NOTE: A course similar to this one will be given Spring Term, 1998. The time of the course will probably be 10-12:30 Mondays (not 4-6:30 as previously advertised). The location has yet to be determined. The course is given as a graduate course in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science and is open to those in graduate studies. Details on the new course will be made available at CMC450: Computers and Communication
Outline for LIS 450, Section CMC Spring Term, 1997
Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Instructor: Caroline Haythornthwaite
This course will meet in Room 119 ENGLISH, 4-6:30 Mondays
First class is January 27.
This course traces issues and research in computer-mediated communication (CMC) that have accompanied the wide-spread acceptance of media such as email, group decision support systems, and the Internet, plus the less widely accepted or known videoconferencing, group decision support systems, virtual hallways, video walls, and media spaces.
CMC has been examined by researchers from many fields, beginning with psychology and unfolding through social psychology, management, computer science, communications, and sociology.
Early research in this area recognized inherent differences between mediated and non-mediated (face-to-face) communication and investigated the impact of this reduced-cues environment on interpersonal communication and relations. This line of reasoning was then picked up by management researchers who began a quest for the best message-medium fit, a debate that still heavily affects CMC research.
More recent research recognizes the group nature of media such as email and videoconferencing. This stream of research looks at group effects that influence the adoption of computer media, their usefulness for groups and organizations, and the impact of group dynamics on the way in which media use is defined and redefined through continued use.
The growth of use of the Internet and the World Wide Web has spawned another realm of research, that of the electronic community. Recent research examines the way in which CMC media support non-work interactions, the nature of relationships among such community members, and what makes and sustains such groups.
Schedule: The course will be conducted through seminars based on research readings assigned for each week. Core topics will be set by the instructor for approximately 8 of the 14 weeks of the course. Topics for weeks 9 to 14 will be decided according to enrollment and the interests of students.
Evaluation: Participants will expected to participate in class discussions, present a seminar on an area of CMC research that interests them (during weeks 9 to 14), and prepare a major paper.
Required Texts:
Fulk, J. & Steinfield, C. (1990) (Eds). Organizations and Communication Technology. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
Jones, S. (Ed.). (1995). Cybersociety: Computer-mediated community and communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Rheingold, Howard. (1993). Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Harper Collins.
Recommended:
Baecker, R. (Ed.) (1993). Readings in Groupware and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.
Other general books:
Lea, M. (1992). (Ed.), Contexts of Computer-Mediated Communication. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf
Kling, R. (1996). (Ed.). Computerization and Controversy, 2nd Edition. San Diego: Academic Press.
McGrath, J.E., & Hollingshead, A.B. (1994). Groups Interacting with Technology. Sage Publications.
Sproull, L. & Kiesler, S. (1991). Connections: New ways of working in the networked organization. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Kollock, P., & Smith, M.A. (in press). (Eds). Communities in Cyberspace. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Other sites to visit:
CMC Magazine -- current table of contents
Journal of Computer Mediated Communication
Center for the Study of Online Communities
For those completely new to the topic, I recommend beginning with Howard Rheingold's highly readable book on the WELL community. This will give you a good grounding for our first meeting.
Overviews
Rheingold, Howard. (1993). Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Harper Collins. (Chpt. 1)
Culnan, M.J. & Markus, M.L. (1987). Information technologies. In F.M. Jablin, L.L. Putnam, K.H. Roberts & L.W. Porter (Eds.), Handbook of Organizational Communication: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (pp. 420-443). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
Garton, L., & Wellman, B. (1995). Social impacts of electronic mail in organizations: a review of the research literature. Communication Yearbook, 18 , 434-53.
Walther, J.B. (1996). Computer-mediated communication: Impersonal, interpersonal, and hyperpersonal interaction. Communication Research, 23(1), 3-43.
Kiesler, S., Siegel, J. & McGuire, T.W. (1984). Social psychological aspects of computer-mediated communication. American Psychologist, 39(10), 1123-1134.
The reduced-cues tradition
Short, J. Williams, E. & Christie, B. (1976). The Social Psychology of Telecommunications . London: John Wiley & Sons. (chpt 4, 6).
Media richness and the message-medium fit debate
Daft, R.L. & Lengel, R.H. (1986). Organizational information requirements, media richness and structural design. Management Science, 32(5) , 554-571.
Trevino, L.K., Daft, R.L., & Lengel, R.H. (1990). Understanding managers' media choice: A symbolic interactionist perspective. Chapter 4, Organizations and Communication Technology.
Commentaries
Culnan & Markus (1987).
Rice R. (1987). Computer mediated communication and organizational innovation. Journal of Communication, 37(4), 65-95.
Fish R.S., Kraut R.E., Root R.W., Rice R.E. (1993). Video as a technology for informal communication. Communications of the ACM, 36(1) , 48-61.
Markus, L.M., Bikson, T.K., El-Shinnawy, M., & Soe, L.L. (1992). Fragments of your communication: Email, vmail, and fax. The Information Society, 8, 207-226.
Nunamaker, J.F., Dennis, A.R., Valacich, J.S., Vogel, D.R., & George, J.F. (1991). Electronic meeting systems to support group work. Communications of the ACM, 34(7), 40-61.
Reid, K. (1995). Virtual worlds: culture and imagination. Chapter 8 in Cybersociety.
Storck, J. & Sproull, L. (1995). Through a glass darkly: What do classweb learn in videoconferences. Human Communication Research, 22(2), 197-219.
... for much more on 'the media' see the collected papers in Baecker, 1993.
Decision-making
Hiltz, S.R., Johnson, K., & Turoff, M. (1986). Experiments in group decision making: Communication process and outcome in face to face versus computerized conferences. Human Communication Research 13(2) , 225-52.
Status
Weisband, S.P., Schneider, S.K., & Connolly, T. (1995). Computer-mediated communication and social information: Status salience and status differences. Academy of Management Journal, 38(4) , 1124-1151.
Non-laboratory
Eveland, J.D. & Bikson, T.K. (1988). Work group structures and computer support: A field experiment. ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, 6(4) , 354-379.
Huff, C., Sproull, L., & Kiesler, S. (1989). Computer communication and organizational communitment: Tracing the relationship in a city government. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 19, 1371-1391.
Reviews and Commentaries
Garton, L., & Wellman, B. (1995).
Kiesler, S. & Sproull, L. (1992). Group decision making and communication technology. Organization Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 52, 96-123.
Contractor, N.S. & Eisenberg, E.M. (1990). Communication networks and new media in organizations. Chapter 7, Organizations and Communication Technology .
Fulk, J., Schmitz, J. & Steinfield, C. (1990) A social influence model of technology use. Chapter 6, Organizations and Communication Technology.
Markus ML. 1990. Toward a "critical mass" theory of interactive media. Chapter 9, Organizations and Communication Technology.
Poole, M.S. & DeSanctis, G. (1990). Understanding the use of group decision support systems: The theory of adaptive structuration. Chapter 8, Organizations and Communication Technology .
Note: Fulk, J. (1991). Emerging theories of communication in organizations. (Journal of Management, 17(2) , 407-46) provides a summary of the theories given in Organizations and Communication Technology.
Finholt, T. & Sproull, L. (1990). Electronic groups at work. Organization Science, 1(1) , 41-64.
Markus, M.L. (1994a). Finding a happy medium: Explaining the negative effects of electronic communication on social life at work. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 12, 119-149.
Markus, M.L. (1994b). Electronic mail as the medium of managerial choice. Organization Science, 5, 502-527.
Markus, M.L. (1992). Asynchronous technologies in small face-to-face groups. Information Technology & People, 6, 29-48.
also ... Kiesler, S. & Sproull, L. (1992).
Wellman, B., Salaff, J., Dimitrova, D., Garton, L., Gulia, M., & Haythornthwaite, C. (1996). Computer networks as social networks: Collaborative work, telework, and virtual community. Annual Review of Sociology, 22, 213-238.
Rice, R.E. (1994a). Network analysis and computer-mediated communication systems. In S. Wasserman & J. Galaskiewicz (Eds.), Advances in Social Network Analysis: Research in the Social and Behavioral Sciences (pp. 167-203).
Granovetter, M.S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78, 1360-1380.
Constant, D., Kiesler, S.B., & Sproull, L.S. (1996). The kindness of strangers: The usefulness of electronic weak ties for technical advice. Organization Science, 7(2) , 119-135.
Haythornthwaite, C. & Wellman, B. (under review) Work, friendship and media use for information exchange in a networked organization.
Baym, N. (1995). The emergence of community in computer-mediated communication. Steve Jones (Ed.), Cybersociety: Computer-mediated community and communication, (pp. 138-163). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Wellman, B. (1988), The community question re-evaluated. In M.P. Smith (Ed.) Power, Community and the City (pp. 81-107). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
Wellman B, Gulia M. (in press). Net surfers don't ride alone: Virtual communities as communities. In P. Kollock & M. Smith (Eds). Communities in Cyberspace, Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press.
Kollock, P., & Smith, M.A. (in press). Managing the virtual commons: Cooperation and conflict in computer communities. In Computer Mediated Communication, ed. S Herring, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Lea M, Spears R. 1995. Love at First Byte? Building Personal Relationships Over Computer Networks. In J.T. Wood & S. Duck (Eds.), Understudied Relationships: Off the Beaten Track (pp. 197-233). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Rice, R.E. & Love, G. (1987). Electronic emotion: Socioemotional content in a computer-mediated communication network. Communication Research, 14(1), 85-108.
Steinfield, Charles W. 1986. Computer-mediated communication in an organizational setting: Explaining task-related and socioemotional uses. In Margaret L. McLaughlin (Ed.) Communication Yearbook vol. 9. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Walther, J.B. (1995). Relational aspects of computer-mediated communication: Experimental observations over time. Organization Science, 6(2) , 186-203.
Crane, D. (1972). Invisible Colleges: Diffusion of knowledge in scientific communities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hesse, B.W., Sproull, L.S., Kiesler, S.P. & Walsh, J.P. 1993. Returns to science: computer networks in oceanography. Communications of the ACM, 36 (8):90-101.
Schatz, B. (1991). Building an electronic scientific community. Proceedings of the Twenty-fourth Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, pp. 730-748. Also in Baecker, R.M. (1993).
Carley, K. & Wendt, K. (1991). Electronic mail and scientific communication.Knowledge, 12(4), 406-440.
Netiquette ... McLaughlin, M.L., Osborne, K.K., & Smith, C.B. (1995). Standards of conduct on the usenet. In S.G. Jones, Cybersociety: Computer-mediated communication and community.
Lea M, O'Shea T, Fung P, & Spears R. (1992). 'Flaming' in computer mediated communication: Observations, explanations, implications. In Contexts of Computer Mediated Communication, ed. Lea M, 89 112. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf
Perrolle, J.A. (1991). Conversations and trust in computer interfaces. In R.Kling (Ed.). Computerization and Controversy (pp.350-363). Academic Press: Boston.
Gelder, L.V. (Oct., 1985). The strange case of the electronic lover. Ms. Magazine. Reprinted in R.Kling (1991). (Ed.). Computerization and Controversy (pp.364-375). Academic Press: Boston.
Walther, J.B., Anderson, J.F., & Park, D.W. (1994). Interpersonal effects of computer-mediated communication: A meta-analysis of social and antisocial communication. Communication Research, 21(4) , 460-487.
McCormick, N.B. & McCormick, J.W. (1992). Computer friends and foes: Content of undergraduate's electronic mail. Computers in Human Behavior, 8, 379-405.
Emmett, R. (1982). VNET or GRIPENET. Datamation, 4, 48-58.
Sproull, L. & Kiesler, S. (1991). Connections, Chapter 6.
Fowles, J. (1987). How we got to this point: A brief history of organizational communications technologies. In L. Thayer (Ed.), Organization--communication: Emerging perspectives, Vol II (pp. 67-81). Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
Yates, J. & Orlikowski, W.J. (1992). Genres of organizational communication: A structurational approach to studying communication and media. Academy of Management Journal, 17(2) , 299-326.
See the 1996 Telecommuting Conference Proceedings
-------------------------- Copyright C. Haythornthwaite 1997 --------------------------