Technologically Mediated Personal Relationships

Abstract

Although social critics fear that technologically mediated communication is eroding ‘genuine’ face-to-face relationships, several studies indicate that communication technologies are capable of fostering rich, deeper connections by extending intimate contacts across barriers of distance and time. Media richness theorists have compared ‘rich’ and ‘lean’ media (Daft and Lengel 1984) and highlighted the richness and speed of certain communication technologies as mediums for carrying information and conveying emotions (Fulk and Collin-Jarvis 2001). Mediated communication is considered to be ‘lean’ rather than ‘rich’ and impedes people’s ability to handle interpersonal dimensions of interaction (Walther et al. 1994). Yet some of the ‘leanest’ text messages can cement intimacies (Baym 2010). The rise of the Internet has therefore also generated optimism about the recovery of a sense of ‘community’ in an electronic form through social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter. As highlighted in the previous chapter, today’s social media are facilitating the informal qualities of interactions involving personal ties of friendship and intimacy. This and the following chapters demonstrate the ways in which greater possibilities are opening up for more diverse intimate contacts and leading to a re-appropriation of newly emerging media technologies for personal (rather than specialist and professional) ends.