This study examines three popular theories of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and how they relate to increased modes of interactivity. The research takes place in a highly interactive virtual world called "There." A total of 18 participants took part in the study. Using participant-observation and in-depth interviews, the study found that all three perspectives manifested themselves in both the reported and observed behavior. The three perspectives examined are the social information processing theory (SIPT), the social identity model of de-individuation effects (SIDE), and the hyperpersonal perspective. The study found that SIPT and the hyperpersonal perspective did the best job at explaining the observed behavior, although many factors of the SIDE model also helped.

K-pop throughout Asia and cause a new Korean wave in recent years, fans who adore K-pop idol has been gradually expanding and attracted much attention. You can see fans showing their fanatical behavior from the news reports. Fans use the Internet to quickly grasp the information, the e-community is the best platform for fans. Fan culture has become increasingly rich and diverse in the era of the Internet. This study tries to explore that fans how to interact with the Internet technology¡HAnd the Internet technology how to change the network relationship between the fans¡HIn this study, the data collected through participant observation and interviews with fans who adore K-pop idol. The result found that Internet is the best tools for fans, it can transmit and spread information. The Internet became a bridge which connecting fans around the world. Fans gathered together and collected resources to reach the goal, they also establish online identity based on their common e-community¡Bcommon experience instead of their background.

Issues concerning communication, information technology and democracy are focused points of studies in politics, sociology and communication. In the past few decades, the Internet has changed the image and ecology of mass media. The Internet provides more opportunities than other media for individuals to participate in the public discourse. Many scholars have suggested that Internet¡¦s characteristics such as real-time, interactivity, openness, and equality may help balance the power and bias exerted by traditional mass media. In this research three Internet forums (board) in Taiwan were analyzed by adopting the content analysis to evaluate the quality of discourse based on the communicative act theory proposed by Habermas. Specifically, we investigate several issues: Is the online forum an open, equal public place? Do participants interact with one another? Do they reach rational-critical discussion within an environment lack of social context cues? Do those virtual debates lead to cohesion and influence the real-life political process? There are several findings. First, although online forums are more open than traditional media¡¦s, individuals without internet facilities and skills are excluded from participation. Even within the forums, participants are not totally free to join or speak due to the registration, written netiquette norms, and hierarchical control systems. Secondly, instead of equally joining the discussion, a small percentage of people contribute to a majority of discourse in two websites¡¦ forums. That is, although online forums provide an opportunity for democratic discourse, it does not mean that everyone subscribed to the online discussion will participate equally. Thirdly, it is possible for individuals to reach rational-critical discussion within a CMC environment, the virtual debates rarely lead to consensus, let alone influencing real-life policy-making. In sum, this study concludes that the Internet has not become an alternative to the traditional media as a public sphere.

According to ¡§the research of Internet users in Taiwan¡¨ by Institute for Information Industry, the number of Internet users in Taiwan has reached 8,590 thousand, and the prevalence rate was 38 percent at December, 2003. And the broadband users also reached 2,100 thousand. As it, we could figure out that the importance of Internet is keep growing. Since the significance and specialty of Internet, many scholars have begun to study for the communication behaviors on Internet. Computer mediated communication contains many kinds of activities, including chat room, BBS, online game, etc. Internet literature is also a kind of computer mediated communication behavior. Traditionally, literature is purely a personal behavior, but the spread and publication of writings is depending on publishers. Therefore, not all people could let their writings be published. Nonetheless, in the world of Internet, everyone could put his writings on BBS or websites. As the characteristics and probabilities of traditional and Internet literature are different, I would focus on the writer of Internet literature, and try to understand their personalities, motivations and behaviors by using both interview in depth and questionnaire. I hope to build the total map of Internet literature from this research. From the research, I found the backgrounds and personalities of Internet writers seem the same. Over half of the writers are students, between 16-30 years old, and have Internet using experience over 3 years. The genres of their writings are mostly romantic novels. For the motivations of writing, ¡§writing is its own purpose¡¨ is the most accepted motivation. Besides, most writers tend to interact with other writers or readers, and adjust their material and style of writings from the interaction. Therefore, Internet literature is not a single-way transmission behavior, but a double-ways social interaction process.

Throughout the life-cycle of a design project, architects rely heavily on their tacit design knowledge to support design decisions. Tacit knowledge is highly personal and implicit. As such, it encompasses expertise, intuitive understanding, and professional insight formed as a result of experience. Due to its implicit nature, tacit design knowledge is typically shared only among colleagues who work in the same office through face-toface interactions. With emerging Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) technologies, designers face new opportunities for capturing and reusing tacit design knowledge. However, there is no accepted CMC strategy for sharing tacit design knowledge in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. This research investigates the impact of tacit design knowledge on design performance in a distributed design environment supported by CMC software. The software was developed and tested in three design studios in which design students sought advice from experts in remote locations. It provides tools for showing images, such as drawings and renderings, and for engaging in a written dialogue (chat session). The written and graphic artifacts of the conversation are stored in a Web-accessible database. The chat sessions included the identification, clarification, and explanation of real problems. Dialogue records provide evidence of a significant influence upon the students’ approach to conceptual design. Content analysis of the comments from the experts provides qualitative evidence for the software’s effectiveness. The participants shared past experience, professional recommendations, and intuitive expectations. In follow-up surveys, most participants reported that their experience with the software was very enjoyable and the software is well-designed to support sharing of design knowledge. This research also suggests that tacit design knowledge may be confidently captured and shared through careful strategic implementation of CMC technology in a distributed design environment. Demographic and attitudinal surveys of the participants suggest that enabling factors for sharing tacit design knowledge include knowledge sharing attitude, just-in-time expertise matching, and timing of the communication.

<p>This essay investigates cases of Swedish-English code-switching in a bilingual discussion forum on the Internet. Code-switching is a linguistic term used to describe switches from one language to another in discourse. The material consists of excerpts from the forum which have been analyzed and presents various cases of code-switching which appeared in the forum. The examples from the forum presented in this essay are chosen due to their relevance to code-switching and bilingualism. The examples were analyzed according to Romaine’s (1989) and Klintborg’s (1999) classifications of code-switching.</p><p>The research questions sought to find out if, how and why the bilingual users in this forum code-switch when communicating. The results proved that the bilingual users do code-switch, and that the most common switch is the insertion of one word, or several words, in another language into an otherwise monolingual sentence. The discussion part also consists of a summary of the switches in the forum.</p><p>The conclusion of the study is that code-switching does exist in this forum, and the participants code-switch in different ways, however mainly to show hospitality and to signal a belonging to the group.</p>

This Report addresses the importance of intercultural communicative competence among foreign language learners and the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) technology to achieve this goal in the classroom. CMC technology provides learners a unique opportunity to interact with students of different cultures, a situation that allows for experiential learning to occur and which has been shown to lead to gains in intercultural communicative competence. The work begins with a definition of culture and intercultural communicative competence, followed by a review of general approaches used to facilitate such competence in students, and finally a review of the literature on the positive and negative aspects of using CMC for cross-cultural learning. As the aim of this work is to offer teachers a resource and guidance for implementing intercultural exchanges via the use of CMC tools, the Report concludes with suggestions on best practices for using CMC in the foreign language classroom. / text

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) has been shown to facilitate positive outcomes in language learning environments, including greater motivation, positive attitudes, and increased interactive quantity and quality of language use. This study posits that CMC can serve as an affordance that allows for increased opportunities for deaf students to engage in direct, collaborative learning and meaningful interaction in English that then allows for increased motivation, improved visualizations of the self, attitudes, and self-efficacy in English language learning. Changes in these outcomes due to the intervention of CMC in college English classes designed for the deaf student will be assessed with pre- and post-tests, using hierarchical linear modeling as a statistical methodology to capture class effects. Qualitative analyses will also capture greater levels of complexity in instructor and student experiences with CMC through interviews, observations, and transcript analysis. This report also includes an evaluation plan with an outline of the essential program components, a logic model, and analysis plan based on stakeholder questions. / text

This study seeks to investigate this core research topic: how identity is involved in everyday interactions between Chinese microblogging website users? By understanding identity as an element in the interaction context of discursive practices, the investigation is achieved through the analysis of naturally occurring text-based online data. Conversation Analysis (CA) and Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA) are used to do the analysis. The former will focus on the interaction structure while the latter will be used to make some of the contents in the interactions relevant. This study seeks to make the “orderliness” (Sacks, 1972) and “members’ methods” (Garfinkel, 1967) under a particular context describable and analyzable. The sequential and categorical organization described in this study shows how members are oriented to identities in the in situ context when they exchange their ideas on a sensitive topic, and on a microblogging website. / text

This dissertation research investigated the role of online discussion in students’ experience in an academic writing class. As an intervention study, I implemented 20-minute-long online discussions at the end of every class period over a semester as part of required class activities and measured students’ subsequent timed writings and their first and final essays to trace some possible influence from online discussion to their writing development. Topics for online discussions were organized according to course objectives and the day’s lesson, with students developing subtopics reflecting their own interest according to the evolution of each discussion. These topics included theoretical concepts on academic writing as well as orthographical, lexical, grammar, and discourse-related inquiries. Participants included 10 treatment and 12 control students registered in two sections of a rhetoric and composition course designated for non-native English speaking students at a private university. This course was not an ESL class, but was part of the regular composition course offerings, except that it was restricted to international students specifically. Data sources included the treatment group’s 26 online discussion transcripts, 12 sets of timed writings, individual interviews, field notes, two types of essays, and surveys. The control group contributed essays, one set of timed writing taken in the middle of the semester, survey responses, five class recordings, and an instructor interview. Data analysis was performed by using a mixed method approach. Results from online discussion transcripts revealed that treatment students made use of online discussions for their learning, shown through types and characteristics of language-, content-, and writing-related episodes and the semester-long changes and pattern in such talk. Interviews and survey data showed students’ positive learning experiences and changes in their perception toward computer-mediated learning experiences over the semester. In terms of students’ writing, the treatment group made significant improvement in their timed writings over the semester and also outperformed the control group in essay writing significantly, in five of seven categories on a writing rubric. The most significant finding from this study was the improvement of treatment students’ writing scores over the semester. This study suggests the possible value of incorporating computer-mediated instruction in writing instruction as well as future research ideas that bridge research on traditional L2 writing and technology-enriched language learning. / text