One day, my friend Sarah revealed to me that had been talking via instant messaging to Josh, a boy she had met online a few months prior. Sarah and Josh’s relationship began on a videogame website where she had posted a question on one of the forums and he had responded with a joke. After a couple of messages, Josh and Sarah exchanged screen names and started communicating on a regular basis. Their friendships lasted for over a year and then they began dating junior year of high school and before they met, the couple decided to attend the same college after graduation. Sarah and Josh finally encountered face-to-face during orientation, on their first day at Delaware State.
The virtual stage of Josh and Sarah’s relationship extended all throughout high school. They sent each other pictures, emails and talked on the phone every night. The relationship moved from friends to couple over a long time, giving Sarah and Josh time to get to know one another in different situations and at different times. When they finally met, Sarah revealed to me that it felt like they had always known each other face-to-face and that there wasn’t any uneasiness or awkwardness. They instantly began to hold hands and Sarah moved into Josh’s dorm room the next week.
The Social Info Processing Theory (Walther) explains Josh and Sarah’s interaction. SIP rejects that the absence of non-verbal cues restricts the capability to exchange social information and states that over time cues are adapted to the verbal channel. Here, the key is time. Although impression formation develops more slowly in CMC than it does in FtF, after a while, it will reach the same level in both environments. Like in my friend’s case, the relationship extended long enough in a CMC environment that by the time it left the virtual world, it had reached the same level of relational development it would have if they had met in person from the beginning.
Overall, leaving virtuality and entering the FtF world can sometime lead to positive (Uncertainty Reduction Theory) or negative (SIDE) outcomes. In the case of Sarah and Josh, the outcome was neutral. Meeting FtF did not change their opinion of each other, rather it confirmed what they already knew about each other. This is because their relationship had matured so much that by the time they met in person that all barriers had been destroyed, doubts had been eliminated and they had become so comfortable and honest with each other that selective self-presentation, the risk of over-attributing (hyperpersonal) or generalizing (SIDE) were not issues anymore.
MY COMMENTS:
http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/11/11-meeting-friend-irl.html
http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/11/11-so-i-guess-im-your-roommate.html
1 comment:
That's really interesting that they decided to go to the same college without having ever met each other in person. That seems really sketchy. Why didn't they just fly out and meet each other first? I'm glad it worked out though.
Also, I like how you added both URT and SIDE as a reference for what could have happened, as opposed to SIP. That is a clever approach and I wish I had thought of that when writing my post.
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