this paper has been provided by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (General and Strategic grants), Bell Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Information Technology Research Centre. We dedicate this chapter to science-fiction personage Judith Merril who net surfed for fifty years until her death in Sept., 1997.

this paper. MISQ Review articles survey, conceptualize, and synthesize prior MIS research and set directions for future research. For more details see http://www.misq.org/misreview/announce.html The associated web site for this paper is located at http://misq.org/misreview/teeni.shtml communication to a view that assesses the balance between medium and message form. There is also a need to look more closely at the process of communication in order to identify more precisely any potential areas of computer support

Beginning with an understanding of virtual reality as an imaginative experience and thus a cultural construct rather than a technical construction, this thesis discusses cultural and social issues raised by interaction on `MUDs', which are text-based virtual reality systems run on the international computer network known as the Internet. MUD usage forces users to deconstruct many of the cultural tools and understandings that form the basis of more conventional systems of interaction. Unable to rely on physical cues as a channel of meaning, users of MUDs have developed ways of substituting for or by-passing them, resulting in novel methods of textualising the non-verbal. The nature of the body and sexuality are problematised in these virtual environments, since the physical is never fixed and gender is a selfselected attribute. In coming to terms with these aspects of virtual interaction, new systems of significance have been developed by users, along with methods of enforcing that cult...

About the CRLT The CRLT has as its mission to promote and support a community of scholars dedicated to research on the design, use, and implementation of technology to improve learning. Three primary themes underlie the work at the Center: • research that contributes to the development of new pedagogical models for continuing professional development in the 21st century; • research on and evaluation of interactive distance learning environments that inform our understanding of student learning; and • research on teaching strategies for using current and emerging technologies to support student interaction, collaboration, and engagement in the issues being studied. This report is one of a series from our on-going research on learning and technology. If you have any questions or comments on this report, or if you would like to find out more about the activities of the CRLT, contact:

Emoticons are graphic representations of facial expressions that many e-mail users embed in their messages. These symbols are widely known and commonly recognized among computer-mediated communication (CMC) users, and they are described by most observers as substituting for the nonverbal cues that are missing from CMC in comparison to face-to-face communication. Their empirical impacts, however, are undocumented. An experiment sought to determine the effects of three common emoticons on message interpretations. Hypotheses drawn from literature on nonverbal communication reflect several plausible relationships between emoticons and verbal messages. The results indicate that emoticons ’ contributions were outweighed by verbal content, but a negativity effect appeared such that any negative message aspect—verbal or graphic—shifts message interpretation in the direction of the negative element.

cation as an integrated set of speech, gaze, and gestural behaviours. As we shall see, studies of mediated communication allow us to identify the contribution of different nonverbal behaviours, such as gaze and gesture to communication. They also help to clarify the overall influence of visual information in communication, and the effects of communication interactive processes such as feedback on communication. Prior to examining what research has to say about these issues, we describe: (a) mediated communication theories; (b) the technologies used to support communication in the various situations; (c) the methods used to study mediated communication. Theories of mediated communication There are many different theories of mediated communication. Rather than describing each in detail, we restrict ourselves here to an exposition of the general form that these theories take, and the general set of claims that they make. The fundamental goal of mediated communication theor

The aim of this research is to develop an in-depth understanding of the dynamics of online group interaction and the relationship between the participation in an online community and an individual’s off-line life. The 21 /2-year study of a thriving online health support community (Bob’s ACL WWWBoard) used a broad fieldwork approach, guided by the ethnographic research techniques of observation, interviewing, and archival research in combination with analysis of the group’s dynamics during a one-week period. Research tools from the social sciences were used to develop a thick, rich description of the group. The significant findings of this study include: dependable and reliable technology is more important than state-of-the-art technology in this community; strong community development exists despite little differentiation of the community space provided by the software; members reported that participation in the community positively influenced their offline lives; strong group norms of support and reciprocity made externally-driven governance unnecessary; tools used to assess group dynamics in face-to-face groups provide meaningful information about online group dynamics; and, membership patterns in the community and strong subgroups actively contributed to the community’s stability and vitality.

At a time of increased social usage of net and collaborative applications a robust and detailed theory of social presence could contribute to our understanding of social behavior in mediated environments, allow researchers to predict and measure differences among media interfaces, and guide the design of new social environments and interfaces. A broader theory of social presence can guide more valid and reliable measures. The article reviews, classifies, and critiques existing theories and measures of social presence. A set of criteria and scope conditions is proposed to help remedy limitations in past theories and measures and to provide a contribution to a more robust theory and measure of social presence. Keywords: Human-computer interaction, computer-mediated communication, nonverbal communication, new media, communication technology, virtual reality

panel. This paper is also intended for inclusion in S. Rafaeli, F. Sudweeks and M. McLaughlin (eds), NetWork and NetPlay: Virtual Groups on the Internet, AAAI/MIT Press. Please do not cite without permission. Abstract: What makes computer-mediated groups tick and/or stick? To what degree are computermediated discussants really sustained “groups”? Does the grouping quality reflect anything beyond technical structure? Are technical structure and grouping related? How do threads define groups, or viceversa? Does any of this change between academic and commercial networks? We propose that one useful perspective for studying group CMC is interactivity. Interactivity is a theoretical construct that grapples with the origins of captivation, fascination, and allure that can be inherent in computer-mediated groups. In the sample of messages collected by ProjectH, we have a first-ofits kind representative snapshot of communication among the very large groups populating the networks. The central unit of interest in studying computer mediated groups is, in this case, the thread of messages. A message thread is a chain of interrelated messages. Rather than individuals ’ self-report, linguistic and socio-linguistic analyses of content, or observational data of larger units, we examine interactivity, the dependency among messages in threads.

The purpose of this study was to analyze a five-week graduate-level education course taught entirely at a distance via the Internet using the Blackboard.com SM e-learning system, with emphasis on exploring the dynamics of sense of classroom community. Subjects were 20 adult learners, evenly divided between males and females, who were administered the sense of classroom community index at the beginning and end of the course in order to measure classroom community. Findings indicated that on-line learners took advantage of the “learn anytime” characteristics of the Internet by accessing the course seven days per week, 24 hours per day.