Bob, Those are my words you quoted, not Alex's. As for your words, I have a few responses. First, you seem to have misconstrued my claim that a lot of the Internet resembles f2f communication. You suggest that I am thereby claiming that ONLY the Internet (and not billboards, etc.) can or do resemble f2f communication. I am certainly NOT claiming the latter. I am sure that any communicative message, regardless of communication mode, can be made to resemble a f2f communication in some way. All it takes is the use of parasocial techniques that have been adapted to the communication mode in question. The parasocial literature indicates that newspapers, magazines, radio, TV and films have all been used to communicate f2f-like messages. Second, I believe you are inaccurate in claiming that certain types of websites are incapable of creating an impression of f2f interaction. A number of articles in the parasocial literature suggest otherwise. So do the articles that originally articulated and stem from Norman Fairclough's notion of synthetic personalization--the mimicking of personal and f2f interaction by a company with its current and potential customers. One needn't look hard for examples on the Internet that affirm these articles. Finally, I think you are particularly inaccurate in claiming that pornography sites do not successfully seek to mimic f2f interaction. Like the advertisement images that mimic them, many pornographic images seek to create a sense of f2f interaction between the viewer and the pictured model. They do so by seeking to make viewers perceive that the camera's position and point of view is theirs, and that they are the subject of the models expressions of desire. --Christian Nelson On Jan 21, 2008, at 1:46 PM, Robert Whitney wrote:

"Perhaps this quote is the most useful for supporting Pam's thesis (one I've been working on, too) that much of the Internet resembles face-to-face communication. Why else would Internet researchers have to be reminded that posting emails is a form of publication unless, of course, Internet posting is so pervasively considered to be something other than publishing--e.g., f2f communication."

- Alex Halavais, last week

I find this statement curious for a number of reasons. For instance, I feel that many books and print works have the same visceral quality as face to face communication, while many print ads or commercials, billboards, etc. feel cold. I think that the same is true of the net, so that "desktop publishing" resembles face-to-face in so far as it is personalized in some way by the writer. However, since the formal establishment of signs and signifiers is not quite present, static, or established in our consciousness- and since the volume of information that we deal with is so daunting that these things often have shifting meanings and allusions, we are confronted in a far more colloquial manner. I believe that individuals, in most informal cases (such as this), write more as if they were having a conversation, which should be obvious but, I question very much if it is anything beyond that. We all know that the internet has "changed the way we communicate" but I think that behind all the rhetoric, and the obvious difference in tools, the nature of the message behind it all is the same (though moving at a much faster rate). An unpersonalized message, or a corporate site- something anonymous does not resemble the visceral qualities of a conversation to me no matter how it is presented. Also, are you proposing to set aside the great deal of pornography which engulfs the internet and would you say that it resembles f2f?

-Bob _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http:// listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org

Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/