On Wed, 28 Jan 2009, Alice E. Marwick wrote:
I'm looking for research on the interaction of different types of CMC - e.g. how chat, email, IM, social networking, virtual worlds, blogging, SMS, mobile etc. are used together as part of a communication environment by users. Most studies I've found concentrate on a single aspect; I'm looking for work on the use of two or more types of CMC by the same users.
have a look at Isaacs, E., Walendowski, A., Whittaker, S., Schiano, D. J., and Kamm, C. 2002. The character, functions, and styles of instant messaging in the workplace. In Proceedings of the 2002 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, November 16 - 20, 2002). CSCW '02. ACM, New York, NY, 11-20. DOI=http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/587078.587081 Abstract: "Current perceptions of Instant Messaging (IM) use are based primarily on self-report studies. We logged thousands of (mostly) workplace IM conversations and evaluated their conversational characteristics and functions. Contrary to prior research, we found that the primary use of workplace IM was for complex work discussions. Only 28% of conversations were simple, single-purpose interactions and only 31% were about scheduling or coordination. Moreover, people rarely switched from IM to another medium when the conversation got complex. We found evidence of two distinct styles of use. Heavy IM users and frequent IM partners mainly used it to work together: to discuss a broad range of topics via many fast-paced interactions per day, each with many short turns and much threading and multitasking. Light users and infrequent pairs mainly used IM to coordinate: for scheduling, via fewer conversations per day that were shorter, slower-paced with less threading and multitasking." Best regards christopher -- Dr. Christopher Lueg Professor of Computing University of Tasmania Private Bag 100 Hobart TAS 7001, Australia christopher.lueg@utas.edu.au http://www.cis.utas.edu.au/users/clueg/ CRICOS Provider Code: 00586B