Configurations of Relationships in Different Media: FtF, Email, Instant Messenger, Mobile Phone, and SMS

Abstract

This study analyzes the configurations of communication relationships in Korea through face-to-face, email, instant messaging, mobile phone, and short message service media. Through a web survey, we asked respondents to identify (1) for each of the five media (2) up to five of their most frequent communication partners, (3) the partner's social role (including colleagues, family, friends), and (4) their own employment category. Individual-level and network-level analyses were used to compare variations in communication relationships and configurations of relationships among social roles overall, within each medium, and for different employment categories, and to identify configurations of relationships across media. IM, SMS, and mobile phone are distinctive media for students, mobile phone for homeworkers, and email for organizational workers. Moreover, mobile phones tend to be used in reinforcing strong social ties, and textbased CMC media tend to be used in expanding relationships with weak ties. Finally, face-to-face (FtF) seems to be a universal medium without significant differences across respondents' employment categories.

“WhatsApp, Teacher?” - Student Perspectives on Teacher-Student WhatsApp Interactions in Secondary Schools

“…According to Media Richness Theory, the preference of a certain medium is done based on the match between its characteristics and affordances, the social context of use, and the favored mode of interaction (Kim, Kim, Park, & Rice, 2007). In line with this model, and compared to other common student-teacher communication formats (e.g., face-to-face, official LMSs), teenage students highlighted several WhatsApp features that they believe improved the communication efficiency for academic and other schoolrelated purposes.…”

How can mobile SMS communication support and enhance a first year undergraduate learning environment?

“…Reasons for this could be connected with how we introduced the SMS communication, in negotiation with students. Also, it could be important that we aligned our academic SMS with existing social SMS protocols (Kim et al 2007). In addition, each message carried administrative content, course-related information and, importantly, the tutor's voice, a blend which might have been significant in making them seem more acceptable.…”

“…For example, Levy and Kennedy's (2005) work gave advice for promoting greater interconnectedness between in-and out-of-class activity by closely linking texts to course content. In order to minimise any possible disruption to classroom contexts and student social communication networks we adopted an asynchronous approach where tutor talk moved from the face-to-face context into the mobile environment and back to face-to-face, a pattern familiar to social texters (Kim et al 2007). Guidance from our survey regarding the students' views of acceptable use of text messaging for learning, especially volume, timing and purpose of the texts also influenced our design.…”

“…Furthermore, complex systems of social etiquette are brought into play by young people to manage close relationships through this medium (Harper and Hamill 2005). However, according to some researchers (Thurlow 2003;Kim et al 2007), it seems that SMS is more likely to add to and blend with face-to-face communication rather than replace it. Thus Reid and Reid's (2005) research cautions against generalisations suggesting uniformity in young peoples' preferences or approaches to SMS communication for social purposes.…”

Synchronous Text Messaging

“…They also find differing practices with WhatsApp, that messages are exchanged more often, are more conversational in nature, are used to communicate within closer social circles and are used more often for group-based communication. Studies of WhatsApp and other mobile instant messengers [7,24,25,29,32,34,37,50,54] point to an always connected, always on style of communication where asynchronous interactions pervade day-to-day lives to produce "a particular way of being together ... that is casual and never-ending" [36].…”