hyperpersonal again

You may know that I'm rather interested in theoretical implications of digital technology for mass communication vs. interpersonal communication (or mass media vs. personal media). My first serious attempt at writing an article for my phd-dissertation concerns these questions. I recently found a paper by Scott E. Caplan from 2001, called "Challenging the mass-interpersonal communication dichotomy: are we witnessing the emergence of an entirely new communication system?". Caplan suggest that computers have spawned a new hyperpersonal communication system, which existing theories of interpersonal or mass communication systems are unable to define or explain. That is, we now have interpersonal, hyperpersonal and mass communication. I still haven't read Walther's article "Computer-mediated communication: impersonal, interpersonal and hyperpersonal interaction (published in Communication Research in 1996), but this article is of course Caplan's point of departure. Hyperpersonal communication suggests that such communication is optimal despite, or more precisely, because of the lack of visual cues. Participants control the quantity, quality and the validity of personal information available to other participants. Moreover participants tend to inflate their perceptions of the other based on the restricted amounts of visual cues.

My informants often say things that confirm this description of hyperpersonal communication:

Sophia: I think it’s easier to have serious conversations on msn than anywhere else, because you don’t have to look people in the eyes.
Dina: I think so too. Like, if I’m going to tell somebody about something serious, then I prefer to use, if not msn, then at least, to write it. It’s much easier. Then you can emphasise more strongly how to express something than when you sit and talk, because then you really just have to take it then and there.

Still, I'm not going to follow Caplan's suggestion of calling this a new and separate system. MSN-conversations are still interpersonal. That participants open up more does not change this. I still prefer to understand communication processes as a continuum between symmetrical (interpersonal interaction) and asymmetrical (mass mediated (quasi)interaction) (model from previous blog-entry).

need new camera

It's summer, and I don't have a camera. I'd love an SLR-camera (like Canon EOS 350D), but I really need a small compact camera that I can take with me anywhere. Casio Exilim EX-750?

I went to the police-station on Friday to report the crime. Police-officer: "Are you sure it was stolen?" Heck, I felt guilty of insurance-fraud even if my camera is in fact stolen. Gone, I don't have it. Guess they have to ask.

abstract accepted

I'm very happy my abstract "Becoming more like friends: the significance of personal media in social networking processes" has been accepted for a paper presentation to be held at the First European Communication Conference in Amsterdam in November. If you'd like to see what I intend to talk about, you can read the abstract (pdf). Oh, I love Amsterdam.

weird

The weirdest thing happened after the Faculty's summer-party on Wednesday. I lost my camera on the after-party. I had it, and then I didn't. I cannot believe anybody there would actually steal it (besides the fact that it doesn't look very attractive, with elastics and duck-tape keeping it together). But the afterparty-host still hasn't found it. Fortunately I have a rather good travel-insurance that covers thefts also when I'm not actually travelling. Though I really can't believe somebody actually stole it. I'm addicted though. I need a digital-camera. Need.

new world order revisited

I'm sort of surprised with the G8 debt relief plan for poor nations. Happily surprised, and a general thumbs up for UK finance minister Gordon Brown and his colleagues. Dept relief in return for health, teachers and infrastructure seems like a good idea. I can't help to be suspicious though. Trying to look for catches I turned to the radical Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen. And yes, they do frame it somewhat differently focusing on how Highly Indepted Poor Countries (HIPC) have been following a tight reform-program to qualify for dept relief. BBC also provides good background: "To qualify, countries have to be very poor and have a very heavy debt burden. They also have to maintain economic stability and produce a strategy for reducing poverty."

Reform-programs are a good thing as long as you see liberalization and privatization as fortunate. The major challenge is of course the next step: creating fair trade-conditions in the world, including poor countries in the globalized world trade system.

Free trade between Southern and Northern countries? Can't be a good thing for our environment, can it? I read a rather interesting article in Framtiden i våre hender's (The Future in our hands) journal yesterday though. Importing tomatoes from the other side of the world is more friendly to our planet than producing our own in this part of the world. Framtiden i våre hender are pro-environmentalist and pro fair-trade. Simultaneously. Buy fair-trade when you can!

the joy of missing out

The best thing about never having seen the first couple of seasons of Sopranos? Ordering them on DVD! One season to the ridiculously low price of 399 NOK (which equals about 62$) from Bokkilden.

Google rank

I know I'm not the only one to experience loosing my rank on Google. But hey, googling for marika lüders, I would expect my blog to be one of the top results. Not anymore, and it's a long way down before my blog appears. After loosing my rank, visits from previously unknown people have naturally also decreased significantly (I keep track of visitors with the help of StatCounter). Guess, I'll just have to wait patiently until Google crawls the web next time and hope for changes. It's certainly annoying though.

mad tv

I admit that I enjoy a wide variety of TV-genres, and I'm not easily shocked or offended by popular-culture. Driving Mum and Dad mad (Monsterbarna) might just be the exception. I watched it with a friend yesterday, and... some parts were just terrible. Watching parents scream to their children (and to each other) was too much. One mum actually kicked after her little Aaron. The idea of helping dysfunctional families is fine, and I can even see that the program has some kind of pedagogical function. But some of these families should really have been protected from exposing their problems for the whole world to see. The back-regions of their lives were at times definitely too exposed, and I can't ever remember vitnessing similar exposure of private life in a public sphere. Will I watch it again?

Btw, I really look forward to being a mum at some point in life.

beyond meaning

Basic questions concerning communication and media never cease to pussle me. The answers appear further and further away as I read about the materiality of media, the (im)possibility of communication and social appropriation and consequences of media technologies. Of course this only serves to confirm academic cliches about the unattainable truth, which sort of makes me wanna gag.

Anyway, I'm just back from a colloquium on Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht's Production of Presence. Gumbrecht aims to present a non-hermeneutic view of cultural pheonomena. Interpretation is not enough. This is where presence comes in. Presence refers to a spatial relationship to the world and its objects. I understand it as 'pure', something that is lost when we inevitably try to interpret a text, an image, anything. As such presence is not about understanding. Having read and enjoyd J.D. Peters Speaking into the air, I necessarily have to let Peters guide my reading: We misspend hope in seeking spiritual fullness in communication. As I understand Gumbrecth, we misspend hope in seeking spiritual fullness in interpretation. Body, being and presence matter. Though Gumbrecht doesn't really tell us how to cope with the concept of presence in actual analytical work. It's seems to be a rahter contradictory task: analysis can hardly be anything but interpretation, can it.