Employer monitoring of communications is prevalent and on the rise due in part to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Health Insurance Privacy Protection Act, and other legislation in the U.S. and other countries. However, the critical effect of this new activity on what is communicated in companies has not been assessed. This dissertation examines the impacts of computer mediated communication systems monitoring on neutral, incriminating and exculpatory content, as well as the overall volume of communications issued on monitored and non-monitored computer mediated communication systems. Incriminating communication is cataloged in a hazard communications taxonomy for this investigation. A controlled laboratory experiment has subjects participate in an instant messaging discussion on a topic for which they are likely to be aware of information that is incriminating to their organization, or its members, or both. Consistent with self awareness theory, monitored subjects engage in significantly less overall and neutral communication. They volunteer fewer high intensity hazard communications, but are less likely to curtail low intensity hazard communications. They issue denials about more incriminating topics. Contributions to research include theory development, especially in the area of standard selection; application of self-awareness theory to the new domain of computer mediated communications monitoring; a research framework; a taxonomy and coding scheme for the new hazard communications constructs; and a relative standards influence instrument and methodology for use in studying competing standards. Implications for corporate monitoring and communications policies are discussed, and a research agenda is outlined.

<p>Electronic mail has become the medium of choice in most organizations because of some of its special features. E-mail, like all computer-mediated communication, changes the way we interact and has therefore an impact on working conditions, sometimes in a negative direction. Research findings so far show divergent opinions about how e-mail has influenced work. </p><p>The main purpose of this thesis is to understand and explain if and why there are possible negative outcomes of e-mail usage in organizations, and to use the findings to develop a guiding model for organizational e-mail use. In order to meet the goals set, earlier research in the area Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) that focus on the effects on the social system was used. This research is mainly based on theories of media choice and communication theories, which offer a valuable contribution for understanding why e-mail might be used in improper ways in organizations. Empirical data was collected in several steps using different techniques. The target group was managers in different kinds of organizations, but also administrative staff and teachers. The result shows that there are several reasons why e-mail usage might be a problem in organizations like expectations of fast feedback and being constantly updated, post absence backlog, too much information in e-mail, too many incoming e-mails, irrelevant information, decreased personal contact, a more sedentary work environment and e-mail splitting the respondents' time.</p><p>The contribution of this thesis is that possible negative aspects of e-mail use in organizations are due to a combination of factors. To overcome any organizational disadvantages of e-mail it is vital to consider the e-mail users' behaviors, feelings and attitudes in a specific organizational context in combination with e-mail's special features. A number of guidelines are presented to help organizations and individuals make e-mail use more efficient and satisfying.</p>

Electronic mail has become the medium of choice in most organizations because of some of its special features. E-mail, like all computer-mediated communication, changes the way we interact and has therefore an impact on working conditions, sometimes in a negative direction. Research findings so far show divergent opinions about how e-mail has influenced work. The main purpose of this thesis is to understand and explain if and why there are possible negative outcomes of e-mail usage in organizations, and to use the findings to develop a guiding model for organizational e-mail use. In order to meet the goals set, earlier research in the area Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) that focus on the effects on the social system was used. This research is mainly based on theories of media choice and communication theories, which offer a valuable contribution for understanding why e-mail might be used in improper ways in organizations. Empirical data was collected in several steps using different techniques. The target group was managers in different kinds of organizations, but also administrative staff and teachers. The result shows that there are several reasons why e-mail usage might be a problem in organizations like expectations of fast feedback and being constantly updated, post absence backlog, too much information in e-mail, too many incoming e-mails, irrelevant information, decreased personal contact, a more sedentary work environment and e-mail splitting the respondents' time. The contribution of this thesis is that possible negative aspects of e-mail use in organizations are due to a combination of factors. To overcome any organizational disadvantages of e-mail it is vital to consider the e-mail users' behaviors, feelings and attitudes in a specific organizational context in combination with e-mail's special features. A number of guidelines are presented to help organizations and individuals make e-mail use more efficient and satisfying.

Double diffusive phenomena occur in many natural systems and in a variety of engineering applications, such as solar ponds. In a solar pond, the erosion of gradient zone due to convection and diffusion is the main cause of inefficiency and hence, requires lot of maintenance. In this thesis, control of erosion of the gradient zone in a solar pond situation has been studied through experiments and transient numerical simulations. A laboratory solar pond was setup in a tank of size 19cm X 19cm X 19cm, and was heated from below. A polymer additive, Carboxy Methyl Cellulose (CMC) was used to increase the viscosity of the working fluid. With 0.01% CMC, viscosity enhancement of the working fluid by 25 to 30 times was achieved, without changing any other properties. The transient momentum, energy and species conservation equations along with continuity equation were solved numerically, using the SIMPLER algorithm with 2 mm grid spacing. The experiments conducted with the addition of CMC, showed delays in the onset of convection and reduced erosion of the gradient zone. The erosion rates obtained from the numerical simulations agreed with the experimental observation. The impact of viscosity on the onset of convection, kinetic energy, convection pattern, frequency of bursts and erosion rate of the gradient zone, were simulated. Numerical simulations revealed that, there is a nonlinear relationship between the viscosity and erosion rate of the gradient zone. Increase in viscosity by a factor of 15 reduced the erosion of gradient zone completely, indicating the dominant role played by Turbulent entrainment. The present work indicates that the control of erosion of gradient zone in solar pond using the polymer additive shows lot of promise. The use of the polymer additive as a method to increase viscosity will lower the maintenance costs and, increase the reliability and efficiency of solar ponds, with less than 5% increase in the initial cost.

<p>I rapporten undersöks problemställningen ”<strong>Hur kan teorin om Gemensam grund och specifikt ”gemensamt avslut” bidra till en ökad förståelse för betydelsen av social interaktion i flexibel undervisning via datorförmedlad kommunikation?” </strong>i en fallstudie med fokus på videokonferenssystem vilka används i lärandemiljöer. Resultaten som framkom tydliggjorde att då ett sociotekniskt glapp uppstår tvingas studenterna att skapa alternativa strategier för att kunna uppnå just det här gemensamma avslutet. Därmed uppvisar också resultaten att drivkraften att uppnå gemensamt avslut inte endast är stark vid kommunikation som sker ansikte mot ansikte utan även vid datorförmedlad kommunikation. Fallstudiens resultat kan därmed ses som ett bidrag till grundforskningen i det att betydelsen av att uppnå gemensamt avslut vid datorförmedlad kommunikation uppvisas, vilket också förstärker betydelsen av Clarks (1996) teori om gemensam grund. Vidare har resultaten från fallstudien också använts för tillämpad forskning då designkonsekvenser tagits fram vilka beskriver hur videokonferenssystem i lärandemiljöer bör utformas för att studenter lättare ska kunna uppnå gemensamt avslut via systemen. Med hjälp av dessa designkonsekvenser kan det sociotekniska glappet reduceras och därigenom skapa ett framgångsrikt lärande för studenter vilka studerar via flexibelt lärande.</p>

The purpose of this study was to explore how instructors of online courses accommodate and make provisions for culturally diverse learners in an online community of inquiry. Ten instructors from two Alberta higher education institutions participated in two phases of research. To explore this phenomenon in the CoI model, intercultural competency indicators were created to test how they could develop and expand teaching and social presence in a cross-cultural environment. In the first phase, analysis of the open-ended survey questionnaire (AMEQ) revealed that in the absence of any cross-cultural design, instructors use facilitation and open communication strategies to foster learning and prevent conflict. The second phase, informed by the first phase, involved augmenting the original 34-item CoI survey instrument. Additional roles that relate to instructor cross-cultural efficacy were incorporated into both teaching presence and social presence elements in the CoI survey instrument. The revised 37-item CoI survey instrument was then administered to the same respondents for face validity. Findings revealed that the incorporated cultural indicators correlated highly with the teaching and social indicators, indicating their usefulness to measure multicultural efficacy in the CoI model. / 2012-April

Computer-mediated environments such as social media create new social climates that impact communication interactions in un-mediated environments. This study examined social variables during conversations on Twitter through a qualitative document analysis that coded messages into affective, interactive or cohesive categories. Perceived social presence, participant satisfaction, and relationships between social presence and satisfaction among Twitter users during streaming conversations were examined through an online questionnaire that was created using qualtrics.com and made available to respondents over a one-week period. The researcher concluded that most social variables in the Twitter conversations of this study fall into the interactive social presence category. In addition, each category of responses functions in a different way to foster social presence. Two groups of survey respondents agreed with 10 out of 21 and 13 out of 21 statements about social presence and 10 out of 13 and 12 out of 13 statements about satisfaction. Findings indicated that positive and negative relationships exist between social presence and satisfaction. Both conversations in this study appeared to be successful. Therefore, agricultural communicators should feel comfortable using CMC more frequently to circulate agricultural information among populations across the globe. It was recommended that further research be conducted to examine social presence among new topics, populations, and other forms of CMC.

This thesis presents two empirical studies of four pairs of design students collaborating on two small products design sessions in both face-to-face and distributed settings while using computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies and a Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE). To gain insight about the way designers communicate and collaborate, the observation focused on how much time the students worked "together" and "individually" in the design process. Each design process was video recorded and analyzed with a video analysis software Observer XT. The first study shows that both teams worked together to arrive at a design concept then they divided the work for each person to work independently (either the 3D modeling task or the 2D graphic task) to produce the final design. Teams worked together less than fifty percent of the overall work time because they could not share design information effectively using the computing technology tools on the collaborative design process. Findings of the first study suggested plausible design criteria for communication tools for distributed collaboration that supports interaction and sharing design information. The second study used the same methodology and experimental procedures as those used in study. However, participants were provided a shared tool such as NetMeeting Whiteboard and Shared program that support shared sketching abilities or shared viewing of 3D objects. The study shows that teams spent more time working together when using programs that support shared sketching abilities or shared viewing of 3D objects. The shared program and the whiteboard function from NetMeeting helped the design teams to share more information. Participants commented that this program helped facilitate the collaborative process by enabling them each to perform multiple tasks such as talking with their teammates and observing 3D object in a shared view at the same time. Participants also reported that they found the distributed setting a more engaging environment to work with teammates because they were "forced to be engaged" and "forced to communicate better," and that they "concentrated more using hand gestures on camera." Although two studies showed that current CVE (Unreal) did not lead to effective collaboration, several potential features such as creating virtual mock-ups for the brainstorming within a virtual environment were introduced. Participants consider real time 3D visualization effective in the design process and thus very promising in the collaborative setting if they can share ideas easily within a 3D virtual environment.

abstract: As an outlet of communication between internet users, digital social media has created opinionated engagement between people that have similar and often contrasting views, just like those in face-to-face communication (Mckenna & Bargh, 2014). The problem is that these digital conversations occur in a synthetic environment, causing users to develop alternative psychological patterns of engagement (Lauren & Hsieh, 2014), that could potentially push them to inadvertently or unknowingly create and participate in negative social interaction with others. The purpose of this study was to determine and assess the needs of a writing heuristic for social media participants to use in engagement with others to increase coherency, civility, and engagement response in content. Research explored existing literature on engagement behavior in digital social media and computer-mediated communication (CMC) and was then used in qualitative sentiment analysis of business-to-consumer social media environments, aiming to recognize the needs in developing a social media writing heuristic. This research found that such heuristic should prompt and advise users to remove ambiguity within engagement practices, encouraging the implementation of salient social markers and nonverbal cues in text. Social media users should also be prompted to create familiarity with others through the posing of messages in an emotional frame that is aligned with their audience’s emotional attitudes, increasing persuasive argumentation and discussion. As well, users should be prompted to thoroughly understand the issues in discussion and follow dynamics to create productive engagement, while avoiding engagement with negative commentary. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Communication 2016

The purpose of this study is to describe and offer a description of postgraduate students' experiences of computer-mediated communication in an interactive web-based learning environment. This is relevant to the South African context regarding its appropriateness and feasibility as a distance-learning medium. In this research study the collaboration of offline and online learning as a dual medium is briefly looked at. Concepts involved in web interactions, such as computer-mediated communication, are reviewed and some of these experiences are described. A systems qualitative analysis was employed in the research design, and consequently a systemic lens was utilised as the theoretical perspective. This lens allowed for a revealing of interactional and communication patterns involved in web-based learning environments. The findings in this research study are discussed and some recommendations for web learners and course presenters are briefly highlighted. / Dissertation (MA (Research Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Psychology / unrestricted