Gender, group composition, and task type in small task groups using computer-mediated communication

In small (4–6 member), online task groups two factors were varied: (a) group composition, in terms of the gender of the group members, and (b) assigned tasks, in terms of the content and amount of cooperation required. Gender group composition included female only (FO), male only (MO), and evenly mixed male and female (MIX) groups. The two task conditions included a ‘feminine’-content, decision-making or a ‘masculine’-content, intellective task. Groups came to consensus on the task answer using only asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC). It was predicted that FO and MO groups would demonstrate communication and satisfaction differences as a function of task assigned as well as group composition. Group composition was related to many group process variables in significant ways; however, in general, task differences were less strong. FO groups, regardless of task, sent more words per message, were more satisfied with the group process, and reported higher levels of group development than either MIX or MO groups. However, both task and gender composition variables were related to various measures of choice of language. Mixed results with regard to gender composition and choice of language require a further examination of gender effects on CMC as occurring in small task groups. Choice of language relation to task type were generally opposite of predictions and require clarification of task distinctions and methodologies used. The significance of the results lies in defining the styles of communicating in the CMC context that will enhance group development.     

Gender and group composition in small task groups using computer-mediated communication

Group composition of small task groups was varied in terms of the gender of group members. Groups then completed a task using only asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC). It was presumed that groups composed of all men or all women would represent extreme positions in several gender-related variables, whereas mixed groups would fall between the extremes. Male-only groups used significantly fewer individually oriented pronouns, changed their opinions least as a result of group activity, used more coarse language toward the task, and were the least satisfied with the group process. Female-only groups were most satisfied with the group process, used the most individually oriented language, and changed their opinions most as a result of the group activity. Mixed groups sent significantly more messages than other groups, but otherwise fell between single-gender groups in terms of language use and satisfaction. The results are interpreted with reference to group and CMC factors, such as the nature of the task, stage of group development, message anonymity, and leadership. These findings are important because of the increasing use of task groups using CMC in the workforce.     

Effects of training on computer-mediated communication in single or mixed gender small task groups

Previous studies by the current authors have indicated that group gender composition can be linked to particular communication styles in small task groups involved in computer-mediated communication. Female only groups were more likely to engage in a pattern that emphasized self-disclosure, statements of personal opinion, “I” statements and coalition language. This “High Communication Style”(HCS) was linked to high group satisfaction, and high group development. The present study attempts to train small task groups in the use of HCS. Experimental groups (Female Only, Male Only, and Mixed) were actively trained in computer-mediated communication and the use of the HCS style. The Control Groups of similar composition were actively trained in the use of e-mail etiquette guidelines that focused on using or avoiding specific formats in their messages. Results indicated that the Experimental Groups had significantly higher levels of self-disclosure and of opinion. Male Only groups showed significantly lower participation than did either Mixed or Female Only groups. Female Only groups scored higher in Group Development than either Mixed or Male Only groups. Contrary to previous studies, however, there were no significant relationships between group development or satisfaction and language content variables. The authors call for further research in the area of communication training for on-line task groups.     

Judgments of gender in computer-mediated communication

One of the most intriguing questions studied recently in the field of computer-mediated communication (CMC) has been how communicators establish a `social presence' in the absence of non-verbal cues which are relied upon heavily in face to face communication. One important area of social presence is the understanding of the gender of each of the participants in a conversation. Herring has speculated that, because of differential language cues, men and women can be identified in text-based messages (Herring, S.C. [1993]. Gender and democracy in computer-mediated communication. Electronic Journal of Communication [On-line], 3(2). Available: http://www.cios.org/getfile/Herring_v3n293). The present study investigated the ability of readers of CMC messages to identify the gender of the author when messages were selected for language characteristics identified in previous studies (Savicki, V., Kelley, M. & Lingenfelter, D. [1996]. Gender, group composition and task type in small task groups using computer mediated-communication. Computers in Human Behavior, 12, 549–565.) as being associated with both group development and gender. Twenty messages from previous research were sorted into gender groups and into high and low communication style categories. Participants were asked their perception of the probable gender of the message author and their certainty of that judgment. Accuracy and certainty of judgments of gender showed significant differences between gender-communication style conditions. However, overall accuracy and certainty of judgments were not related. Neither was there a difference in accuracy or certainty of judgments between male and female judges. Finally, judges' accuracy followed gender stereotypes for messages sent by men, but were opposed to the stereotype for messages sent by women.     

A model of group satisfaction in computer-mediated communication and face-to-face meetings

This study attempts to present a model of member satisfaction with group decision process. Three variables: ease of use (EOU) of the communication medium; participation; and decision confidence (DC), were explored as determinants of member satisfaction. The study offers an explanation of the effects of these variables on group process satisfaction in two communication media: a nearly synchronous text-based computermediated communication (CMC) and traditional face-to-face communication (FTF). Results indicate that these variables were good predictors of member satisfaction. Regression and correlation analyses help to validate the model for the two communication media using the ordering of the predictor variables and the strength of the relationship. Results confirm that ease of use showed the most contribution to satisfaction and that ease of use is lower in CMC than in FTF. The findings also confirm the effect of communication medium on member satisfaction.     

Copresence and Its Social-Relational Antecedents in Computer-Mediated Communication: The Case of Instant Messenger

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies like instant messenger have been increasingly used as a tool for interpersonal relationship development and maintenance. To better understand such use of CMC, we investigate copresence—defined as a communicator's perception of being with other communication partners through CMC—and its role in affecting the intention to continue using the medium. We explore three social-relational antecedents of copresence: prior use of the medium, perceived critical mass, and user commitment to maintain the relationship with others. Hypotheses are tested with survey data on the use of instant messenger. In general, the results support the research hypotheses. We suggest that the concept of copresence can be a novel and helpful theoretical perspective for understanding the use of CMC for social-relational purposes.     

The impact of text‐based CMC on improving L2 oral fluency

This paper reports on a study investigating the potential effect of synchronous and asynchronous text‐based computer‐mediated communication (CMC) on oral fluency development of second‐language (L2) learners. Sixty‐three intermediate learners of English were randomly assigned to one of three groups (two experimental groups and one control group), each consisting of 21 participants. The participants in the experimental groups completed four communicative tasks under two different instructional environments: synchronous text‐based CMC environment and asynchronous text‐based CMC environment. The average length of pauses, the articulation rate, the fluent‐run, the phonation‐time ratio and the speaking rate served as dependent variables. The study found that the participants in synchronous CMC group improved their L2 oral fluency significantly compared with their peers in the other two groups. The results also revealed the students in asynchronous CMC group obtained higher mean scores than those in the control group, although the differences between groups were not statistically significant.     

Equality of participation and influence in groups: The effects of communication medium and sex composition

We tested the claim that computer-mediated communication (CMC) is more egalitarian than face-to-face (FTF) communication by studying patterns of reported participation and influence in 30 FTF and 30 synchronous CMC groups over seven weeks. Twenty-two of these groups were composed of a majority of males or females; these were used to test effects of communication medium and sex composition on relative levels of participation and influence among group members. Competing predictions were derived from three theories: proportional theory, social role theory, and expectation states theory. Results indicated that CMC participation was perceived as more centralized than was FTF participation in groups' first meetings, but as similar for the remaining six meetings. Results revealed no or weak support for any of the competing theories of sex composition. Influence was perceived as most centralized in CMC majority-male groups and in FTF majority-female groups. In CMC groups, males in majority-female groups were perceived as having more influence than their female group members, whereas males in majority-male groups were perceived as having less influence than their female group members. In FTF groups, the ratio of male-to-female influence in majority-male and majority-female groups did not differ significantly. Implications of these findings and the need for additional longitudinal research are discussed.     

Factors influencing the use of computer mediated communication by teachers in secondary schools

In this article, a survey on the factors influencing the use of computer mediated communication (CMC) by teachers in secondary schools in Brussels is described. The survey compared a group of CMC users with non-CMC users. It is demonstrated that language teaching was the best predictor for the use of CMC. The main reason for this is that education policy within the area under investigation has developed a specific CMC project that is primarily oriented towards a target group of language teachers. A second predictor of CMC use was the degree of technological innovativeness. This instrument is a measure of the willingness of the teacher to adopt technological innovation in his own teaching practice. A third predictor was perceived CMC attributes. This instrument indicates the degree to which users observe any congruence between the characteristics of CMC as a medium and their own teaching practice.     

The influence of dispositions and Internet motivation on online communication satisfaction and relationship closeness

Guided by the Uses and Gratifications (U&G) perspective, this study examined the influence of unwillingness to communicate, loneliness, Internet-use motives, and Internet (CMC) use and interaction (amount and types of use and self-disclosure) in online communication satisfaction and online relationship closeness. There were 261 participants in this study. Overall, participants who perceived their face-to-face communication to be rewarding, used CMC for self-fulfillment, and disclosed their personal feelings to others tended to feel close to their online partners. Moreover, those who used the Internet for purposes of self-fulfillment and affection and intended to disclose their feelings to others felt satisfied with their online communication. The associations among the constructs extend our knowledge of the U&G theoretical model, how and why people communicate interpersonally in CMC settings, and the influence of individual differences on CMC for relational communication.     

'I totally agree with you': gender interactions in educational online discussion groups

Abstract This paper discusses findings from an extensive project examining gender, language and computer-mediated communication (CMC) in the context of undergraduate psychology courses. The contributions of 197 introductory psychology students (148 females, 49 males) participating in asynchronous CMC as part of their course were collated and coded for their language content using a qualitative content analysis procedure in Atlas.ti 4.2. Nearly 700 postings were characterised according to gender on the basis of seven categories relating to language and communication style – attenuated, authoritative, traditional male and female language features, mixed language, positive socioemotional and negative socioemotional. Gender interactions were analysed in terms of positive and negative socioemotional content, focusing on explicit markers of agreement and disagreement. Gender-related patterns in language use and interaction style were found. Females were more likely than males to make attenuated contributions and express agreement, whereas males were more likely than females to make authoritative contributions and express disagreement. These results are discussed in terms of the implications for the increasing use of CMC in education.     

Gender stereotyping over instant messenger: The effects of gender and context

Researchers have observed that contrary to the high expectations for online communications, gender stereotyping has not disappeared in this medium, and is sometimes even accentuated. This study aimed to understand the effect of gender over instant messenger, a relatively new and unexplored medium. Instant messenger was chosen because it is a medium that is used most by youth who have grown up communicating online. Participants were interviewed over instant messenger about a potential online support service and were then asked to judge the effectiveness of their interviewer. The interviewer was identified only by a masculine or feminine name and was computer-simulated so as to remove any bias. The topic of discussion was stereotypically masculine or stereotypically feminine. Male participants were found to employ a male superiority heuristic, whereby they judged the male interviewer as more competent, regardless of the context. Female participants were hypothesized to judge the female interviewer as more competent in the feminine context, and the male interviewer as more competent in the masculine context (the context-gender match heuristic), but this hypothesis was not supported. The findings are discussed in the context of previous research on gender stereotyping in online communication.     

Computer-mediated communication in adolescents with and without a history of specific language impairment (SLI)

The various uses of computer-mediated communication (CMC) are transforming the nature of social interactions and human relations among adolescents. Little is known about engagement of exceptional youth with this technology. The present study investigated the implications of language and social factors for frequency of CMC use and its relationship to adolescent well-being in young people with and without a history of specific language impairment (SLI). Eighty six adolescents with a history of SLI and 90 typically developing 17 year olds participated. Participants completed standardized assessments of psycholinguistic abilities and self-report measures of language motivations and social motivations for CMC use, as well as anxiety and depression. Results indicate that language abilities have a complex relationship with frequency of CMC use; social abilities have a more direct association and are predictive of frequency of CMC use. Both adolescents with SLI and typically developing adolescents were less shy online. No association was obtained between frequency of CMC use and reported emotional symptoms of anxiety and/or depression. It is argued that the characteristics of CMC, in terms of its less stringent language demands and its reduced-cues environment, can provide a medium for positive adaptation of adolescents with communication challenges.     

Gender and computer-mediated communication: group processes in problem solving

The study reports results from an experiment investigating aspects of communicative processes, using face-to-face (FtF) communication and computer-mediated communication (CMC). The latter was performed in two variants: participants writing under their own names or participants writing anonymously. There were two problems to be solved, both having ambiguous solutions. The theoretical aim was to determine if gender would influence communication equality, social relations, and communicative processes. Furthermore, private and public self-awareness was studied in order to identify differences between the media and between the sexes. The results show that participants discussing FtF were more private self-aware than participants in CMC, and females were more private self-aware than males. Females produced more messages in FtF communication than they did in CMC, and there were also more opinion change from females than from males. Social judgements were more positive from females than from males. A qualitative analysis showed that females expressed more opinions and agreements in FtF communication than in CMC, but also that they agreed more than males in responding to messages from a male. There were also more disagreements in FtF communication than in CMC.     

Skills required for participating in CMC courses: An empirical study

The development of new communication technologies and their applications has opened a broad spectrum of options to promote learning, of which a significant one is CMC – Computer-Mediated Communication. Yet, students use this medium to a relatively small extent. Our premise is that the use of these technologies depends on the level of skills and expertise of the individuals using them. The purpose of this study is to determine whether taking a Computer Literacy and Applications course (CLA) before taking CMC courses has an impact on students' participation in CMC courses and on the effective use of various CMC tools. The sample consisted of 153 students enrolled in CMC courses in the Social Sciences in the Spring 2001/2 and Fall 2002/3 semesters. Participants were divided into two groups: 80 students who had taken CLA, and 73 students who had not. A questionnaire to assess the impact of CLA on participation in CMC courses was administered to the two groups. The results of the study indicate that participation in CMC courses is more intensive in the group that had taken CLA. Based on these findings, we recommend mandating a CLA course, like the one developed at the Open University of Israel (OUI), before taking CMC courses.     

Gender,Communication, and Self‐Presentation in Teen Chatrooms Revisited: Have Patterns Changed?

This study evaluates empirically the proposition implicit in much recent gender and CMC research that expressions of gender distinctness among teens in online environments are becoming less frequent and less traditional. Gender preferences were analyzed in linguistic features and communication styles in synchronous text messages, along with self‐presentation in user profile pictures, drawing on data from popular English‐language teen chat sites collected in 2010. Significant differences were found in speech acts, message tone, and in physical stance, dress, and social distance in profile pictures that generally conform to traditional gender stereotypes. These findings are interpreted in light of previous gender and teen CMC research, adolescent development and socialization patterns, mass media representations, and trends towards media convergence in chat platforms.     

Toward a Natural Language Interface for Transferring Grasping Skills to Robots

In this paper, we report on the findings of a human-robot interaction study that aims at developing a communication language for transferring grasping skills from a nontechnical user to a robot. Participants with different backgrounds and education levels were asked to command a five-degree-of-freedom human-scale robot arm to grasp five small everyday objects. They were allowed to use either commands from an existing command set or develop their own equivalent natural language instructions. The study revealed several important findings. First, individual participants were more inclined to use simple, familiar commands than more powerful ones. In most cases, once a set of instructions was found to accomplish the grasping task, few participants deviated from that set. In addition, we also found that the participant's background does appear to play a role during the interaction process. Overall, participants with less technical backgrounds require more time and more commands on average to complete a grasping task as compared to participants with more technical backgrounds.     

Effects of culture,social presence,and group composition on trust in technology‐supported decision‐making groups

This study examines trust in technology‐supported groups from the perspectives of culture, social presence and group composition. Our results demonstrate that, in culturally homogeneous groups, individualism has a negative impact on the level of interpersonal trust; however, in culturally heterogeneous groups consisting of Chinese and U.S. participants, individualism has a positive impact on interpersonal trust among members. There were also significant differences in the level of trust between homogeneous Chinese groups and heterogeneous groups consisting of Chinese and U.S. participants. In addition, the mediating role of communication quality was identified to explain the effect for trust‐of social presence on trust. These findings have important implications on building and communication in global technology‐supported decision‐making groups.     

The development of group identity in computer and face-to-face groups with membership change

A three-part conception of group identity is proposed that draws on common fate, cohesiveness, and cognitive views of group identity. The changing contribution of these three components to group identity was examined for 31 original and 29 reconfigured groups which met for 7 consecutive weeks using either face-to-face (FIF) or computer-mediated communication (CMC). Group identity was consistently lower for computer-mediated groups, and this effect was stronger in the reconfigured groups. In the original groups, group identity started high and declined for both FTF and CMC groups. In the reconfigured groups, developmental patterns differed from those of the original groups, and also differed by communication medium. Individual differences accounted for a substantial amount of variance in group identity across original and reconfigured groups.     

Analyzing CMC content for what?

Computer mediated communication (CMC) refers to communication between individuals and among groups via networked computers. Such forms of communication can be asynchronous or synchronous and serve a wide variety of useful functions ranging from administration to building understanding and knowledge. As such there are many reasons for interest in analyzing the content of CMC. Foremost among these is the opportunity that the written text is able to offer for various types of analysis. Others have to do with the need to understand human communication patterns in this medium, their conventions, form and functions, the nature of the subtext within it, and how people derive meaning and understanding in such contexts. The papers in this special section of this journal have attempted to closely examine the subject of CMC content analysis. It includes examination of what is involved in the analysis of CMC content, schemes and frameworks for analyzing them, and knowledge building within such contexts.