Lack of established conventions (1996)      

The fourth stage of Internet

The European interuniversity Association on Society, Science and Technology

Paper presented by Jean-Marc Valentin  in 1996

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Not only does the use of Internet suffer from a lack of social and physical cues, it also suffers from a lack of established conventions. Norms that are common in face-to-face communication are no longer valid, other conventions are taking place. There are few shared standards for salutations, be they for personal or official correspondence. Along these lines, there are also few shared standards for the structuring of formal and informal messages, and for adapting message content to both have an impact and be polite. Kiesler (1) calls the use of Internet “a technology in cultural transition” and asks how people will go about developing a communication network social structure for it. Internet will have dramatic psychological and sociological impacts in the fourth stage on group communication processes and objectives as discussed in chapter “Will Internet bring a new culture?” at page 38. Gone are social and physical cues that formerly provided for efficient group communication. Gone are the status and position cues that allowed a single person to dominate a meeting. Gone are established norms and conventions. Group users of Internet must learn to work around these losses, or find alternative ways of implementing them electronically. Because use of Internet is a relatively recent phenomenon, changes will continue to occur as cues and norms are further discarded, developed, and replaced.

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Paper can be found:

http://www.pcrescue.ch/content/The%20future%20of%20the%20Net.pdf

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(1) Kiesler, S., Jane Siegel and Timothy W. McGuire. “Social Psychological Aspects of Computer-Mediated Communication.” 1984. in Computerization and Controversy, Ed. Charles Dunlop and Rob Kling, San Diego: Academic Press, Inc., 1991, pp..334-335