Computer mediation vs. dialogic communication: How media affordances affect organization-public relationship building

Abstract

The ontological conflict between computer mediation and dialogic communication—a normative ideal for ethical organization-public relationship building rooted in interpersonal literature—has attracted much scholarly attention, and in particular has generated the notion that mediated dialogue is a self-contradictory concept. In this study, we question this argument and provide empirical evidence by conducting a survey that links media channels’ affordances to their capability to carry organizations’ dialogic orientations. Results show that bandwidth and social presence affordances facilitate dialogic communication while anonymity slightly inhibits it, whether the communicative context is proactive or reactive. Social presence exerts the greatest impact on how publics perceive organizations’ dialogic orientations, and anonymity’s negative role was overstated by previous studies. Assessing media channels’ dialogic affordances, we found video conferencing and instant messaging to be the most dialogic channels for mediated organization-public communication.