User talk:Aniuni/sandbox

Hyperpersonal Theory

Hyperpersonal Theory (HPT) is related and understood through computer-mediated communication(CMC). Hyperpersonal Theory is part of interpersonal communication theory meaning that the HPT suggests CMC due to the uses technological messages rather than face-to-face interactions. According to Erin Schumaker (2013) the hyperpersonal theory represents how people communicate online rather than FtF. The theory displays predictions on how people present themselves in a virtual environment. HPT demonstrates how individuals communicate uniquely, while representing themselves to others, how others interpret them, and how the interactions create a reciprocal spiral of FtF communication.

Background

Orignination of the hyperpersonal theory model came from Joseph Walther. He is the Director of Center for Information Technology and Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Walther, according to the University of California, Santa Barbara says, "his teaching and research focus on computer-mediated communication (CMC) and social media in personal relationships, groups, educational settings, and inter-ethic conflict, topics on which he has contributed several original theories and numerous experiments and surveys".

Computer-Mediated Communication

Computer-mediated communication, also known as CMC, relates to hyperpersonal theory model because it suggests that computer-mediated communication can turn hyperpersonal since they both lack the use of face-to-face communication. CMC "may be impersonal". However, there are now online friendships and virtual communities. CMC was "emerged as an unintended byproduct of linking large computers to one another for security and information redundancy". In doing so, operators found that the computers were able to send messages to other people, enabling computer-mediated communication. From this researchers began to question whether CMC could replace traveling to events, such as business meetings, and indicate whether or not CMC might provide meetings more effective than FtF meetings. This is where researchers developed online behaviors vs personal interaction behaviors. They tested this by interactions through e-mail. Researchers then found that computer-mediated communication was more "task-oriented" rather than FtF conversations/meetings.

Uses of Hyperpersonal Theory

Hyperpersonal Theory Model describes how people use virtual communication, or computer-mediated communication, rather than face-to-face communication(FtF). There are two directions Walther makes on "the work of CMC and its interpersonal effects":

1. "an effort is made to integrate theories and research findings pertaining to impersonal and interpersonal interactions in CMC, not by dismissing one in favor of the other but rather by specifying some conditions that favor each type outcome, either of which may be desirable and useful in certain contexts"
2. "a new perspective is offered regarding the heightened levels of intimacy, solidarity, and liking via CMC, which have been observed and documented in several empirical and anecdotal accounts. Combinations of media attributes, social phenomena, and social-psychological processes may lead to CMC to become "hyperpersonal," that is, to exceed face-to face (FtF) interpersonal communication"

Applications

Walther

Joseph Walther is noted to be the founder of this theory, however, he uses his finding to teach at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In his research he found "the hyperpersonal model of CMC proposes a set of concurrent theoretically based processes to explain how CMC may facilitate impressions and relationships online that exceed the desirability and intimacy that occur in parallel offline interactions". The model Walther created has four main components that illustrate how CMC relates to message structure and reception:

1. "effects due to receiver processes"
2. "effects among message senders"
3. "attributes of the channel"
4. "feedback effects"

These four components represent how CMC may effect how relationships online exceed offline relationships.

Jiang, Bazarova, and Hancock

Jiang, Bazarova, and Hancock use Joseph Walther's hyperpersonal theory model to indicate the understandings of intimacy interpersonal relationships through CMC. In their study, the three researchers established "some online relationships tend to be more intimate than FtF relationships and CMC interactions are often rated as significantly more intimate than FtF counterparts. One approach to explain this phenomenon is the hyperpersoanl model, which highlights the cognitive and behavioral processes and CMC affordances that can contribute to greater online intimacy".They depicted that people tend to "put their best foot forward" while engaging in CMC relationships. They found that CMC allows a person to self-present themselves. One thing they studied throughout this research was the idea of online dating. Online dating allows a person to post a picture of themselves that they chose and avoid a less attractive photo of them. Jiang, Bazarova and Hancock discovered that "related to the sender's behavior in CMC, people appear to be more comfortable disclosing personal information in CMC than Ftf". This may lead to a more positive hyperpersonal relationship.

Critique

Walther describes some challenges to CMC research. His area of concern lies within three areas:

1. "the increasing neglect of off-line comparisons in CMC studies, potentially undermining broad theoretical understanding and leading to potentially inflated views of CMC's effect"
2. "how and whether new technologies affect the utility of theories that were developed in the contact of somewhat older technological contexts"
3. "how we study interpersonal communication when many relationships are radically multimodal".

Walther's seeks to tell researchers not compare FtF communication with CMC due the fact they rely on different users and features.

Peer Review

Hi Amber - Which sandbox should I be reviewing? I am also copying a message below that I left for you in yesterday in your "/sandbox 2" - Talk to you soon, Doug

Hi Amber! I will be reviewing your Wiki article for our COM 563 class and I have a question before I get too far along. I see that "Hyperpersonal model" already exists on Wiki, but "Hyperpersonal theory" is listed on our class page as an article that does not exist. So, I wanted to know for sure if I will be reviewing a new page by you, or if you are modifying the existing page. And, if it's a new page could you give me quick explanation as to the basic differences between the two theories? Your draft and the other article reference Joeseph Walther as developing the theory (or theories). Assuming there is a difference you may want to consider including that in your article with a link to the other theory. I look forward to working with you! Thanks.Dougok (talk) 21:08, 27 June 2018 (UTC)Dougok (talk) 00:35, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

COM 563 Peer Review notes - Hyperpersonal

Hi Amber – I think you have a great article in the making! You are obviously a good writer, and I am really interested in this topic, so I look forward to learning a lot from your final product.

I made a number of small edits directly in your Sandbox2, per Dr. Pederson’s prompts. Some of them may have been lost because your Sandbox and Sandbox2 keep getting shuffled around and deleted by Wiki reviewers. Initially, I made my changes in Sandbox2. And, I am not sure if my earlier edits migrated to Sandbox when Lee Vilenski moved the page from Sandbox2 to your original Sandbox. Regardless, I tried to leave a short description in Talk for each of my changes. In addition to that, in keeping with Dr. Pederson’s peer review prompts, I offer the following for your consideration.

1.     Does the introduction section in the entry provide you with a basic knowledge of the theory or concept? What could be improved in this section?


I would suggest that you consider paraphrasing the definition of HPM and then footnote that definition at appropriate times rather than quoting Schumaker’s definition. My recollection from the training modules is that it is preferable for us to try to avoid long quotes. You may also want to include a general overview of the Daft and Lengel Media Richness Theory (MRT) here as well to lay the ground work for HPM (see below for a more detailed MRT information and explanation).    
2.    What are the strengths of the content sections?  Talk about the organization, flow, and what you learned from these sections. 


I really like how you are approaching the article, and I think your writing is really clear and well-suited to the task at hand. I do think you might be better served by consolidating a good bit of your descriptive language under the Lead section or in the Background section. I thought it was great that you caught Walther’s current position at UCSB. Earlier, when I was looking at your subject, everything I saw said Walther was at a different school.

Your use of Jiang, et al. under Applications is really well done!


3.    What are the weaknesses in the content sections?  What can the author do to improve these sections?  Make sure to offer specific sections.

I am not sure the following are weakness per se, but I wanted to offer as many ideas as I could think of for your consideration in case you thought they might be helpful.

At first blush, it seems like you might want to fold the CMC section into the Background section.

Additionally, I noticed that Joseph Walther’s Wiki page said he works at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication, and your page says UCSB. You definitely appear to be correct, so I edited Wiki’s Walther page to reflect his current position at UCSB, however, I don’t have the dates for when he left WKW or started at UCSB. So, the last two posts under “Academic appointments” in Walther’s article need to be updated with those dates if you have them. I know that’s not your article, but if you come across them, I think updating the Walther article would be in the spirit of Wiki, so to speak.

Additionally, you might want to consider paraphrasing Walther’s two approaches instead of quoting him at length under the “Uses of Hyperpersonal Theory Model” section.

I think it might make sense to discuss how Walther builds on, or diverts from, other theories, either in the Background section or in a new section, or subsection somewhere, called something like “Related theories”, for example. Sort of an overview of the playing field, including Daft & Lengel again but with some more details. The following are some “conversational” notes for your consideration:

• As far as I know, the biggest player in this area of study may be Daft & Lengel’s Media Richness Theory (MRT) (1986). Walther discusses his HPM theory by contrasting it with the MRT’s suggestion that communication via CMC is “less rich” than FtF communication as posited by Daft & Lengel, for example. This is a big contrast, and MRT seems like it has been pretty sacrosanct for quite a while. If, as according to Daft and Lengel, CMC is less-rich that FtF, how can it ever be hyperpersonal? Because of this, HPM’s contrast with the long-standing and well-accepted MRT seems like one of the first things that should be explained, either in the Background section or in the Lead section, in order to frame your article. I would recommend providing a brief description of both theories and how they differ and cite, or quote, Walther himself who starts his HPM article by contrasting HPM with MRT (1996, pp. 3-4).
• Friedman and Currall (who were supporters of MRT at the time they wrote their Dispute Exacerbating Model of Email (DEME) (2003) article) argue that at least one form of CMC (email) exacerbates disputes compared with richer mediums like FtF interactions. I am not sure how, or if, you might like to weave that into the discussion of HPM, but Friedman and Currall do make arguments about certain shortcomings of CMC when compared to FtF. I don’t agree with this theory, and wrote an argument against it for another class, but many other folks seem to buy it. DEME seems to come to a, more or less, opposite conclusion than Walther’s HPM.
• Kock’s Media Naturalness Theory (2004) also contrasts with HPM insofar as Kock argues that humans are, evolutionarily, just not as well-equipped to deal with CMC when compared to “richer” forms of communication like FtF interactions. He argues, more or less, that this is because evolutionary changes take far longer to come about than the short amount of time we have had since CMC has enveloped the world. That is, we have evolved to communicate through FtF interactions and we have simply not had time to evolve into being equally adequate CMC practitioners. Personally, I think there are a number of problems with Kock’s premise, and Channel Expansion Theory (below) chips away at it and, in my view, offers some support for HPM theory.
• Channel Expansion Theory (CET) (1999) seems to undercut Kock’s need for evolutionary changes in humans and instead argues that humans can adjust to new “channels” of communication (see Wiki “theory” section for eponymous article) as well as the reference to Carlson and Zmud (1999) below. In my view, CET is consistent with Walther’s HPM, and may even support it, because CET argues humans can adjust to new applications of CMC. This seems consistent with Walther’s notion that humans are equally capable of managing FtF and CMC (Walther, 1996, pp. 10-11).
• Interestingly, in 2011, Kock revisits the issue of Media Naturalness in light of the Channel Expansion theory (Kock & Garza, 2011) and, in turn, argues that Media Naturalness and CET can co-exist. This is interesting to me for your article, because it shows how one of big supporters of MRT (Kock), and therefore presumably a detractor for HPM, eventually concludes that CMC interactions can achieve “positive effects” (Kock & Garza, 2011, p.9) when compared to an equivalent FtF interaction, at least in the case of distance learning.


 


4.    Does the “application” section make sense?  What is lacking and how can it be improved?

I think the “Walther” portion of this section should probably be moved up to the Lead section, or Background.

The Jing, et al. section seems spot on. The last sentence of this paragraph might need to be reworded so that it does not sound like original work. For example, “Jiang, et al. argue this may lead to a more positive hyperpersonal relationship” (with citation added).

As I understand Dr. Pederson’s instructions and feedback, your Jiang, et al. section is exactly what he is looking for under the Applications section. I would suggest adding a few more examples. Here is another one that appears to incorporate Walther’s HPM for your consideration: Koutaminis, M., Vossen, H.G.M., Peter, J., & Valkeburg, P.M. (2013).

 
5.    Does the “critique” section offer a substantive critique of the theory or concept? What suggestions do you have to improve this section?


I think the information you include under the Critique section is, like your other areas, well-written and informative. But, I think this information should also be moved up and included in the Lead or Background section(s). Initially, I wasn’t exactly sure what to put in this section of my own article either. But, Dr. Pederson has since given me some feedback that clarifies what he wants here. If my understanding is correct, I think he wants citable, paraphrased opinions on potential shortcomings with HPM, including those that Walther may have acknowledged himself.


6.    Discuss any issues with grammar, sentence structure, or other writing conventions. 

I think your writing is very professional and easy to read. I look forward to reading your article when it is done!

References:

Carlson, J.R. & Zmud (1999). Channel Expansion Theory and the Experiential Nature of Media Richness Perceptions. The Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 42(2): 153-170. Daft, R. L. & Lengel, R. H. (1986). Organizational Information Requirements, Media Richness and Structural Design. Management Science, Vol. 32, (5): 554-571. Kock, N. (2004). The Psychobiological Model: Towards a New Theory of Computer-Mediated Communication Based on Darwinian Evolution. Organization Science, Vol 15(3): 327-348. Kock, N. & Garza, V. (2011). Media Naturalness and Compensatory Channel Expansion: A Study of Online and Face-to-Face Sections of the Same Course. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, Vol. 9(2): 1-12. Koutaminis, M., Vossen, H.G.M., Peter, J., & Valkeburg, P.M. (2013). Practice makes perfect: The longitudinal effect of adolescents’ instant messaging on their ability to initiate offline friendships. Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 29: 2265-2272. Friedman, R.A. & Currall, S.C. (2003). Conflict escalation: Dispute exacerbating elements of e mail communication. Human Relations-New York; Vol. 56(11): 1325-1348. Walther, J.B. (1996). Computer-Mediated Communication: Impersonal, Interpersonal, and Hyperpersonal Interaction. Communication Reasearch, Vol. 23(1) February: 3-43.Dougok (talk) 23:56, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Amber's peer review of tie signs

Hi Amber! Thanks so much for your thoughtful review and great suggestions. I intend to work on the areas you suggested in the coming days. Please let me know if you think of anything else. Dougok (talk) 04:06, 29 June 2018 (UTC)