Interactivity on the Nets

What makes computer-mediated groups tick and/or stick? To what degree are computermediated discussants really sustained “groups”? Does the grouping quality reflect anything beyond technical structure? Are technical structure and grouping related? How do threads define groups, or viceversa? Does any of this change between academic and commercial networks? We propose that one useful perspective for studying group CMC is interactivity. Interactivity is a theoretical construct that grapples with the origins of captivation, fascination, and allure that can be inherent in computer-mediated groups. In the sample of messages collected by ProjectH, we have a first-ofits kind representative snapshot of communication among the very large groups populating the networks. The central unit of interest in studying computer mediated groups is, in this case, the thread of messages. A message thread is a chain of interrelated messages. Rather than individuals’ self-report, linguistic and socio-linguistic analyses of content, or observational data of larger units, we examine interactivity, the dependency among messages in threads. Results indicate that the content on the net is less confrontational than is popularly believed: conversations are more helpful and social than competitive. Over half of the messages in the sample make reference to a previous message, one-fifth of messages refer to more than one previous message, and onetenth of messages refer to how previous messages related to even earlier ones. Interactive messages seem to be more humorous, contain more self-disclosure, display a higher preference for agreement and contain many more first-person plural pronouns. This indicates that interactivity does indeed play a role in the social dynamics of group CMC, and sheds a light on comparing interactive messages with conversation. Differences in interactivity are reported for different networks and different types of authors as well. The focus, we propose, should be on the glue—that which keeps message threads and their authors together—and what makes the groups and their interaction tick.