Week 6: Emotion versus Emoticon
The most striking feature of both required readings for this week is how fast their information can become outdated. While Baron's chapter was written in 2008 and Baym's in 2010, the largely retrospective considerations both give to digital media-based communication shows the age of each.
image sourced from here
Baron's book is underlined by the concept of being "always on"; a concept that, for many people, has become well and truly normalised. Advances in mobile phone and wireless technology, cultural trends, and successful marketing by companies like Apple have normalised the idea that we should be "always on". Baym cites a 2002 study by Puro that suggests Finnish women are more likely than men to keep mobile phones by them at night, yet this study was undertaken when phones were used for three forms of media; phone calls, SMS and MMS (Baym, 2010, p. 67). Now technology has changed to the point where, for many Australians, video chatting over the internet is cheaper than calling them via the traditional phone medium (phone lines, signal towers etc). In most cases, new mobile phones come with this technology pre-installed.
When considering the (rather dystopian) question Baym (2010) raises about standardised norms within digital communication, Baym offers little weight to the idea that all communication is both mediated and premeditated, and relies on previous establishment of assumed norms between two parties. If I were to email that early adopter of email, the Queen; my tone would hardly be the same as if I were to send a Facebook message to a friend of mine. The idea of role establishment and performance should be given more consideration than Bayn allows. Not only is my identity conditioned by my cultural identity and my assumed relationship to the message receiver, but also by the medium I choose to use. With more and more media being developed to communicate, different roles for each medium can be seen (much like the way Skovholt, Grønning and Kankaanranta show emoticons can have a place in workplace communication to negate potential threatening readings or act "as solidarity markers" (2014, p.14)). In my social circle; using Snapchat to call in sick seems like an outrageous idea, but in the last 15 years, texting in sick or late has become a relatively more acceptable practice.
image sourced from wired.com
Both Baym and Baron discuss the ways that mediated technology work to substitute the cues given and perceived in face-to-face communication, but fail to consider the ways that technology could/will overcome this. Without going as far as fully immersive virtual reality, ideas such as the Facebook "Like-A-Hug" vest and the Hugvie give some clues to the ways technological advancements can substitute the most needed social cues.
My closing thought is that since "always on" has become naturalised, users are able to utilise communication that requires less engagement and commitment. Ignoring a short Facebook message is less offensive to the sender than ignoring a costly text was, as… who can keep up with the flood of information these days? #lazyexcuse :-P
References:
Baron, Naomi. 2008. “Ch 1: Email to Your Brain: Language in an Online and Mobile World.” In Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World, 3-10. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Baym, Nancy. 2010. “Ch 3: Communication in Digital Spaces.” In Personal Connections in the Digital Age, 50-70. Cambridge MA: Polity Press
Skovholt, Karianne, Anette Grønning and Anne Kankaanranta. 2014. “The Communicative Functions of Emoticons in Workplace E-Mails: :-).” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Published online before print. January 10, 2014. doi: 10.1111/jcc4.12063