At 03:05 PM 8/5/2005, Andrew Ledbetter wrote:
Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 12:10:55 -0500 From: "Ledbetter, Andrew Michael" <aledbett@ku.edu> Subject: [Air-l] Postal mail and e-mail To: <air-l@listserv.aoir.org>
I am currently writing a literature review on how various communication modalities are used in interpersonal contexts. One modality I am (not surprisingly) finding little material on is postal mail. In particular, I am looking for sources that either (a) address changes in postal mail use with the advent of e-mail or (b) qualitative comparisons of the use of postal mail and e-mail within interpersonal relationships. In particular, I have heard anecdotal reports of e-mail being more "convenient" but postal mail being "special" in a way that e-mail is not, though I have not found scholarly material that documents this perception.
Does anyone know of scholarly articles that address these issues?
Thanks, Andrew
---------------- Andrew M. Ledbetter Ph.D. student, University of Kansas
Andrew: You might want to have a look at two chapters in my book, Cyberpl@y: Communicating Online (Berg, Oxford, 2001; companion website, http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~msdanet/cyberpl@y/). Chapter 2 is about email and Chapter 4 is about digital greetings in the late 1990s.. The latter chapter reviews what arbiters of etiquette like Miss Manners had to say about handwritten vs. commercial cards, etc., and I debate paper vs digital greetings. My 1997 paper Danet, B. (1997). Books, letters, documents: The changing aesthetics of texts in late print culture. Journal of Material Culture, 2(1), 5-38. may also be relevant for you. Nancy Baym knows this paper. Brenda Danet