Aya Haneda - Blog #2

The topic that was examined last class was “Chatrooms and Forums”. At the time, I found it peculiar that we were assigned to perform these tasks online but later realized that the idea of chatrooms and online forums and how an individual communicates through online were associated with what we were doing for class. We were commenting on an aspect or question that raised answers and our other audience; our peers in our class had the likelihood of reading it. This explores the concept of “writing on an online forum” and the idea of how CMC can be interpreted differently than Ftf; similar to what was explored last week. The way my peers (receiver) in class interpreted my online answer could have differed to meaning that I had intended to build.

In this class, I explored the Mommy Forum, similar to the name of the online chatroom where like all forums target a particular author, in my case it targeted mommies. Upon understanding the forum, I didn’t think I would have much to investigate but while answering the questions did I realize how much effort and time were used to create the layout specifically for individuals of this target age. The Fantasy Football forum had a layout where in the mommies eyes may seem more complicated than the layout in the Mommy forum. The features of stars, rankings and approvals have aided mommies or future audiences in other forums to show how effective or important a comment or humorous a comment might be.

From this class, I realized how much thought were put into the idea of online chatrooms than I once believed. Every aspect and every detail proves a solid reason of why the aspect is present in the chatroom or online forum. Every star, approval, upvotes are all features that work well. I believe that these features all aid the goal of an online forum, which is to communicate with a wide variety of audiences that you may not have Ftf contact in at that point in your life. Linking this concept to our class in CAS283, the idea of the lack of social context cues and social presence theory could be the reason to the misperception of my comments. The third factor – the Channel is missing in the hyperpersonal communication by Walther. The channel holds a key role in understanding and decoding messages. Without cognitive reallocation; body positioning, facial attributes it is hard for the receiver to decode this message and thus we tend own a self-fulfilling prophecy; the feedback loop where we try to treat our partners interpretations aligned with your own perception.

Another aspect that we touched on was the idea of reliability of individuals on these forums.  We have the freedom to create our own nickname and this could be related to the idea of falsifying your own identity. What are the dangers to online forums and communications? You may know more than what you factually know and you may have a tendency to reveal more information about yourself than through Ftf. CMC has a tendency to self-disclose earlier compared to other types of communication. In the Mommy forum, this was visible when individuals stated what they were doing everyday and where these individuals should go to find “fun baby toys”. These mommies felt so comfortable with the idea of other mommies feeling their same stress and happiness that they tended to give many personal information.  Individuals should be careful in the world of CMC.