CHAPTER 10
SOCIAL INFORMATION PROCESSING THEORY
Outline
XXI. Introduction.
A. Scholars who studied new electronic media have offered a variety of theories to
explain the inherent differences between computer-mediated communication (CMC)
and face-to-face communication.
1.
Social presence theory suggests that text-based messages deprive CMC
users of the sense that other people are jointly involved in the interaction
2.
Media richness theory classifies each communication medium according to
the complexity of the messages it can handle efficiently.
3.
A third theory concentrates on the lack of social context cues in online
communication.
B. Each of these theories favors a cues-filtered-out interpretation in regard to the
absence of nonverbal cues as the medium’s fatal flaw.
C. Joe Walter, a communication professor at Cornell University, argued that given the
opportunity for sufficient exchange of social messages and subsequent relational
growth, face-to-face and CMC are equally useful mediums for developing close
relationships.
XXII. CMC versus face-to-face: A sip instead of a gulp.
A. Walther labeled his theory social information processing (SIP) because he believes
relationships grow only to the extent that parties first gain information about each
other and use that information to form impressions.
B. SIP focuses on the first link of the chain—the personal information available through
CMC and its effect on the composite mental image of the other.
C. Walther acknowledges that nonverbal cues are filtered out of the interpersonal
information sent and received via CMC, but he doesn’t think this loss is fatal.
D. Two features of CMC provide a rationale for SIP theory.
1.
Verbal cues: CMC users can create fully formed impressions of others based
solely on linguistic content of messages.
2.
Extended time: Though the exchange of social information is slower via CMC
than face-to-face, over time the relationships formed are not weaker or more
fragile.
E. You’ve got mail—A case study of online romance
1.
The film You’ve Got Mail portrays an online relationship.
2.
It also illustrates verbal cues and extended time, concepts crucial to SIP
theory.
XXIII. Verbal cues of affinity replace nonverbal cues.
A. Walter claims that humans crave affiliation just as much online as they do in faceto-face interactions. But, with the absence of nonverbal cues, which typically signal
affinity, users must rely on text-only messages.
121 B. He argues that verbal and nonverbal cues can be used interchangeably.
C. Experimental support for a counter-intuitive idea.
1.
Walther and two of his former graduate students ran a comparative study to
test how CMC users pursue their social goals and if affinity can be expressed
through a digital medium.
2.
In their study, the participants discussed a moral dilemma with a stranger via
either CMC or face-to-face. The stranger was in actuality a research
confederate told to pursue a specific communication goal. Half the
confederates were told to interact in a friendly manner and the remaining
pairs were told to interact in an unfriendly manner.
3.
The mode of communication made no difference in the emotional tone
perceived by the participants.
4.
Self-disclosure, praise, and explicit statements of affection successfully
communicated warmth as well as indirect agreement, change of subject, and
compliments offered while proposing a contrasting idea.
5.
In face-to-face interactions, participants relied on facial expression, eye
contact, tone of voice, body position, and other nonverbal cues to
communication affiliation.
XXIV. Extended time: The crucial variable in CMC.
A. Walther is convinced that the length of time that CMC users have to send messages
is the key determinant of whether their message can achieve a comparable level of
intimacy as face-to-face interactions.
B. Messages spoken in person take at least four times as long to say via CMC. This
differential may explain why CMC is perceived as impersonal and task-oriented.
C. Since CMC conveys messages more slowly, Walther advises users to send
messages more often.
D. Anticipated future interaction and chronemic cues may also contribute to intimacy
on the Internet.
1.
People will trade more relational messages if they think they may meet again
and this anticipated future interaction motivates them to develop the
relationship.
2.
Walther believes that chronemic cues, or nonverbal indicators of how people
perceive, use, or respond to issues of time, is the only nonverbal cue not
filtered out of CMC.
XXV. Hyperpersonal perspective: It doesn’t get any better than this.
A. Walther uses the term hyperpersonal to label CMC relationships that are more
intimate than romances or friendships would be if partners were physically together.
B. He classifies four types of media effects that occur precisely because CMC users
aren’t proximal.
1.
Sender: Selective self-presentation.
a. Through selective self-presentation, people who meet online have an
opportunity to make and sustain an overwhelmingly positive impression.
b. As a relationship develops, they can edit the breadth and depth of their
self-disclosure to conform to the cyber image they wish to project.
2.
Receiver: Overattribution of similarity.
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3.
4.
a. Attribution is a perceptual process where we observe people’s actions
and try to figure out what they’re really like.
b. In the absence of other cues, we are likely to overattribute the
information we have and create an idealized image of the sender.
c. Martin Lea and Russell Spears describe this identification as SIDE—
social-identity-deindividuation.
i. Users meet around a common interest.
ii. In the absence of contrasting cues, they develop an exaggerated
sense of similarity and group solidarity.
Channel: Communicating on your own time.
a. Walther refers to CMC as an asynchronous channel of communication,
meaning that parties can use it nonsimultaneously.
b. A benefit is the ability to plan, contemplate, and edit one’s comments
more than is possible in spontaneous, simultaneous talk.
Feedback: Self-fulfilling prophecy.
a. A self-fulfilling prophecy is the tendency for a person’s expectation of
others to evoke a response from them that confirms what was
anticipated.
b. Self-fulfilling prophecy is triggered when the hyperpositive image is
intentionally or inadvertently fed back to the other person, creating a
CMC equivalent of the looking-glass self.
XXVI. Critique: Walther’s candid assessment.
A. Walther rejected the notion that online communication is an inherently inferior
medium for relational communication.
B. Walther’s empirical studies show that relationships in cyberspace often form at the
same or even faster pace than they do for people who meet offline.
C. CMC users who join online discussion groups or enter chat rooms may have a higher
need for affiliation than the typical person whose relationships are developed
through multichannel modes.
D. The hyperpersonal perspective lacks a central explanatory mechanism to drive
synthesis of the observed effects.
E. The hyperpersonal perspective has also been less explicit in predicting negative
relational outcomes in CMC.
Key Names and Terms
CMC
Computer-mediated communication.
Social Presence Theory
Earlier CMC theory that suggests that text-based messages deprive CMC users of the
sense that other people are jointly involved in the interaction.
Media Richness Theory
CMC theory that classifies each communication medium according to the complexity of
the messages it can handle efficiently.
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Flaming
Hostile language that zings its target and creates a toxic climate for relational growth on
the Internet.
Cues Filtered Out
Interpretation of CMC that regards the absence of nonverbal cues as the medium’s
permanent flaw, which limits its usefulness for developing interpersonal relationships.
Joseph B. Walther
Communication professor at Cornell University who argues that given the opportunity
for sufficient exchange of social messages and subsequent relational growth, face-toface and CMC are equally useful mediums for developing close relationships.
Social Information Processing (SIP)
Walther’s perspective regarding CMC, so labeled because he believes relationships
grow only to the extent that parties first gain information about each other and use that
information to form impressions.
Verbal Cues
In the absence of any other cues, CMC users will use verbal cues to form impressions.
Extended Time
Because CMC information is exchanged at a much slower rate, online relationships will
develop the same intimacy possible in face-to-face relationships only if given an
extended time.
Anticipated Future Interactions
In Walther’s perspective, it’s a way of extending psychological time. The possibility of
future interaction motivates CMC users to develop a relationship.
Chronemics
Nonverbal scholars label used to describe how people perceive, use, and respond to
issues of time in their interactions with others.
Hyperpersonal
CMC relationships that are more intimate than romances or friendships would be if
partners were physically together.
Attribution
A perceptual process where we observe people’s actions and try to figure out what the
person is really like.
Martin Lea and Russell Spears
European social psychologists who explain over-the-top identification as social-identitydeindividuation (SIDE).
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
The tendency for a person’s expectation of others to evoke a response from them that
confirms what was anticipated.
Principal Changes
This chapter is entirely new to the sixth edition.
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Suggestions for Discussion
Only a theory of “new media” relationships?
Social information processing theory appears to be an exciting new approach to the
“new media,” a way of accounting for online communication, particularly as it stacks up
against face-to-face encounters. On the other hand, could the central ideas developed in this
theory apply just as well to old-fashioned letters, even those sent through the U.S. Postal
Service? Is this simply a theory of written communication? Glen’s great-grandfather became
engaged to a woman he’d never met through written correspondence. Their relationship
developed gradually, letter by letter, until they were sufficiently attached to one another to get
married. It’s possible that Walther’s theory building applies as well to their communication as it
does to You’ve Got Mail.
Longevity of relationships
It’s likely that some students in your class have developed a relationship through CMC,
either via e-mail, chat rooms, or as part of a virtual community. As such, they are likely to
warmly embrace SIP’s perspective about online relationship develop and be vocal advocates
that relationship development is not only possible, but probable. But, with the relative newness
of technologies such as digital cameras, webcams, text messaging, and e-mail, can we predict
how technology might affect the longevity of these mediated relationships? Some might
speculate that physical closeness at some time in the relationship is necessary to guarantee
the long-term survival of close bonds.
The virtual girlfriend
Your students may be familiar with Asia’s “virtual girlfriend.” After joining (and paying a
subscription fee), a “girlfriend” appears as an animated message on the subscriber’s mobile
phone video screen. Disclosure comes at a price—literally, as the anime only responds when
she has been bought flowers or gifts by paying more money. The “relationship” develops as
money is exchanged for more information about one’s “girlfriend,” sweet talk, and introduction
to her “friends.” You might want to engage students in a comparison of the differences
between online relationships with real people versus connections established with such
simulations. Given Walther’s position regarding the possibility of idealizing one’s online
partners, are these “sims” very different than such relationships?
Distance education
You might want to discuss online education and the development of relationships with
professors and other students when the only contact you have is through e-mails, message
boards, and chat rooms. Does that environment help or hinder the learning process? A host of
communication scholars, led by the work of James McCroskey, suggests that nonverbal
immediacy is a critical component of teaching effectiveness. How might effectiveness be
moderated by a mediated relationship? If your students have participated in online only or
technology-assisted classes, how have the various modes of communication affected their
relationships with students and professors?
Critiquing the theory
As speculated by Griffin in the chapter’s Critique, Walther’s theory hasn’t addressed a
perhaps fundamental question: why do people choose to develop online relationships?
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Encourage students to probe some motivations. How might these varied motivations affect the
quality and quantities of one’s relationships, both online and off?
Sample Application Log
Laine
I’ve definitely seen Walther’s hyperpersonal “selective self-presentation” at work in my
relationship with my boyfriend. In the beginning stages of our relationship, our self-disclosure
was most often via instant messaging for the very reason that Walther claimed—“people who
meet online have an opportunity to make and sustain an overwhelmingly positive impression.”
IM allowed us to carefully process and edit what were going to say before we committed to
saying it by pushing “send.” I would often type on the instant message screen, read it through,
delete it and start over if there was something that I said in a way that might leak information
that I wasn’t yet ready to disclose.
I have found that once you move beyond the slower pace of online interaction and get used to
the pace of face-to-face interaction, it’s hard to go back. For example after we became
comfortable with each other face-to-face, our CMC became almost nonexistent. When we are
living in separate states, the different pace of online communication becomes frustrating.
Exercises and Activities
Comparing CMC and face-to-face relationships
Ask your students to compare a relationship that they have developed via CMC (or
maintained if they don’t have online relationships) to a face-to-face relationship. How would
they characterize the relationship, their impression of the other person, and what they believe
they have portrayed about themselves? Walther suggests that a self-fulfilling prophesy may be
at work in which impressions are carefully crafted and messages obtained at one’s own
convenience. In comparison to flesh-and-blood people, do students have a more idealized
version of the other when the relationship has been mediated?
Feature film illustration
In addition to You’ve Got Mail, another feature film that may provide interesting
discussion is Simone. It is the story of a movie producer, played by Al Pacino, who—
unbeknownst to the audience—creates a digital actress. The film demonstrates the power of
technology to “create” people and you might find it a good tool to stimulate discussion about
simulating reality.
Further Resources
§
Barbara Warnick takes a rhetorical approach to theoretical issues of the Internet in
“Rhetorical Criticism of Public Discourse on the Internet: Theoretical Implications,” Rhetoric
Society Quarterly 28 (Fall 1998): 73-84. She has also produced a full-length treatment of
rhetoric and technology entitled Critical Literacy in a Digital Era: Technology, Rhetoric, and
the Public Interest (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002), and a review essay on the
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relationship between argument and new media, “Analogues to Argument: New Media and
Literacy in a Posthuman Era,” Argument and Advocacy (Spring 2002): 262-70.
Relationship development
§ For more on verbal and nonverbal affinity exchange, see Joseph B. Walther, Tracy Loh, and
Laura Granka, “Let Me Count the Ways: The Interchange of Verbal and Nonverbal Cues in
Computer-Mediated and Face-to-Face Affinity,” Journal of Language & Social Psychology
24, 1 (March 2005): 36-66.
§ Kevin B. Wright explores relational maintenance in online relationships in his article,
“Online Relational Maintenance Strategies and Perceptions of Partners within Exclusively
Internet-Based and Primarily Internet-Based Relationships,” Communication Studies 55, 2
(2004): 239-54.
§ For more on disclosure, see Lisa Collins Tidwell and Walther “Computer-Mediated
Communication Effects on Disclosure, Impressions, and Interpersonal Evaluations: Getting
to Know One Another a Bit at a Time,” Human Communication Research 28, 3 (July 2002):
317-48.
§ Sonja Utz explores friendship development in her article, “Social Information Processing in
MUDs: The Development of Friendships in Virtual Worlds,” Journal of Online Behavior 1, 1
(2000): n.p.
§ Artemio Ramirez, Jr., Joe Walther, Judee Burgoon, and Michael Sunnafrank intersect SIP
with URT in “Information-Seeking Strategies, Uncertainty, and Computer-Mediated
Communication,” Human Communication Research 28, 2 (April 2002): 213-29.
§ For more on relationship initiation, see Jeffrey S. McQuillen’s article “The Influence of
Technology on the Initiation of Interpersonal Relationships,” Education 123, 3 (Spring
2003): 616-24.
Communication and technology
For discussion of information technology and the computer’s effect on communication, see:
§ Alan L. Porter and William H. Read, The Information Revolution: Current and Future
Consequences (Greenwich, CT: Ablex, 1998).
§ Nick Heap, et al., eds., Information Technology and Society: A Reader (London: Sage,
1995).
§ Nicolas Negroponte, Being Digital (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).
§ Frank Biocca and Mark Levy, eds., Communication in the Age of Virtual Reality (Hillsdale,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1995).
§ Steven G. Jones, Cybersociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community
(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995); Virtual Culture: Identity and Communication in
Cybersociety (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1997); and Cybersociety 2.0: Revisiting ComputerMediated Communication and Society (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998).
§ David Holmes, Virtual Politics: Identity and Community in Cyberspace (Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage, 1997).
§ Tharon W. Howard, A Rhetoric of Electronic Communities (Greenwich, CT: Ablex, 1997).
§ Sara Kiesler, Cultures of the Internet (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997).
§ David Slayden and Rita Kirk Whillock, Soundbite Culture: The Death of Discourse in a Wired
World (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999).
§ Tom Koch, The Message Is the Medium: Online All the Time for Everyone (Westport, CT:
Praeger, 1996).
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§
§
Kevin A. Hill and John E. Hughs, Cyberpolitics: Citizen Activism in the Age of the Internet
(Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield, 1998); Bosah Ebo, ed., Cyberghetto or Cybertopia? Race,
Class and Gender on the Internet (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998).
James W. Chesebro and Donald G. Bonsall, Computer-Mediated Communication: Human
Relationships in a Computerized World (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989).
One of Chesebro and Bonsall’s principal contentions is that “computerized communication
is altering human communication itself” (7).
Distance Education
§ Karen Swan, “Building Learning Communities in Online Courses: The Importance of
Interaction,” Education, Communication & Information 2, 1 (May 2002): 23-50.
§ Jennifer Waldeck, Patricia Kearney, and Timothy Plax explore e-mail messages between
educators and students in their article, “Teacher E-mail Message Strategies and Students’
Willingness to Communicate Online,” Journal of Applied Communication Research 29, 1
(February 2001): 54-70.
§ Paul L. Witt and Lawrence R. Wheeless, “Nonverbal Communication Expectancies about
Teachers and Enrollment Behavior in Distance Learning,” Communication Education 48, 2
(April 1999): 149-54.
§ For more on teacher immediacy in online classes, see:
o Lori J. Carrell and Kent E. Menzel, “Variations in Learning, Motivation, and Perceived
Immediacy between Live and Distance Education Classrooms,” Communication
Education 50, 3 (July 2001): 230-40.
o Roger N. Conaway, Susan S. Easton, & Wallace V. Schmidt, “Strategies for
Enhancing Student Interaction and Immediacy in Online Courses,” Business
Communication Quarterly 68, 1 (March 2005): 23-36.
o J.B. Arbaugh, “How Instructor Immediacy Behaviors Affect Student Satisfaction and
Learning in Web-based Courses,” Business Communication Quarterly 64, 4
(December 2001): 42-54.
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Sample Questions are not reproduced in the online version of the Instructor's Manual.
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Sample Questions are not reproduced in the online version of the Instructor's Manual.
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Sample Questions are not reproduced in the online version of the Instructor's Manual.
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