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destroying friendships?
by bakera＠ohiou.edu 23 Apr '03

23 Apr '03

While I agree with Nancy Baym and Steve Jones that a medium is incapable in itself of destroying friendships, I want to add that, in my view, characteristics of email can independently influence the communication process to some extent: --The permanence or relatively long-lasting imprinting of words can sometimes affect people more deeply than words uttered in passing. Along with nonverbal softenings or qualifiers, people can more easily come back and say they weren't so serious about the opinion, or even that they had changed their minds. With asynchronous conferencing and listservs or even logged synchronous writings from chat or IM's, the rereading of the words can possibly affect people differently than just hearing the words out loud. --As several people have mentioned, reading the contrary thoughts sent to everyone on the list could provoke embarrassment as well as intellectual disagreement or anger. For this reason, among others, I choose not to receive an individual's emails to a list of people whenever possible. Actually I hope my postings here on the air-list do not in any way disrupt pleasant colleague relationships I may have established in the past. :-) Do we have research on negative sentiments or disagreements expressed f2f vs. email? I know we have some good experimental studies comparing liking and self-disclosure for the two modes.

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Re: [Air-l] e-mail destroying friendships?
by Art McGee 23 Apr '03

23 Apr '03

> Charles did not indicate he had done the forwarding. He > said a friend had. Yes, quite right. Sorry Charles. %-) Art

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Presuming face to face is 'better'... some past papers (was RE: [Air-l] e-mail destroying friendships?)
by Anderson, Ben 23 Apr '03

23 Apr '03

> Along with Nancy I'm dubious about claims regarding particular forms > of communication as, at least implicitly, "ideal" or even "more > human" than others (which is not to say that some may not be "more > mediated" than others). There has been some thinking along these lines in the HCI/CSCW community. See for example Hollan and Stornetta's 1992 paper 'Beyond being there' (http://www.hcibib.org/gs.cgi?word=checked&terms=C.CHI.92.119) and Paul Dourish et al's 1996 paper http://www.hcibib.org/gs.cgi?word=checked&terms=J.JCSCW.5.1.33 These were reactions to the at the time (and still, to some extent) popular analytic trick of comparing audio/video mediated communication with 'face to face' and thus showing how IT mediated communication was 'poorer'. Dourish et al point out that it is 'different' and, in some contexts, can be 'better'. Ben

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Re: [Air-l] e-mail destroying friendships?
by Esther Milne 22 Apr '03

22 Apr '03

and let;s not forget that unauthorised 'forwarding' has a technological precedent. In eighteenth and nineteenth century epistolary practice it was not uncommon for letters to be circulated within a particular community *without* the consent or knowledge of the original author. just my two cents (and doctoral thesis on the correspondence between email and postal technologies) worth! cheers, Esther Esther Milne Lecturer in Media and Communications School of Social & Behavioural Sciences Swinburne University of Technology John Street Hawthorn VIC 3122 AUSTRALIA Tel: +613 92148195 Fax: +613 98190574 >>> c.chesher(a)unsw.edu.au 04/22/03 09:41pm >>> On Tuesday, April 22, 2003, at 02:01 AM, Charles Ess <cmess(a)lib.drury.edu> wrote: > a friend with a specific political viewpoint regularly forwards > e-mails to a > list of friends; > at some point, someone in the group strongly disagrees with the > perspective > / argument represented in a forward - and, instead of ignoring the > matter, > fires back to the whole group; What strikes me as distinctive in this scenario is the cultural form of the act of email forwarding. I do think that it risks destroying friendships! In a f2f conversation you might cite some other authority in stating a political position. But when you forward a polemical email, you're using a huge slab-quote. It is more analogous to passing out a pamphlet than to stating an opinion in the context of a discussion. Not only does your e-pamphlet text weaken your readers' sense that it has been authored by a friend, but the fact that your message is addressed to a large list of receivers also dilutes their sense that the message is personally from you. On the other hand, you probably feel strongly about the message. That's why you chose to forward it to people who you believed shared the same views. But the choice of who you add to the list of receivers is likely to be less considered than for an email that you have written yourself, because you've spent less time in composing it. And the opinions in the email may be expressed more forcefully than you might put them in your own words. When you get the rebutting email you probably receive it as a personal affront to you, rather than a rejection of the original email. And it's in public -- posted to you and your other friends! The friendship is definitely in trouble. I think these risks are structured into the technocultural configuration of the event of forwarding a politically inflected email -- in its technical, textual, temporal, affective and interpersonal specificity. Chris -- - Dr Chris Chesher Work phone 61 2 9385 6814 Lecturer Mobile: 04040 95 480 School of Media and Communications Messages: 61 2 9385 6811 Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Fax: 61 2 9385 6812 University of New South Wales Email: c.chesher(a)unsw.edu.au UNSW Sydney 2052 http://mdcm.arts.unsw.edu.au/ _______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l(a)aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l

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Online Advocacy and Lobbying Panel Session Webcast
by Steven Clift 22 Apr '03

22 Apr '03

For those of you interested in researching online advocacy and lobbying, the webcast described below should be of direct interest. Steven Clift http://www.publicus.net P.S. I am always interested in learning about online advocacy success stories and lessons learned <clift(a)publicus.net> for my Democracies Online Newswire <http://www.e-democracy.org/do> <- subscribe free here. *** Democracies Online Newswire - http://e-democracy.org/do *** ---- Please Forward ---> Online Advocacy and Lobbying Webcast This event was hosted by E-Democracy <http://e-democracy.org> and the Institute for New Media Studies <http://www.inms.umn.edu> at the University of Minnesota. Have you ever wondered: - What were the top e-mails received by Governor Jesse Ventura? - What people think when an interest group doesn't have a website? - What is an advanced collaborative online advocacy network? - What is online advocacy and lobbying anyway? If so, then listen to the online advocacy webcast from: http://www.e-democracy.org/neoamn Or directly from: http://www.inms.umn.edu/neoamn/onlineadvocacypanel.ram The webcast includes audio with Power Point slides in Real format or audio-only for download in MP3. Short and to the point panelist presentations were followed by audience questions and an engaging discussion and debate. This is one of the best panel sessions ever held on this topic in general, and likely the only one freely available on the Internet. Minnesota is known for its depth of online political activity - lessons learned here are valuable everywhere. The dynamic panelists include: Robbie LaFluer - Director, Minnesota Legislative Reference Library Marcia Avner - Public Policy Director, Minnesota Council of Non-Profits - Author, Lobbying and Advocacy Handbook for Nonprofit Orgs. David Strom - Legislative Director, Taxpayers League of Minnesota Brian Elliott - Political Coordinator, Clean Water Action Alliance - Minnesota Environmental Action Network Christine Nelson - Former Director of Citizen Outreach, Governor Ventura's Office Linda Jean Kensicki - Panel Moderator - Asst. Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota Stay tuned next week for the announcement about the Net & Elections panel or get a preview at the same site. Sincerely, Steven Clift Visiting Fellow <http://www.publicus.net/fellow> - February 2003 Institute for New Media Studies, University of Minnesota ^ ^ ^ ^ Steven L. Clift - W: http://www.publicus.net Minneapolis - - - E: clift(a)publicus.net Minnesota - - - - - T: +1.612.822.8667 USA - - - - - - - ICQ: 13789183 *** Past Messages, Discussion http://e-democracy.org/do *** *** To subscribe, e-mail: listserv(a)tc.umn.edu *** *** Message body: SUB DO-WIRE *** *** To UNSUBSCRIBE instead, write: UNSUB DO-WIRE *** *** Please send submissions to: clift(a)publicus.net ***

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Query on Digitial Technology and National Identity
by Andrew Herman 22 Apr '03

22 Apr '03

Friends- I am developing a course on the mediation of national identity through digital communications technology and am wondering if the good folks at/in AOIR can point in the direction of some good scholarly work in this area. I am aware of the work that David Morley and Kevin Robbins have dome on Eurpean identites in terms of broadcast media as well as the work of Jody Berland on Canada but am drawing blanks otherwise. references to/about Canada, especially comparing the US and Canada would be most appreciated. Andrew Andrew Herman, Ph. D. Visiting Associate Professor of Sociology College of the Holy Cross Worcester, MA 01610 (508) 793-2531

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Re: Query on Digitial Technology and National Identity
by Philipp Budka 22 Apr '03

22 Apr '03

One book i would really recomend on this topic is Nils Zurawski (2000): Virtuelle Ethnizität. Studien zu Identität, Kultur und Internet. Unfortunatly in German, but i guess Nils is subscribed to air-list and you can contact him for english abstracts of his work. And there is an article from Mark Poster (1999) in Jones (Ed.): Cybersociety 2.0 called "Virtual Ethnicity". Both works deal mainly with ethnicity but also with the interconnected phenomenon nationalism. Greetings, Philipp -- Philipp Budka email: ph.budka(a)philbu.net tel.: +43(01) 95 28 244 tel. mobil.: +43(0)6991 95 28 244 Rustengasse 5/10 1150 Wien, Austria http://www.philbu.net +++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more http://www.gmx.net +++ Bitte lächeln! Fotogalerie online mit GMX ohne eigene Homepage!

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Re: [Air-l] e-mail destroying friendships?
by Chris Chesher 22 Apr '03

22 Apr '03

On Tuesday, April 22, 2003, at 02:01 AM, Charles Ess <cmess(a)lib.drury.edu> wrote: > a friend with a specific political viewpoint regularly forwards > e-mails to a > list of friends; > at some point, someone in the group strongly disagrees with the > perspective > / argument represented in a forward - and, instead of ignoring the > matter, > fires back to the whole group; What strikes me as distinctive in this scenario is the cultural form of the act of email forwarding. I do think that it risks destroying friendships! In a f2f conversation you might cite some other authority in stating a political position. But when you forward a polemical email, you're using a huge slab-quote. It is more analogous to passing out a pamphlet than to stating an opinion in the context of a discussion. Not only does your e-pamphlet text weaken your readers' sense that it has been authored by a friend, but the fact that your message is addressed to a large list of receivers also dilutes their sense that the message is personally from you. On the other hand, you probably feel strongly about the message. That's why you chose to forward it to people who you believed shared the same views. But the choice of who you add to the list of receivers is likely to be less considered than for an email that you have written yourself, because you've spent less time in composing it. And the opinions in the email may be expressed more forcefully than you might put them in your own words. When you get the rebutting email you probably receive it as a personal affront to you, rather than a rejection of the original email. And it's in public -- posted to you and your other friends! The friendship is definitely in trouble. I think these risks are structured into the technocultural configuration of the event of forwarding a politically inflected email -- in its technical, textual, temporal, affective and interpersonal specificity. Chris -- - Dr Chris Chesher Work phone 61 2 9385 6814 Lecturer Mobile: 04040 95 480 School of Media and Communications Messages: 61 2 9385 6811 Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Fax: 61 2 9385 6812 University of New South Wales Email: c.chesher(a)unsw.edu.au UNSW Sydney 2052 http://mdcm.arts.unsw.edu.au/

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RE: [Air-l] Aoir 4.0
by Matthew Allen 22 Apr '03

22 Apr '03

Please bear with us...we are very very close to releasing the information you all want concerning the conference. Best wishes Matt Program Chair

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re:e-mail destroying friendships?
by K.Kyriakopoulou 22 Apr '03

22 Apr '03

Hi there! It seems to me that the question about friendship in the electronic environment which lacks face to face communication is closely related to the fundamental characteristics of friendship, provided and categorised by Aristotle. Probably the communication via email offers the possibility for the homonoia or likemindness between the participants to be developed (discussion of interesting issues, exchange of information of common interest etc) , but it may also give birth to a sort of 'parrhesia' based on the lack of face-to-face communication. The conflict that the 'parrhesia' may cause does not -I think- necessarily indicate the termination of a friendship, but it probably provides the friendship -or better, the two parts of the friendship-with a new perspective under which their relationship may be reconsidered. Now, to what extent 'parrhesia' may lead to the dissolution of friendship, depends on the elasticity of the ties between the friends, and on the category of friendship -according to the aristotelian analysis- the particular relationship belongs....or, what do you think about? Kind regards Kalliopi Kyriakopoulou PhD cand. Dept.of Politics and IR, University of Kent, U.K. email: kk36(a)ukc.ac.uk

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