Page 226 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

COMPUTERS, THE INTERNET, AND VIRTUAL CULTURES

is regarded as a more encompassing form that provides an essential blend of
verbal and non-verbal cues for social interaction, CMC is diagnosed as utilizing
fewer channels, and thereby ‘bereft of [the] impression bearing data’ that makes
for effective interpersonal communication (Walther 1993: 384).
The ‘cues filtered out’ perspectives dominated CMC scholarship in the
1980s. Under the assumption of CMC’s social deficiency, studies of email
systems revolved around the application of these technologies to work-related
tasks within organizations, where interpersonal exchange was believed to be
limited and unnecessary (Hiltz, Johnson, and Turoff 1986). Driven by adminis-
trative interest in enhancing productivity and improving operations, these
studies were focused on how email could mediate internal corporate com-
munications and what effect this mediation would have on work-related
activities, such as decision-making (Garton and Wellman 1995; Wellman et al.
1996). Though culture does not appear as a central theme in these early studies,
it is important to consider that these technologies were not widely diffused
outside of organizational settings. Early adopters at this time consisted of
government agencies or corporations (and, in some cases, educational institu-
tions) that deployed CMC for particular purposes. Nevertheless, by the 1980s
notions of ‘corporate culture’ were themselves widespread, and it is at least
somewhat surprising not to find CMC scholars forming opinions regarding
the influence of CMC on organizational culture. It is equally surprising given
that, even in the early days of development of ARPANET, non-task-oriented
communication took place. For instance, one can consider as a precursor to
listservs and Usenet discussion groups the SF-LOVERS mailing list and the
development of UUCP (the Unix-to-Unix Copy Program that enabled files to
be passed easily across networked computers running Unix) in the 1980s (Salus
1995). These developments were not widely reported at the time, for Internet-
working had many years to go before it would capture the public imagination.
But these developments did not go unnoticed in the networking community,
and they have been acknowledged recently among CMC scholars as important
moments in the development of a network culture (Hauben and Hauben
1997). Still, what is surprising is that no studies of the ARPANET (and other
Internet precursors) were undertaken at the time of their development (or
quickly thereafter) by CMC researchers.
Instead, comparisons between CMC and F2F characterized the bulk of early
CMC research, as did organizational context. Research on organizational email
systems was characterized by comparative studies of CMC and F2F interactions
with regards to how the inherent properties of communication media
influence individual media choice (Wellman et al. 1996). Consequently, forms
of uses and gratifications research gained a foothold as well, and foreground
rationality as a means by which one could explain CMC use. Media richness
scholars argue that, when faced with a given task, individuals will make a
rational choice among available communication media based on consideration
of how well each medium matches the task (Daft and Lengel 1990; Webster

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