"Back and forth, back and forth"

Abstract

This work explores the act of channel switching, or switching between forms of face-to-face (FtF) and mediated communication (e.g., text messaging, instant messaging) during romantic couple conflict. Interviews were conducted with 24 individuals currently involved in a non-cohabitating romantic dating relationship of 3 months or longer. Results revealed that many patterns of channel switching are used during conflict, including switches from mediated to FtF communication and from FtF to mediated communication. In addition, participants had a number of interpersonal motivations for initiating a channel switch, including avoiding conflict escalation, managing one's emotions, and attempting to reach a resolution. Theoretical and design implications are discussed.A critical factor that may affect how individuals manage a conflict FtF is the presence of face threat, or a threat to one's public self-image [3,10]. Brown and Levinson [3] identified a variety of acts that might be face-threatening, including expressions of strong negative emotions, disapproval, criticism, and accusations, all of which may come up during a conflict. In fact, previous research suggests that individuals prefer to use mediated channels of communication in face-threatening contexts [20], including conflict resolution [28]. Yet, the rationale behind these choices has either not been explored [28] or been limited to identifying practical reasons such as proximity (spatial distance preventing FtF interaction), technological advances (aspects of CMC that made it superior to FtF), and convenience or ease of use [9]. It may be that there are other reasons why individuals manage a conflict in CMC rather than FtF.

A frown emoji can be worth a thousand words: Perceptions of emoji use in text messages exchanged between romantic partners

“…More broadly, these findings converge with empirical evidence showing that CMC can be an appropriate channel of communication when addressing relationship issues (Miller-Ott et al, 2012;Perry & Werner-Wilson, 2011), especially if individuals use different communication modalities (Scissors & Gergle, 2013). Based on our findings, the use of objective information and emotional text might be a better strategy to help preventing problems from escalating rapidly, until the issue can be addressed FtF.…”

“…Presumably, the lack of non-verbal cues conveys greater ambiguity in these situations, leading problems to escalate rapidly. Yet, Scissors and Gergle (2013) showed that addressing relationship problems using CMC can help by allowing partners to manage their emotions and reach a solution, especially when different communication modalities are used. When the relationship problem is addressed and solved, individuals indicate CMC to be as satisfying as FtF communication (Coyne et al, 2011;Derks et al, 2008).…”

Augmenting Couples' Communication with Lifelines

“…Couples have special mediated communication practices: they find different ways of staying in continuous touch when apart [39,40], share intimate information with each other [50], and use an entire ecosystem of communication apps to support their different relational needs [18,41]. Scissors et al [47] show how couples switch back and forth between diverse channels to strategically mediate conflicts. Cramer and Jacobs [18] describe how couples intentionally leverage specific characteristics of diverse apps to adapt to each other's routines or add meaning to their messages: one app can become the "working hours" channel and another the "leisure"; importance or urgency can be conveyed by sending the same message via multiple apps; and a minimalist Yo signal [3] can mean "I'm thinking about you".…”

'It's More Like a Letter'

“…We opted to perform individual interviews because perceptions about communication technologies are often different within a pair [19] and because paired interviews may conceal mismatched preferences between relationship partners, making it important to survey the experiences of each person separately [2]. While it is still useful to perform additional pair interviews to allow for cross-comparison [49], we did not do this due to logistical and scheduling constraints. As shown in Table 1, some pairs were distributed across different cities and timezones, which would have made it hard to maintain a consistent protocol for pair interviews.…”

“…the experience of growing closer through mediating technologies [50]. The ability to foster deep sharing may also provide an outlet for working through difficult relational matters, as when attempting to resolve conflict via mediating technologies [49].…”