Computer Mediated Communication: Is it Real or Unreal?
Day by day, the internet has grabbed the attention of people around the world. More and more people start to use the internet as one of their important source of communication. Before, if we want to communicate with people on the other side of the world, we had to make an expensive phone call or use the slow snail mail. However, today, we can just go to a cyber cafe, pay 3-4 dollars per hour and communicate with them using e-mail or chat room instantly. This type of new communication is called CMC (Computer Mediated Communication). Its ability to give fast and easy communication make us think that it is the future for humankind. However, people start to concern about how this type of communication can affect our lives. If we think that talking to someone face-to-face where we can touch and feel is "real". What about talking the same conversation via CMC without the physical presence? Is it going to make the conversation one level more abstract from the real, making it less real? While many believe that CMC can create real life interactions and meaningful human relation, others argue that CMC is unreal type of interactions because it lacks in humanity and physical presence that tends people to hide their true identities.
If honesty is define as something that made a relationship to look real, advocates argues that online interaction can have honesty among their users. A study by Andrea Baker, an Ohio University sociologist, say that people tends to promote frank and honest conversation in writing(via e-mail) than with people who start their relationship in person (qtd. in Wolcott 147). It is more likely to relate this with what a couple; Hull and his fiancee Lynda, experienced from dating online, who said: "Right from the start, there was the openness, respect and love for each other that has continued to grow and flourish" (Eggett, par 4). When honesty and trust exists in a relationship, CMC can prove that it can also promote something that is called "real"; something that is true and not just a made up place to substituted social reality. They are concerned that "the virtual culture lacks an essential core of humanity where social reality is made up rather than being real" (Maasik and Solomon 145). The interactions that we have using internet to exchange knowledge, share thoughts and feelings are not real because there is no sense of trust, honest and care in the relationship. People tend to hide the truth and lying about who they really are in online relationship. However, skeptics think that the communication via CMC is somewhat unreal type of interactions, primarily because it lack in nature humanity and physical presence. s believe that CMC can produce the same type of communication that we had when talking to someone face-to-face. In communication via CMC, "people exchange information and knowledge, exchange pleasantries and argue, fall in love and share emotional support, find friends and lose them, engage in intellectual discourse, conduct commerce, make plans, brainstorm, flirt, gossip, feud an
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Approximate Word count = 1221
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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