being unsociable is where after having a phone conversation with his mother he calls Peggy, a woman he has a crush on, saying, “P-Peggy, it’s J-Jimmy… if you hurry and look outside right now there’s a rainbow to look at/ S-See it? You see it? Ha Ha boy, it sure would be fun to take a walk out right now and look at it don’t you think right now” (Ware 12). There would be no problem with this phone conversation until Jimmy’s face-to-face conversation with Peggy happens. While day dreaming about a life together with Peggy, Jimmy is stirred from his dream where Peggy tells him, “Jimmy!! Take your mail and get out of here! I’ve got work to do” (Ware 16). Jimmy relies on the telephone for his communication and gets the results expected of a poorer medium of communication than face-to-face communication. However, the telephone is still a richer form of communication to computer mediated communication, one of the biggest new forms of communication. The results expected from this medium are even lower than that of the telephone. By relying heavily on CMC people will end up with less intimate relationships than Jimmy Corrigan. With more reliance on this new medium of communication people have become more distant individuals, with fewer connections between them. Examples include people text and instant messaging others instead of talking to them. New communication technology is causing many in our society to become more detached from one and another compared to the results from face-to-face communication. This detachment is evident throughout today’s society and even in works of fiction by Chris Ware and Octavia Butler.
Computer-mediated communication has increased a great amount over a short period of time. Online tools such as blogging, chatting, e-mailing and networking sites have become more and more popular. Other similar technologies such as text messaging have also become extremely popular. These technologies have allowed for more convenient communication but have also caused communication to become more impersonal. This detachment involved in CMC has had many adverse affects on the relations of today. Joseph McGlynn conducted two studies involving CMC and relationships. The first study examined CMC’s impact on closeness, satisfaction and support while study two examined the reasons individuals chose to use CMC and the perceived effects of using this medium of communication. In study one it was found that as the quality and quantity of CMC increased so did the amount of relational closeness, satisfaction and social support. Study one also found a positive relationship between the amount and quality of face to face communication and all three of the variables. In study two it was found that:
Respondents suggested while CMC enables relational partners to maintain a greater number of relationships with reduced time and effort, the value of relationships may be declining. As a result of this paradox, partners face the challenge of balancing increased numbers of connections with decreased perceptions of connection. (McGlynn 46)
The results of these two studies show that while CMC has allowed people to maintain relationships they have had to sacrifice the merit of these relationships. One of the individuals involved in the experiment even said “Friendships today are different because although you can keep in touch easier, I feel that some closeness or intimacy may be lost through CMC.”(McGlynn 46) Conducting trivial relationships online does not compare to carrying out these same relationships face-to-face where closeness and intimacy are at a premium. The beneficial effects of CMC such as its convenience are cancelled out by the fact that it misses a major component of communication, intimacy.
I have seen this lack of intimacy firsthand. While using CMC I have continued insignificant relationships with people I rarely spoke to face-to-face. On an online networking site I had a conversation with one individual who I knew from school. I had only spoken to him briefly during our whole time together in school but, when I joined the online networking site many mere acquaintances were labeled as friends. While I was able to contact them much easier than I would have been able to before I realized that many people labeled as friends really were not friends. They were only people I knew, with whom I had little to discuss. Instead of talking to these people about trivial matters I could have been meeting other people face-to-face and establishing more tangible or intimate relationships.
Besides a lack of intimacy, other examples of the disadvantages of CMC in the real world are evident in Sonja Utz’s “Media Use in Long-Distance Friendships” and Robert J. Sidelinger’s “Couples Go Online: Relational Maintenance Behaviors and Relational Characteristics Use in Dating Relationships”. In Utz’s study she compared the use of e-mail and phone conversations in long-distance relationships. It was found that people preferred phone conversations over e-mail for intimate conversations while they used e-mail for less intimate communication. One reason that the phone was preferred over e-mail was “because of its higher media richness and social presence – fewer socio-emotional cues get lost.”(Utz 16) The phones closer relationship to face-to-face communication provides advantages over CMC with regards to socio-emotional cues. The less technologically advanced form of communication is the form used for the more intensive actions. Sidelinger’s study dealt with how CMC affected relational maintenance behaviors and relational characteristics. These characteristics include communication satisfaction, interaction involvement, commitment and relationship satisfaction. Sidelinger concluded that, “Even when people communicate simultaneously with each other by IM, they may not feel a strong presence of each other. Ultimately, CMC may not be employed effectively if individuals are not fully emerged in the communication process as they interact with one another online.”(Sidelinger 12) The amount of effort put into the communication correlates to the results of the communication. This shows that CMC is not as effective in relationships as richer mediums of communication such as the phone and face-to-face communication. The convenience of CMC also causes it to become more superficial.
The superficiality of this medium also leads to other problems. In Jamie Switzer’s “Creating Impression in CMC” she conducted a study where individuals who worked in the virtual world on a task were asked questions about their teammates. The results of the study showed that a third of the respondents did not even form impressions of their teammates. Other respondents used cues in the text to create their impressions. One respondent said, “I picture short sentences coming from short people,” (Switzer 19). The lack of several major cues causes more random impressions to become formed with CMC. In regards to CMC Switzer said, “the information and range of cues available is significantly narrowed…CMC places a greater emphasis on text-based verbal behaviors as well as on preconceived biases and personal schemas.”(Switzer 3) The reliance on biases to form impressions shows that CMC is not effective in forming relationships. Other research shows some of the effects of relationships developed online. “When Online Meets Offline: The Effect of Modality Switching on Relational Communication” by Artemio Ramirez Jr. and Shuangyue Zhang examines how switching mediums of communication effected relationships. Those who stayed online with their relationships had “greater intimacy and social attraction than the other conditions in which Ftf (face-to-face) contact occurred.”(Ramirez 1) Relationships were even harmed when they transferred from online communication to face-to-face communication (Ramirez 1). This may relate to Switzer’s findings about biases and schemas being used for impressions, since these usually turn out to be false the relationships formed only through CMC will not live up to the expectations when people meet in person. Any relationship that you have to use stereotypes to form is not a good relationship. Relationships should be based on what we know about other people not simple assumptions. If relationships cannot transition to face-to-face there is no point in having them, not many people are willing to interact with others solely online.
While there are many disadvantages to using CMC there are also a few advantages of this medium of communication such as the convenience it provides. In McGlynn’s study the main reason for the use of CMC was determined to be its convenience. This medium of communication does allow people to correspond more often and helps to deal with barriers such as time and distance. CMC can help people communicate in long-distance relationships and others who have conflicting schedules. However McGlynn also found that, “comparatively few participants denoted CMC as a superior means of communication,” (McGlynn 77). He even refers to Geert Hofstede’s ideas of individualism versus collectivism as a reason for the choice of personal convenience over better communication with others. In America there is an individualistic culture where things such as convenience for one are put over the relationship of two. People sacrifice relationships for their own convenience. People in America have sacrificed many things for convenience but, if a form of communication hinders relationships because of its expediency, is that really an advantage that we should make a sacrifice for? Others support CMC with the social information processing theory which suggests that these relationships involving CMC may take longer to develop but, in the end they are just as effective (Ramirez and Zhang 5). This theory goes against the ideology of the social presence theory and the cues-filtered-out theory. Both concepts suggest that nonverbal cues, which can be found in face-to-face communication, help to with relational processes (Ramirez and Zhang 5). Some of these factors that are lost in CMC include partner predictability, social information exchange, self-disclosure and attraction. Much of our communication relies on non-verbal communication and the cues involved within it. Without these cues it is much harder to understand one and other. How do you explain a shrug to someone on the computer? The answer is that you cannot. We lose these things with CMC, some of the more distinctive parts of our conversations which help to get our point across.
With the more personal parts of communication, such as cues, becoming lost with these new technological changes people should try to focus their attention on using technology to create more personal communication. Society should try to become closer with one and another instead of more distant. An example of something we should strive for is the communication found in Octavia Butler’s “Lilith’s Brood”. While the humans rely on the same face-to-face communication that has been used by them for thousands of years, the Oankali are able to use their sensory tentacles to send messages to each other. The sensory communication is even more personal then the face-to-face communication of humans. When discussing the level of communication between two Oankali construct sisters and Akin, another Oankali construct, Butler says, “He could talk to them, communicate with them nonvocally, but he could never have the special closeness with them that they had with each other.”(Butler 379) The direct forms of communication used between the Oankali create stronger relational bonds such as the one between the two construct sisters who relied on each other. If new communication technology allowed us to communicate on a deeper level like the Oankali it would strengthen interpersonal relationships. Since this is one of the goals of communication we should strive for technology that would put us on par with the Oankali. With new mediums of communication similar to the one described above humanity could finally creating a richer medium to express ourselves not something that is worse but, more convenient.
In today’s society people are relying more and more on CMC and similar technology. As a result those who rely heavily on CMC have made more superficial relationships. Many people are less willing to put the same amount of effort into relationships as they would without CMC. People want things in their life to be fast and easy but, some things simply should not be. As communication technology progresses further will mankind be willing to give up more of the intimacy involved in relationships for convenience and other things that make talking to each other easier or will we try to create more intimacy in our communication? Will we end up with relationships like those of the Oankali or Jimmy Corrigan?