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Abstract
Studies of online environments estimate that the majority of members in online forums do not contribute to ongoing discussions and only observe or “lurk” (e.g., Nonnecke & Preece, 2000). Despite the prevalence of this form of information acquisition, direct comparisons between the experiences of these “observers” (or “lurkers”) and active participants are lacking. The present research draws on previous research examining perceptual differences between participants and observers as well as social information processing theory (Walther, 1992) and reports on three studies examining such differences in computer-mediated communication (CMC). Study 1 examined the effects in the context of interpersonal interaction in synchronous CMC. Study 2 examined the effects in the context of group interaction in both synchronous and asynchronous CMC. Study 3 replicated and extended the results of the previous studies across two time periods. The overall results (a) support the presence of participant–observer differences in CMC, (b) show that the presence of anticipated future interaction moderates said differences, and (c) provide mixed evidence that participant and observer interpretations of relational messages converge over time.
An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the Western States Communication Association 78th Annual Convention held February 17–20, 2007, in Seattle, WA during which it was awarded the Top Paper in the Interpersonal Interest Group.
An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the Western States Communication Association 78th Annual Convention held February 17–20, 2007, in Seattle, WA during which it was awarded the Top Paper in the Interpersonal Interest Group.
Notes
An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the Western States Communication Association 78th Annual Convention held February 17–20, 2007, in Seattle, WA during which it was awarded the Top Paper in the Interpersonal Interest Group.
1. The discussion questions/topics were: (a) What do like or dislike about your classes? (b) Discuss something from your past that you feel guilty about. (c) What type of job would you like to have? (d) What are the best and worst things that have ever happened to you? (e) How would your male and female friends describe you? Participants determined the order in which the items were discussed. A follow-up analysis in all three studies failed to identify any significant effects due to the ordering of the questions (p>.35).
2. The chat environment used in the study was designed such that anyone entering or leaving was “announced” to others already present on a sidebar. Participants in all of the studies using synchronous CMC were told prior start of the study that the “observer” was a research assistant assigned to the discussion to insure no technical difficulties arose. This explanation resulted from a pilot study testing different cover stories, which indicated no significant differences between a control condition with no observer and a condition with an observer utilizing this explanation. Although the conferencing system included tools that would have allowed observers to log into the system and observe interactions undetected (“stealth mode”), doing so raises ethical questions regarding the expectation of privacy and protection of human subjects. The university's human subject protocol oversight committee approved (and indeed expressed a preference for) the above explanation. Participants using asynchronous CMC in Studies 2 and 3 were provided a similar explanation to insure comparability of conditions.
3. Upon completing the discussions, participants were randomly assigned through a lottery system to evaluate one member of their group (assigned by the researchers) on the RCS. Observers were also assigned to evaluate one group member. The resulting observer evaluation was paired with the corresponding group member evaluation and employed in the analyses. The same approach was used in Study 3, where evaluations were completed after each task.
4. Because the discussions occurred in the context of groups, groups were treated as nested in preliminary analyses to identify the appropriate error terms for significance tests. The primary result of this approach is the reduction of Type 1 error.
5. Tasks are available upon request.