A22. Rice,
R.E. & Love, G. (1987). Electronic emotion: Socio-emotional content
in a computer-mediated communication network. Communication Research,
14(1), 85-105.
This article investigates a new communications medium-public
computer
conferencing-by separately and jointly analyzing two basic aspects of
human
communication: (1) content, the extent to which such systems can
support
socioemotional communication, and (2) connectivity, communication
patterns
among system users. Results indicate that (1) computer-mediated
communication
systems can facilitate a moderate exchange of socioemotional content
and
(2) basic network roles did not generally differ in percentage of
socioemotional
content. Some fundamental issues in analyzing content and networks in
computer-mediated
systems, such as structural equivalence versus cohesion network
approaches,
are discussed in light of these results.
Click
here for PDF copy of publication