SMS: EXPLOITING THE INTERACTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF NEAR-SYNCHRONY

Abstract

This paper argues that near-synchrony creates interactional advantages for SMS and that these help to explain the popularity of the medium. The research included 32 interviews with adult mobile phone users, 24-hour communication diaries, and an analysis of respondents' text messages. Many of the text messages collected were short, phatic messages. These distinctive messages exploit the near-synchrony and brevity of SMS. Text messages combine low-contact threshold with immediate direct personal contact; consequently users can send ‘thinking of you’ messages, creating social connection with negligible effort and disruption. The near-synchrony of SMS also enables a distinctive form of conversation. In SMS conversation, the brevity of messages often creates ambiguity, but asynchrony limits scope for collaborative interpretation, making it harder to clarify meaning. However, instead of treating this as a problem for repair, users sometimes deliberately exploit this, using SMS as an equivocal, open-ended form of communication. The paper ends with a discussion of near-synchrony, contrasting SMS, email and instant messaging, and arguing that the temporal affordances of media are socially shaped and not technologically determined.

Keywords:

• communication studies
• computer-mediated communication
• media studies
• mobile technology

Notes

In this research the text messages were collected in telephone calls; the transcription process may have reduced the number of abbreviations.

Goodnight text messages have been observed in several studies of young people (Ito et al. 2005a; Grinter & Eldridge 2001). The prevalence of goodnight text messages is supported by four weeks data obtained from the service provider O2 (over 69,000 text messages and 241,000 call minutes). Analysis by the author of traffic by time of day indicates that although call usage peaks at 19:00, SMS peaks much later at nearly 23:00.

Newer phones with large screens such as the iPhone sometimes display threaded text message conversations.