Hola, Guten Tag, Bonjour and Hello again,
I hope all of my loyal viewers are doing
well and enjoying my blogging thus far. Today is a great day for me as the Portland Trailblazers start their season! Anyways, for my second official blog entry I
would like to focus on the theory of Social Information Processing or SIP. This
theory was coined by Joseph Walther and heavily focuses on the use of Computer
Mediated Communication (CMC). CMC is seen as text based messages, which filter
out most non-verbal cues. This can be a text message, facebook message, online
forum, or even a blog entry like this one. For the purpose of this blog I made
a great sacrifice and attempted to go 48 hours without the use of CMC.
Throughout this post I will discuss my experience without CMC while providing a
bit more detail about the theory. Also, since this is a sports in
communications blog, I will be providing an example of how CMC can be seen in
sports today.
As I explained, CMC is the communication
via text based messages. This day in age much of this is done via the web. I
think it is safe to say whether it be facebook, twitter, chatrooms, etc. almost
all of us use CMC daily (especially so considering you are reading this blog).
CMC provides some benefits that face to face communication may not, such as
increased self-disclosure, extended time for those who prefer it, and a
platform for those who struggle with face to face communication to communicate
comfortably. Critics of CMC such as media relations theorists argue though that
CMC is too narrow to convey rich messages. You can also argue that CMC is
depriving people of necessary real life social skills. Other critics point to
CMC as depriving users of the sense that another actual person is involved in
the communication, these would be social presence theorist. Whether you think
CMC is an effective means of communication or are a critic, it is likely CMC is
not going to disappear anytime soon. This is because it is a key aspect of
interpersonal relationships today, but considering these critical theories can
make one question the extent that CMC should be used.
For the purpose of this blog I attempted to
make a great sacrifice and go without CMC for 48 hours. This meant no internet
essentially, no facebook, twitter, email, etc. As an avid tweeter I thought
this may be very difficult for me. I began attempting this challenge the morning of Tuesday, October 29th. The day began with me fighting the temptation to roll
over out of bed and check my texts, facebook, twitter, and email as is my usual
morning tradition. I quickly realized that my phone tells me when I have a text
and displays it on the screen, so in a panic I switched my phone into airplane
mode. Throughout the day of class, studying and going to the gym I noticed that
not using CMC was not as difficult as I had expected it would be, it was almost
peaceful in a sense and increased my rate of information sharing. The real
challenge though came at night. During my downtime is when I tend to use the
most CMC, facebook messaging, tweeting, or texting friends. It was at this time
I also realized I needed to email a professor regarding an assignment due on
the upcoming Friday. This put me in a dilemma, do I wait until Thursday (the
night before) to email or break my CMC ban to give them ample time to respond.
Sadly, despite my best efforts, my true colors as a worry wart broke through
and I emailed my professor thus ending 14 hours without CMC. While going
without CMC was by no means the most difficult thing I have done in life,
merely going 14 hours made me realize how critical it is in today’s society.
One
aspect of CMC that really stood out to me during this challenge was the chronemics.
Chronemics are the study of people’s systematic handling of time in their
interaction with others. Simply put, it looks at how we balance time in our
interaction with people. 
I noticed that CMC allows us to balance our time much
more on our own terms. For example I am able to email my professor at my convenience
with CMC, but without CMC I am forced to attend his office hours or call him to
make an appointment to meet with him. This being said, CMC is an effective tool
for time management in communication. The above comic shows an example of how chronemics can vary between participating members of the communication as well.
I’d
like to give a brief example to conclude this entry of how we are seeing CMC in
sports today. CMC is everywhere in sports, from players, coaches, and managers
communicating through text messages to email correspondence between employees
for professional sports franchises. But one particular area I found interesting
was how CMC between coaches and prospective athletes is being limited by the
NCAA. There is currently a push to deregulate texting rules in recruiting for
the NCAA, here is a brief video from the NCAA discussing both the pros and cons
of CMC in recruiting (sorry the embedded video would not work). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1txZxoDSDA. Do you
think coaches should be limited in the amount of CMC they can have with a
prospective player? Or is it unfair to set a limitation on a communication method?
No matter what side of the fence you sit on one thing is clear, CMC is everywhere.
It will be interesting to see how different people and industries adapt to CMC
as a part of everyday life in the near future.
Until next time, stay cool friends.
P.S. here is the sports video of the day, Go Blazers!
-Zach
