What determines instant messaging communication? Examining the impact of person- and situation-level factors on IM responsiveness

Abstract

Acknowledging that the way mobile communication is used is shaped by socially negotiated social norms, this study examined the factors that impact instant messaging (IM) communication at the person and situation levels using the experience sampling method (ESM). We measured how the characteristics at the person level (i.e., availability and responsiveness preferences), contextual factors (i.e., location and copresence of others), and message-related attributes (i.e., sender and chat type) impact users’ responsiveness in IM communication. The study empirically investigated a sample of 90 smartphone users who completed 820 ESM protocols regarding their use of the messenger service WhatsApp. The results of the multilevel analyses revealed that users’ responsiveness in IM communication is affected by person- and situation-level factors, but the latter factors were found to have a much stronger impact. The effect of specific influential factors is discussed in detail.

You are not alone: Smartphone use, friendship satisfaction, and anxiety during the COVID-19 crisis

“…Others, however, emphasized potential health benefits (Schneider et al, 2019) due to smartphones' vital role as a coping tool to reduce stress (Carolus et al, 2019), particularly during social isolation (Garfin, 2020). This dualistic impact is in line with the position that outcomes of smartphone use depend on several factors, such as predispositions and context (Dogruel & Schnauber-Stockmann, 2020), or type and intensity of use (Elhai et al, 2017b).…”

Using technology to unobtrusively observe relationship development

“…We found that daily texting frequency, but not responsivity and message length, showed systematic curvilinear growth and decline during the relationship formation transition. Lack of systematic change in responsivity may be due to social norms that suggest that close others, particularly romantic partners, may be expected to respond to CMC more quickly than friends, co-workers, or acquaintances (Dogruel & Schnauber-Stockmann, 2021). Lack of systematic change in message length may be due to constraints of the technology itself (e.g., the amount of text easily written and read in a text message).…”

Producing In Situ Data From a Distance With Mobile Instant Messaging Interviews (MIMIs): Examples From the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…By using popular, well-developed mobile messengers for qualitative data collection, MIMIs benefit from the ease and routinized use of these digital spaces (see also Kaufmann, 2020; Mols & Pridmore, 2020, p. 3). Furthermore, the near-synchronicity that mobile messaging shares with SMS (Rettie, 2009), allows spontaneous (near-)synchronous interactions between participant and researcher while being comparatively unobtrusive (Dogruel & Schnauber-Stockmann, 2020, p. 2). Another advantage of using mobile messengers for data collection are the “contextual communication-related information, determining knowledge about key aspects of dialogic process” (Aguado & Martinez, 2020, p. 443), such as when a user was last online or whether a message was read (see also Kaufmann & Peil, 2020).…”

“…A spontaneous exchange of mobile communication between participant and researcher is not intended, even though smartphones and in particular mobile messengers offer this potential, as Dawson (2020, p. 213) points out: “Research can be interactive and co-operative, working with participants rather than on participants. A fixed time and place for participation in the research project is not required, enabling participants to go about their daily lives while connecting with researchers.” Recently, the mobile messenger WhatsApp has been used in the context of MESM—but only to send participants the links to the standardized questionnaires (Dogruel & Schnauber-Stockmann, 2020).…”