While computer-mediated communication use and research are proliferating rapidly, findings offer contrasting images regarding the interpersonal character of this technology. Research trends over the history of these media are reviewed with observations across trends suggested so as to provide integrative principles with which to apply media to different circumstances. First, the notion that the media reduce personal influences—their impersonal effects—is reviewed. Newer theories and research are noted explaining normative “interpersonal” uses of the media. From this vantage point, recognizing that impersonal communication is sometimes advantageous, strategies for the intentional depersonalization of media use are inferred, with implications for Group Decision Support Systems effects. Additionally, recognizing that media sometimes facilitate communication that surpasses normal interpersonal levels, a new perspective on “hyperpersonal” communication is introduced. Subprocesses are discussed pertaining to re...

Computer-Mediated Communication Impersonal, Interpersonal, and Hyperpersonal Interaction

This chapter is about methods for managing and analyzing qualitative data. By qualitative data the authors mean text: newspapers, movies, sitcoms, e-mail traffic, folktales, life histories. They also mean narratives--narratives about getting divorced, about being sick, about surviving hand-to-hand combat, about selling sex, about trying to quit smoking. In fact, most of the archaeologically recoverable information about human thought and human behavior is text, the good stuff of social science.

Data Management and Analysis Methods

It is a daunting honor to deliver the inaugural Pool Lecture. Ithiel de Sola Pool was a brilliant, broad-gauged scholar whose interests ranged from the Nazi elite to direct satellite broadcasting, from the first rigorous computer simulation of electoral behavior to the development of network theory, from which he invented "small world" research. He helped found the field of political communications. A graduate of the University of Chicago's political science department during its classic golden age, and first chair of the MIT political science department, Pool must also have been a remarkable teacher, for his students continue to contribute to our understanding of technology, communications, and political behavior. When I accepted this honor, I did not guess how close my own inquiry would lead me to Pool's own professional turf. I shall return to the contemporary relevance of Pool's insights at the conclusion of this talk.

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Tuning In, Tuning Out: The Strange Disappearance of Social Capital in America

Social cognitive theory provides an agentic conceptual framework within which to analyze the determinants and psychosocial mechanisms through which symbolic communication influences human thought, affect and action. Communications systems operate through two pathways. In the direct pathway, they promote changes by informing, enabling, motivating, and guiding participants. In the socially mediated pathway, media influences link participants to social networks and community settings that provide natural incentives and continued personalized guidance, for desired change. Social cognitive theory analyzes social diffusion of new styles of behavior in terms of the psychosocial factors governing their acquisition and adoption and the social networks through which they spread and are supported. Structural interconnectedness provides potential diffusion paths; sociocognitive factors largely determine what diffuses through those paths.

Social cognitive theory of mass communication

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Social Cognitive Theory of Mass Communication

Living with television: the violence profile.

The “Mainstreaming” of America: Violence Profile No. 11

Television is the source of the most broadly shared images and messages
in history. It is the mainstream of the common symbolic environment into
which our children are born and in which we all live out our lives. Even
though new forms of media seem to sprout up weekly, television’s mass
ritual shows no signs of weakening, as its consequences are increasingly
felt around the globe.

Growing Up with Television: Cultivation Processes

Growing up with television: The cultivation perspective.

If future historians wanted to know about the common cultural environment of stories and images into which a child was born in the second half of the 20th century, where would they turn? How would they describe its action structure, thematic content, and representation of people? How would they trace the ebb and flow of its currents? Pathetic to say, they would find no other source than our own Cultural Indicators database and reports.

George Gerbner

Papers

Living with television: the violence profile.

The “Mainstreaming” of America: Violence Profile No. 11

Growing Up with Television: Cultivation Processes

Growing up with television: The cultivation perspective.

Cultivation Analysis: An Overview