Magazine

SPECIAL FOCUS: WHAT IS CMC?

Notes on Defining of Computer-Mediated Communication

If you think of Computer-Mediated Communication only in terms of technologies, you might conclude that CMC on the Internet involves only information exchange and retrieval.

But where would this view of CMC on the Internet get you? I say: Nowhere. You'd miss the bigger picture of CMC on the Internet and become baffled by its rising popularity.

Therefore my definition of CMC is this: Computer-Mediated Communication is a process of human communication via computers, involving people, situated in particular contexts, engaging in processes to shape media for a variety of purposes.	Ferris outlines the current state of scholarly definitions of CMC in research application areas. Murray applies Wittgenstein's ideas of family resemblance to the definition of CMC.

If the Internet involves only data lookup, I'm in trouble. This means there's nothing profound happening online, and I should get out of the business of writing about the Net and researching how people use it. But I don't think that a technologically deterministic view of Internet-based CMC holds. I believe CMC operates within human contexts and is thus a rich forum for human communication and an inexhaustible source of interest for study.

References

John December's (john@december.com) most recent book is The World Wide Web Unleashed 1997 (Indianapolis: Sams.net Publishing, 1997).

Copyright © 1997 by John December. All Rights Reserved.