Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is one of the most widely utilized communication techniques in the business world. Although widely used, little is known about the effectiveness of communicating affective information, emotion in particular, through CMC. Most CMC research has investigated communication of cognitive information, however, only a few studies partially incorporate affects in their analyses. As a result, a primary objective of this dissertation is to investigate the following research questions: (1) Can CMC transfer affective information? (2) To what extent does CMC transfer affective information? Integrating relevant literature from psychology as well as communication research, this dissertation proposes a conceptual model based on a modified version of Brunswik's lens model. The research model and hypotheses were developed to guide the empirical tests of cue utilization, i.e, detecting a message sender's emotional intentions from email messages. A total of 225 student subjects participated in a 2 x 3 x 3 (with control groups) laboratory experiment. The results indicate that affective information can be transferred through CMC. In particular, message receivers were able to detect the sender's emotion by (1) associating the message content with positive or negative emotions, (2) using emotion cues such as emotion words, linguistic markers, and paralinguistic cues, and (3) combining these two techniques. The results further indicate that message receivers indicated a higher degree of senders' emotions when the number of emotion cues in the message increased. The results from this study provide some useful information for practitioners as well as for researchers. For practitioners, this study suggests that communicating emotions through electronic media requires careful selections of emotion cues that will be included in the message. For researchers, this study presents a research model that may be used as a foundation for future research in this area. Directions for future research include further examinations of variables that may affect the CMC of emotions. The current study can also be extended to investigate the CMC of emotions across different types of subjects, communication technology, and time frames. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Management Information Systems in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2004. / June 18, 2004. / Lens Model, Emotions, Computer-Mediated Communication, Experiments / Includes bibliographical references. / David B. Paradice, Professor Directing Dissertation; Martin. G. Fennema, Outside Committee Member; Joey F. George, Committee Member; Michael H. Dickey, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_181818 |
| Contributors | Boonthanom, Ranida (authoraut), Paradice, David B. (professor directing dissertation), Fennema, Martin. G. (outside committee member), George, Joey F. (committee member), Dickey, Michael H. (committee member), Department of Management Information Systems (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
Page generated in 0.0184 seconds