The elementary forms of digital communication

Abstract

Although a tremendous amount of modern interaction is electronic, our understanding of everyday digital communications—including what they look like and how their properties vary by medium and relationship type—is still growing. In this paper, we examine digital exchange in two of its simplest forms: email and SMS. Specifically, our data consist of 2,004 messages provided by a diverse sample of college students, supplemented by in-depth interviews with their authors. These data were collected in 2010—a time when both mediums were widespread but devoid of most of their modern complexity. Based on these data, we make two contributions: First, we develop an empirically grounded typology of the basic properties of text-based digital communication; second, we document the distribution of these properties across five common relationship types. Respectively, these findings provide a starting point to understanding the substance of digital exchange in all its many forms and an empirical benchmark for comparison.