Computer-mediated Communication Systems Research Articles

Meeting Effectiveness and Inclusiveness: Large-scale Measurement, Identification of Key Features, and Prediction in Real-world Remote Meetings

Workplace meetings are vital to organizational collaboration, yet relatively little progress has been made toward measuring meeting effectiveness and inclusiveness at scale. The recent rise in remote and hybrid meetings represents an opportunity to do so via computer-mediated communication (CMC) systems. Here, we share the results of an effective and inclusive meetings survey embedded within a CMC system in a diverse set of companies and organizations. We correlate the survey results with objective metrics available from the CMC system to identify the generalizable attributes that characterize perceived effectiveness and inclusiveness in meetings. Additionally, we explore a predictive model of meeting effectiveness and inclusiveness based solely on objective meeting attributes. Lastly, we show challenges and discuss solutions around the subjective measurement of meeting experiences. To our knowledge, this is the largest data-driven study conducted after the pandemic peak to measure, understand, and predict effectiveness and inclusiveness in real-world meetings at an organizational scale.

Experts vs. Peers: The Role of Situational Characteristics in Opinion Seeking on Electronic Networks of Practice

With advances in information and communication technologies (ICT), organizations of various forms now deploy an increasing number of ICT-enabled persuasive systems in several domains. Traditional computer-mediated communication (CMC) theories mainly focus on the effectiveness of media in the synchronous/asynchronous spectrum for effectively matching medium with communication task. The contemporary communication environment is rich with asynchronous channels such as email, Web, and text messaging, which makes it important to go beyond synchronicity and determine the nuances among various asynchronous channels. No rigorous research has compared the effectiveness of these channels in the persuasive systems domain where organizations use technology to persuade users to modify their behavior in a direction that they mutually agree to be desirable. In this paper, we study the effectiveness of CMC and the strategy used to frame the persuasive message. We explore persuasive strategies of praising, reminding, suggesting, and rewarding for health behavior and promotion. We model user experience as a mediator between channel strategy combinations and persuasive effectiveness. Through controlled user studies, we compared sixteen combinations of communication channel and persuasive strategy with or without emoticons. We found that channel/strategy combinations affect persuasive effectiveness (mediated by user experience) in varying degrees. Our findings contribute to the body of CMC and persuasive system knowledge and have practical implications for online advertising, health promotion, and persuasive technology design.

Social Distancing and Social Biosensing: Intersubjectivity from Afar

The shelter-in-place orders across the U.S. in response to the COVID-19 pandemic forced many relationships once sustained by in-person interaction into remote states through computer-mediated communication (CMC). Work, school, holidays, social engagements, and everyday conversations formerly experienced through rich and contextual in-person interactions instead have taken place on messaging, voice, and video chatting platforms that diminish or altogether lack many social cues and other qualities critical to social interaction. The difficulties feeling connected to one another observed during this period have stressed the need for novel forms of communication that enable deeper interactions. Social biosensing, the interpersonal sharing of physiological information, has shown promise facilitating social connection at a distance. In the present research we document the experiences of nine pairs of friends (N = 18) who navigated living through a shelter-in-place order, reporting on their experiences sharing their electrodermal activity (EDA) in response to short videos. Participants described the artificial and unnatural nature of communicating using typical forms of CMC and a range of interpretations of EDA as both emotional response and as representative of personal characteristics. We implemented a phased approach to study the temporal nature of forming an understanding of unfamiliar yet intimate data like EDA. Our results indicate typologies of meaning-making processes: “stablers”, “broadeners”, and “puzzlers”. We also interpreted our findings through the lens of intersubjectivity, analyzing how analogical apperception and dialogical interaction both play a role in participants’ meaning-making about their own and their partner’s biosensory information. We conclude with implications from this work pertinent to intersubjectivity theorists, social biosensing researchers, and CMC system designers and developers.

Structuring Virtual Group Interaction Process to Improve Group Performance with Computer-mediated Communication Systems

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to study how to improve virtual group productivity by structuring group interaction processes with Computer-Mediated Communication System (CMCS). Design/Methodology/Approach - A laboratory experiment was designed, and research hypotheses were developed with group interaction modes, Parallel Interaction (PI) and Sequential Interaction (SI). Data to test the hypotheses were collected, and statistically analyzed with the General Linear Model. Findings - Group performance was significantly better in groups with parallel interaction (PI) for subjective decision quality and satisfaction with decision process, but objective decision quality was found to be not significant. Research Implications - As more group interaction moves to the virtual space, there is a need to better understand the behavior of virtual groups to more effectively support their interaction to improve performance. The study found that interaction procedures for virtual group can be designed in such a way to eliminate or minimize ill-effects of interaction inefficiencies by providing flexible CMCS-enabled structured interaction procedures and rules so that each group member participates in group interaction in his/her most preferable decision strategy. Based on the findings, this study calls for CMCS to develop more functionality such as automated leadership functionality or computerized structured interaction techniques as real-time online Delphi, with which groups can flexibly arrange interaction procedures that allow group members to contribute in their most preferable way.

Understanding Higher Education Institution-wide CMC Systems Implementation: A Structuration Theory Perspective towards Sustainability in Developing Countries

Information Technologies have come to be accepted as the new normal in many parts of the world. Events like the outbreak of the COVID-19 have highlighted the significance of these artifacts in facilitating the continuance of or daily activities without grinding to a halt. While some educational institutions, from the kindergarten all through to higher education, were actively engaged in teaching and learning, others were grappling with implementation issues. This paper takes a look at Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) Portal implementation in HEIs within a developing country through the lens of Giddens’s Structuration Theory. Two Ghanaian HEIs' implementation of CMC portals is examined using Tetteh et al’s CMC portal implementation framework as well as a structuration theory adapted by Orlikowski & Robey from Giddens’s work. Findings reveal an indistinct and almost absent consideration of the broader institutional goals for implementing CMC portals. It was also found that the activities involved in the adoption, implementation, and institutionalization of technology into institutional processes, are often not adequately considered, were unaligned with institutional visions, and not well understood. Strategies that can improve the utilization of CMC portal initiatives and guide implementation efforts of HEIs in Ghana are then advanced. Additionally, the study broadens our understanding of the structuration perspective on the outcomes of technology implementation in institutions providing another lens for identifying the underlying causational factors.

Effect of Computer-Mediated Communication System on Job Satisfaction of Employees in Transmission Division of Ceylon Electricity Board, Sri Lanka

This study aims to investigate how computer mediated communication (CMC) system have impacted on employee’s job satisfaction of Ceylon Electricity Board, Sri Lanka to fill the gaps in the computer mediated communication literature and provide useful information on interpersonal relationships within an organization. The sample of the study consisted of 400 respondents representing executive and medium level technical service (MLTS) staff of the transmission division of Ceylon Electricity Board in Sri Lanka. Self-administered questionnaire and the web-based questionnaire was used to collect primary data while data were analyzed with Partial Least Squares path modeling (PLS). The research findings indicated that computerized maintenance management is the most significant factor impacting on the employees’ job satisfaction and it also identified that there is a positive and statistically significant impact of instant messaging and electronic mails on employees’ job satisfaction. The results provide valuable input regarding the instant messaging and job satisfaction.

Employee’s Job Satisfaction with Computer Mediated Communication System

To fill the gaps in the computer mediated communication literature and provide useful information on interpersonal relationships within an organization, this study aims to investigate how computer mediated communication (CMC) system have impacted on employee’s job satisfaction of Ceylon Electricity Board, Sri Lanka. An empirical research was conducted to test the hypothesized relationships based on a conceptual framework developed through a comprehensive literature review on CMC and job satisfaction. Through a literature support this model consisted of three independent variables (i.e., electronic mails, instant messaging and computerized maintenance management) in computer mediated communication system and a dependent variable which is job satisfaction. The sample of the study consisted of 100 respondents representing executive and medium level technical service (MLTS) staff of the transmission division of Ceylon Electricity Board in Sri Lanka. Self-administered questionnaire and the web-based questionnaire was used to collect primary data. The data were analyzed with Partial Least Squares path modeling (PLS) to test the hypotheses of the study. The research findings indicated that computerized maintenance management is the most significant factor impacting on the employees’ job satisfaction. Moreover, it also identified that there is a positive and statistically significant impact of instant messaging and electronic mails on employees’ job satisfaction. The results provide valuable input regarding the instant messaging and job satisfaction. Therefore, managers should have to pay their more and more attention in order to improve instant messaging as one of the communication media in an organization. In this research considered only three CMC dimensions which influence the job satisfaction. But there are more CMC dimensions used as organizational communication in future studies.

Analysis and Design of Social Presence in a Computer-Mediated Communication System.

Social presence, or the subjective experience of being present with another existing person, varies with the interaction medium. In general, social presence research has mainly focused on uni-directional aspects of each exchanged message, not on bidirectional interactions. Our primary purpose is to introduce such bidirectional evaluation by quantifying the degree of social presence with a few statistical measures. To this end, we developed a software called “TypeTrace” that records all keystrokes of online chat interactants and reenacts their typing actions and analyzed the results from different chat conditions, mainly focusing on the characterization of bi-directional interactions. We also compared the chat interaction patterns with the patterns from phone call datasets to investigate the difference of live communication in different media. The hypothesis of the experiment was that either richness or concurrency of communication is important for organizing social presence. Richness is defined by the variety of information at a time in communication and the concurrency is the number of temporal thread being processed at the same time. Our results show that when we merely increase the richness of information by presenting the typing process, the cognition of others' presence does not significantly increase. However, when the information concurrency is augmented by introducing the transmission of realtime text, we found that the transfer entropy between the interactants becomes considerably higher, and the social presence and emotional arousal, intimacy increased. High transfer entropy was also observed in the phone call dataset. This result shows that the mere augmentation of information richness does not necessarily lead to increased social presence, and concurrent communication is another critical factor for fostering vivid conversation in digital environments.

Meeting Effectiveness and Inclusiveness in Remote Collaboration

A primary goal of remote collaboration tools is to provide effective and inclusive meetings for all participants. To study meeting effectiveness and meeting inclusiveness, we first conducted a large-scale email survey (N=4,425; after filtering N=3,290) at a large technology company (pre-COVID-19); using this data we derived a multivariate model of meeting effectiveness and show how it correlates with meeting inclusiveness, participation, and feeling comfortable to contribute. We believe this is the first such model of meeting effectiveness and inclusiveness. The large size of the data provided the opportunity to analyze correlations that are specific to sub-populations such as the impact of video. The model shows the following factors are correlated with inclusiveness, effectiveness, participation, and feeling comfortable to contribute in meetings: sending a pre-meeting communication, sending a post-meeting summary, including a meeting agenda, attendee location, remote-only meeting, audio/video quality and reliability, video usage, and meeting size. The model and survey results give a quantitative understanding of how and where to improve meeting effectiveness and inclusiveness and what the potential returns are. Motivated by the email survey results, we implemented a post-meeting survey into a leading computer-mediated communication (CMC) system to directly measure meeting effectiveness and inclusiveness (during COVID-19). Using initial results based on internal flighting we created a similar model of effectiveness and inclusiveness, with many of the same findings as the email survey. This shows a method of measuring and understanding these metrics which are both practical and useful in a commercial CMC system. By improving meeting effectiveness, companies can save significant time and money. Improving meeting inclusiveness is hypothesized to improve meeting effectiveness, but also improves the working environment and employee retention at organizations.

Language, Psychology, and New New Media: The Hyperpersonal Model of Mediated Communication at Twenty-Five Years

Research on the hyperpersonal model originally described how the substitution of language for nonverbal cues, necessitated by text-based computer-mediated communication systems, transforms users’ reception, self-presentation, composition, and reciprocal reinforcement of messages in ways that create socially desirable relationships online. This article reviews the model after 25 years. It explicates the original model and mentions a sample of illustrative findings. It reflects on the state of internet diffusion and research traditions in the 1990s that affected the model’s original focus, and how these conditions have changed. It enumerates contexts that continue to meet the model’s original boundary assumptions, and some boundary expansions. It explores ways in which the model’s principles extend into contemporary multi-modal social media. It illustrates the evolutionary applicability of the model through cases of deceptive online romances, including contemporary online romance scams. It concludes by suggesting future research examining how many contemporary social media performances and responses comport with and illustrate the model’s tenets, at scale.

The Effect of Message Persistence and Disclosure on Liking in Computer-Mediated Communication

In computer-mediated communication (CMC) systems, the messages that a user types usually persist on the screen for some time, a feature that distinguishes CMC from face-to-face interaction. Persistence may activate psychological self-perception, leading communicators to infer from their persistent messaging how they feel about the subject more so than if messages did not persist. This study applies persistence and self-perception to the relationships between self-disclosure and liking. It identifies which among several disclosure or liking relationships may be most susceptible to self-perception effects. An experiment found that message persistence interacts with a conversational partner’s responses to self-disclosure and intensifies liking toward the partner. Suggestions follow for future research further exploring the mechanisms of persistence, and reconceptualizing self-perception factors in interactive media settings.

Untangling a Web of Lies: Exploring Automated Detection of Deception in Computer-Mediated Communication

Safeguarding organizations against opportunism and severe deception in computer-mediated communication (CMC) presents a major challenge to chief information officers and information technology managers. New insights into linguistic cues of deception derive from the speech acts innate to CMC. Applying automated text analysis to archival e-mail exchanges in a CMC system as part of a reward program, we assess the ability of word use (micro level), message development (macro level), and intertextual exchange cues (meta level) to detect severe deception by business partners. We empirically assess the predictive ability of our framework using an ordinal multilevel regression model. Results indicate that deceivers minimize the use of referencing and self-deprecation but include more superfluous descriptions and flattery. Deceitful channel partners also overstructure their arguments and rapidly mimic the linguistic style of the account manager across dyadic e-mail exchanges. Thanks to its diagnostic value, the proposed framework can support firms’ decision making and guide compliance monitoring system development.

Emotional Awareness: An Enhanced Computer Mediated Communication Using Facial Expressions

This paper describes the design of a prototype for an emotionally enhanced computer mediated communication system which is aimed at compensating for the emotional distance between communicators. The prototype system encourages the sender to take the emotional perspective of the message receiver by giving the sender a sense of how his message may affect the intended receiver, and by allowing the sender to reconsider sending the message or revise it. The objective of an emotionally enhanced communication system is to raise awareness to the ease in which a written word might be misinterpreted since emotions are too often unseen due to the nature of lean communication media. In order to show the receiver’s assumed emotion, the written text would be parsed before sending the message. An algorithm, for demonstrating the prediction of the emotion a written message might evoke, will choose a facial expression from a pool of 7 expressions, according to the words and phrases inserted in the message. We conducted a user test to evaluate the acceptance and attitudes toward such an emotionally enhanced communication system and received a high level of acceptance and favorable attitudes towards using it.

Unweaving a Tangled Web: Exploring Automated Detection of Deception Cues in Online Claims within B2B Incentive Programs

Safeguarding organizations against opportunism and severe deception in computer-mediated communication (CMC) presents a major challenge to CIOs and IT managers. New insights into linguistic cues of deception derive from the speech acts innate to CMC. Applying automated text analysis to archival email exchanges in a CMC system as part of a channel incentive program, we assess the ability of word use (micro-level), message development (macro-level), and intertextual exchange cues (meta-level) to detect severe deception by business partners. We empirically assess the predictive ability of our framework using an ordinal multilevel regression model. Results indicate that deceivers minimize the use of referencing and self-deprecation but include more superfluous descriptions and flattery. Deceitful channel partners also over structure their arguments and rapidly mimic the linguistic style of the account manager across dyadic e-mail exchanges. Thanks to its diagnostic value, the proposed framework can support firms’ decision-making and guide compliance monitoring system development.

Trust tokens in team development

Purpose – Computer-mediated communication systems (CMCSs) have become the standard for supporting virtual teamwork. However, interpersonal trust formation though CMCSs is impaired due to limited media richness of the communication channels. The aim of this paper is to identify trust forming cues that occur naturally in face-to-face environments and are suitable to include in CMCSs design, to facilitate greater trust in virtual teams. Design/methodology/approach – To select cues that had a strong effect on fostering trust behaviour, a non-participatory ethnographic study was conducted. Two student teams at the University of Waterloo were observed for 6-12 months. Researchers identified mechanisms used for building trust and bridging team developmental barriers. Findings – The paper identifies five trust tokens that were effective in developing trust and bridging team developmental barriers: expertise, recommendations, social capital, willingness to help/benevolence, and validation of information. These behavioural cues, or behavioural trust tokens, which are present in face-to-face collaborations, carry important trust supporting information that leads to increased trust, improved collaboration, and knowledge integration. These tokens have the potential to improve CMCSs by supplementing the cues necessary for trust formation in virtual environments. Practical implications – This study identifies important mechanisms used for fostering trust behaviour in face-to-face collaborations that have the potential to be included in the design of CMCSs (via interface design objects) and have implications for interface designers, team managers, and researchers in the field of teamwork. Originality/value – This work presents the first ethnographic study of trust between team members for the purpose of providing improved computer support for virtual collaboration via redesigned interface components.

Short message service or disService: Issues with text messaging in a complex medical environment

BackgroundHospitals today are experiencing major changes in their clinical communication workflows as conventional numeric paging and face-to-face verbal conversations are being replaced by computer mediated communication systems. In this paper, we highlight the importance of understanding this transition and discuss some of the impacts that may emerge when verbal clinical conversations are replaced by short text messages. MethodsIn-depth interviews (n=108) and non-participatory observation sessions (n=260h) were conducted on the General Internal Medicine wards at five academic teaching hospitals in Toronto, Canada. ResultsFrom our analysis of the qualitative data, we identified two major themes. De-contextualization of complex issues led to an increase in misinterpretation and an increase in back and forth messaging for clarification. Depersonalization of communication was due to less verbal conversations and face-to-face interactions and led to a negative impact on work relationships. ConclusionsText-based communication in hospital settings led to the oversimplification of messages and the depersonalization of communication. It is important to recognize and understand these unintended consequences of new technology to avoid the negative impacts to patient care and work relationships.

Designing for Interpersonal Trust – The Power of Trust Tokens

Computer mediated communication systems (CMCSs) are increasingly being used to support activities of virtual teams, improving information exchange and capacity of these teams. However, the technology that enables these teams to benefit from effective and timely information exchange suffers from constraints of media richness, limiting the amount of social information that can be transmitted. This missing information can affect the formation of trust between members of these teams. In this paper, we conducted an ethnographic study to identify behaviors that facilitate the development of trust within face-to-face teams as an opportunity to design interface design objects with similar effects. A key observation was trust tokening, where trust is conveyed through social referents. Trust tokening has the potential to be adapted for use in computer support systems where establishing interpersonal trust is just as important as face-to-face collaborations.

Design on Monitoring and Evaluation Methods for CSCL System

The problem of capitalizing on experience of how to track and analyze the learning processes is of particular interest in Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) environments, where learning is usually based on the interactions occurring among peers. This paper provides some examples of DPs addressing tracking problems in CSCL environments. Our DPs have been elaborated with a twofold aim to contribute to the field by proposing possible solutions to tracking problems frequently faced in CSCL; on the other hand, by using DPs as a tool for sharing experience, we hope to inform the development of functions that could be integrated in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) systems in order to support the monitoring, evaluation and assessment of the learning experience and therefore augment its effectiveness.

Why computer-mediated communication improves the effectiveness of fraud brainstorming

Current auditing standards require auditors to conduct a fraud brainstorming session aimed at considering ways in which the audit client's financial statements might be fraudulently misstated. Lynch et al. (2009) document that computer-mediated fraud brainstorming is significantly more effective than face-to-face brainstorming for generating relevant fraud risks. In this study, we code and analyze process-level data from the Lynch et al. (2009) study to understand the factors contributing to the greater effectiveness of electronic fraud brainstorming. Specifically, we conduct mediation analysis to discern the degree to which equality of participation and two measures of task focus contribute to greater fraud brainstorming effectiveness when using a computer-mediated communication system compared to traditional face-to-face brainstorming. We also examine participants' perceptions of ease of system use, satisfaction with the process, and satisfaction with the outcome. Overall, the results indicate that the primary reason for the greater effectiveness of electronic fraud brainstorming is the greater degree of task focus as revealed through the length of comments made when using computer-mediated fraud brainstorming. In an absolute sense, participants using electronic brainstorming felt that their brainstorming mode was easy to use and they were satisfied with the process and outcome. The primary contribution of this study is in enhancing our understanding of precisely why computer-mediated fraud brainstorming outperforms face-to-face fraud brainstorming.

The Influence of Computer-Mediated Communication Systems on Community

As higher education institutions enter the intense competition of the rapidly growing global marketplace of online education, the leaders within these institutions are challenged to identify factors critical for developing and for maintaining effective online courses. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) systems are considered critical to successful online courses. Using the Community of Inquiry framework, this study examined the use of CMC systems. Results suggested no significant difference in social presence, cognitive presence or teaching presence between the online students who used only asynchronous CMC systems and those who used a combination of both asynchronous and synchronous CMC systems; however, students' comments suggest that the use of a combination of synchronous and asynchronous CMC systems may increase their sense of community in the online environment.