Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

ut the goal is to provide a space where people can meet and interact.
Third, “inviting interaction is about the role of informing people of the available proximal social
possibilities, which can motivate to spontaneously engage in new encounters.” 35 In this case, the focus
is on providing people the ability to invite social interaction or respond to invitations to engage in social
interaction. One of the best examples of this type of use of technology to help facilitate collocated social
interaction is https://www.meetup.com/. Meetup provides a range of different activities and groups people
can join that then meet up in the real-world. For example, in the next 24 hours, there is a Swing Dance
Cruise, Writer’s Group, and Meditation Workshop I could go to just in my local area.
Lastly, “encouraging interaction is about incentivizing or persuading people to start interacting or
maintaining ongoing interaction.” 36 In the case of encouraging, it’s not just about providing opportunities,
but also using technology to help nudge people into collocated social interaction. For example, an
application could require students in an online class who live near each other to get together to study or
work on a course project together. You may notice that the common design approach here is introducing
constraints. This means that people are required to meet up and engage in collocated social interaction to
accomplish a task because neither can do it on their own. Video games have been using a version of this
for years. In many social video games, a single player will not have all of the abilities, skills, weapons, etc.
to accomplish a specific goal on their own. They must work with other players to accomplish a task. The
only difference here is that the tasks are being completed in a FtF context instead of a mediated context.
Key Takeaways
Synchronous communication is communication that happens in real time, whereas
asynchronous communication has a time lag between the exchange of messages.
Nonverbal behaviors are not inherent in many forms of computer-mediated
communication. With text-based messages (email, texts, IRC, etc.), there are no
nonverbal cues to attend to at all. In other mediated forms (e.g., Skype, Facetime,
Zoom), we can see the other person, but it’s still not the same as an interaction in
a FtF context.
Netiquette is the set of professional and social rules and norms for acceptable
and polite behaviors when interacting with another person(s) through mediating
technologies.
A number of human communication variables have been examined within the
CMC context: communication apprehension, communication competence, etc.
Exercises
Think about the asynchronous and synchronous computer-mediated
communication technologies you use regularly. Are nonverbal behaviors filtered
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Interpersonal Communication