Page 228 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

COMPUTERS, THE INTERNET, AND VIRTUAL CULTURES

social relationship formation are addressed, they are considered as a function of
the group task, or as a side e ffect of work relations. Social aspects of CMC
are not central to those research programs in which technology is seen as
driving media choice, use, and relationships (Bordia 1997). However, as sug-
gested by Schmitz and Fulk (1991), media use is influenced by more than
rational choices made in consideration of message content and the situation or
task at hand; the use of media is also influenced by social forces and symbolic
cues. Context is important. The primary focus of CMC research has been on
CMC as a transmission tool for communication and information exchange,
and not on CMC as a tool for social connectivity (Jones 1995).

Internetworking and community

Robins noted that ‘the mythology of cyberspace is preferred over its sociology’
(1995: 153), to which we would add that its sociology is preferred over its
phenomenology and philosophy. In recent years, the rapid expansion of
CMC’s favorite (and favored) progeny, the Internet, has opened up new
doors with regards to the study of electronic communication as more than a
technological phenomenon but also as a social one (Jones 1995, 1997a).
Researchers have come to the study of the Internet and its associated applica-
tions (i.e. Usenet, MUDS, IRC, WWW, and electronic mail) with social impli-
cations at the center of their inquiry, expanding their questions, contexts of
investigation, and approaches to studying these new media both theoretically
and methodologically.
Those scholars concerned with social aspects of the Internet and CMC have
centralized ‘connection’ in their research, arguing that human-connecting
computer networks are by nature social networks (Jones 1995; Wellman et al.
1996). They also emphasize context, both that surrounding and that
encompassed within these media. While the former refers more to the physical
environment and user demographics existing outside the enveloped media, the
latter attends to the notion of ‘social space’, which is created and re-created in
the course of technologically mediated interactions. This last consideration of
context has helped to move scholarship away from the dominant view of CMC
as a ‘tool’ for communications transmission and information exchange towards
one that views CMC as a place of ‘production and reproduction’ of social
relations (Jones 1995).
However, one cannot consider these studies to be cultural approaches to
Internetworking. Online community studies and studies of community net-
works (Garton and Wellman 1995; Jones 1995; Rheingold 1993) tend to
explore a particular group of people who, driven by a common interest,
develop a shared sense of community in the course of virtual interaction,
typically on Usenet groups, listservs, or in multi-user dungeons (MUDS). The
phenomenon of central interest is how individuals come together via CMC
and develop a group identity (as well as a sense of personal identity) in the

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