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Computer-Mediated Communication: who is mediating what?

Computer-Mediated Communication: who is mediating what?. John Bateman University of Bremen. Three areas of inquiry for this talk. the role and nature of the communication itself the role and function of the ‘user-receiver’ the position and role of the computer. Person. Medium. Computer.

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Computer-Mediated Communication: who is mediating what?

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  1. Computer-Mediated Communication: who is mediating what? John Bateman University of Bremen

  2. Three areas of inquiry for this talk • the role and nature of the communication itself • the role and function of the ‘user-receiver’ • the position and role of the computer

  3. Person Medium Computer Computer Person “from tool to medium” HCI Person CMC StartingPoints Computer asMachine or Tool adapted from: Höller, Heinzpeter: "Kommunikationssysteme - Normung und soziale Akzeptanz", Braunschweig 1993, S. 107 ff.

  4. Some Motivations • ‘anytime’/ ‘anyplace’ interaction • re-use of materials for wider audience • re-purposing of materials

  5. Person Computer Person Person Person Person Person Information Re-Use Information Re-purposing

  6. I: The role and nature of the communication itself • explore ways of characterizing activity that occurs in computer mediated communication systems • analyses in CMC have tended to concentrate on the group activities from a social perspective

  7. Classification of situations according to time and place Johansen 1992

  8. Approaches from Linguistics:e.g., register theory • The language that occurs in a situation is critically responsive to that situation • features of the situation systematically call for particular kinds of features in the language • features of the language are one of the main means by which speakers judge their communicative situations

  9. Written permanent record more anonymous audiences Spoken joint, interactive achievement specific audiences Context • Language: • semantics, • grammar, • phonology,...

  10. Attention and possible disagreement marker Temporal proximity marker Participant+ Contrast Point of disagreement Addressees Contrasting forms “In your reply to David’s message at 21-Jan-2000 09:21:12 you said “that sucks”, but this is not what you said at 21-Jan-2000 09:20:30 to Pete.” “Hey, you just told Pete it was OK.”

  11. Contrasting forms “In your reply to David’s message at 21-Jan-2000 09:21:12 you said “that sucks”, but this is not what you said at 21-Jan-2000 09:20:30 to Pete.” “Hey, you just told Pete it was OK.”

  12. Consequences... • interaction is a very exact thing! • the degree of success or otherwise of a CMC-system that attempts to support relatively free interaction will be directly related to the extent to which it has managed to simulate the ‘immediacy’ and the ‘placement’ of expression normal with speech

  13. Computer Person Person Person II: The role and function of the ‘user-receiver’ learning, distance learning Educator Student Interactants Interactants communication Company Client business Workers Workers CSCW

  14. Computer Person Person Person II: The role and function of the ‘user-receiver’ SIMULATION Student Student learning, distance learning Educator Student Interactants Interactants communication business Company Client Workers Workers CSCW

  15. Person Computer Person Person Person Person Person Customization Information tailoring

  16. Respecting the needs of the receiver is relatively new! • how appropriate documents are for their readers is one focus of development within Graphic DesignDocument DesignInformation Design this century • still underestimated to what extent the reader needs to be considered • (note: parallel but largely independent of UI-work)

  17. The functional turn • With schools of graphic design such as the Bauhaus and the Swiss School, the role of communicative purpose and function was brought into typography and document design • this has also developed, as with CMC, alongside emerging technologies... gannets

  18. Redistribution of Information across modalities and across time 1972 The plumage is white with a tinge of buff on the head and neck and dark brown, almost black, wing-tips. Immatures are firstdusky all over, laterpiebald or white sprinkled with dark spots. Plumage white, save the wing quills, which are dark brown, not black as usually stated. The fledglingblackish-slate, spotted white. Immature till the third or fourth year, and recognized by the dark brown, chiefly on the back, wings, and tail, which colour diminishes season by season till at maturity reduced to the brown of the wing quills. 1924 ADULT: White,black wing-tips, yellow nape. JUVENILE: Grey, gradually becoming white over 5 years. 1996

  19. Integrating Words and Pictures Studies show that designers must help readers: • search for the information they want in prose and graphics • make sense of it once they find it • construct a coherent interpretation of the prose and graphics • generate connections between the words and the pictures • put the information to personal use.

  20. ‘Rhetoric’ for organising information • something that is perceived as necessary for good document design: and particulary web design and online interaction... • but how to systematise and teach it?

  21. The GEM project:‘Genre and Multimodality’(http://www.gem.stir.ac.uk)Stages in Analysis • Content analysis: what ‘facts’ are being communicated? • Rhetorical analysis: what is the RST structure? • Layout analysis: • what layout elements are there`? • what is their hierarchical structure? • Does the layout support the rhetoric?

  22. Relation between content, rhetorical organisation and layout • examine the page layout • examine the rhetorical structure of the information as presented • look for interrelationships

  23. Rhetorical Structure Theory: RST NUCLEUS SATELLITE so you don´t get the wires mixed up. Replace spark plugs one at a time (Honda Civic car manual) Example relation: motivation

  24. motivation presents an action in which the reader is the actor and which is `unrealized´ with respect to the context NUCLEUS Replace spark plugs one at a time comprehending the satellite increases the reader´s desire to perform the action presented in the nucleus SATELLITE so you don´t get the wires mixed up. EFFECT: the reader´s desire to perform the action presented in the nucleus is increased.

  25. A simple case

  26. Layout Structure: blocks

  27. Rhetorical Structure of the Page elaboration joint The artic explorer wears lots of warm clothes to protect him from the cold ‘material’ balaclava trousers mittens windproof top boots woolen underclothing

  28. Layout Structure of the Page the page G A B C D E F

  29. Content Analysis

  30. RST analysis background background elaboration elaboration body parts Tiger: pic attributes relationships comparisons lifespan diet weight length young height season body maturity gestation tail joint purpose means elaboration joint function coat joint coating of stripes background eyes hearing joint Tiger: mouth ( pic ) back of ears white spots claws canines molars ( pic ) function purpose ( pic ) claws why retract

  31. Page Layout Elements

  32. Layout Structure Types of element: Drawing Intermediate Caption Textblock eyes ears coat mouth teeth claws

  33. Bad Documents and Bad Products • When people experience difficulty in understanding either texts or technology, they tend to blame themselves more often than they should. • This has potentially serious long-term consequences: • leading them to believe that they are incapable of dealing with complex technology • leading students (of any age) to believe that they are too incompetent to understand the subjects they study in school or the topics and technologies they must learn on the job.

  34. The ‘illusion of knowing’ Poorly designed textbooks can create more than one kind of problem for readers. ... at times we may overestimate how well we understand. ... College students... who read texts in which experimenters had “planted” contradictions failed to notice the contradictions. Suprisingly, after having read contradictory material, students rated themselves as feeling ‘very certain’ they understood the text. In fact, students had overlooked the contradictions and had answered many of the comprehension questions incorrectly. cf. Schriver (1997:226) Glenberg, Wilkinson and Epstein (1982) Memory and Cognition 10(6):597-602.

  35. Person Computer III:The position and role of the computer Person

  36. Computer Person Person Exchange of Data mediated by Computer Data Data

  37. Person Person Person Person Exchange of Data mediated by Computer Computer Data Data

  38. Automatic and Semi-automatic information extraction A A A A A A A A A User Interface Information Retrieval User Data Visualisation and Natural Language Generation Structured Knowledge Base Authors Example: the Dartbio information system:Artist Biographical Data

  39. Information Request Handler User Museum Curators Data Web-browser Visualisation and Natural Language Generation Structured Knowledge Base Example: the ILEX system:Interactive Web-based Museum Explorer (University of Edinburgh) Form-based information input interface

  40. University of Edinburgh ILEX System startup page Automatic webpage generation from an annotated data base

  41. Person Computer Structured Knowledge Base Data Person Person New roles and functions for the information ‘preparer’? learning, distance learning Educator Student Interactants Interactants communication business Company Client Workers Workers CSCW

  42. Symbolic Authoringe.g., Drafter project http://www.itri.brighton.ac.uk/projects/drafterAgile project http://www.itri.brighton/projects/agile • Symbolic authoring allows a ‘writer’ to produce texts via a specification of the texts’ intended meaning rather than directly as text • A text generation component then converts these specifications into natural texts • Advantages: • the text generation component can produce a variety of texts from the same information • e.g., variations in style and selectedlanguage • non-variation can be enforced, e.g., terminology

  43. Multilingual Document Production • Producing documents from a single knowledge base source for different language communities • Can either be: • translation based: text-in, text-out • generation based: authored content-in, text-out • Can also be spoken (Verbmobil Project: http://verbmobil.dfki.de)

  44. New Technologies and CMC • New technologies (such as Natural Language Processing) are changing the role that the computer can take on when mediating information • There are already significant applications where information presentation is largely taken over...

  45. USA Today: development of the “Weather Page” 1981 1990 1994

  46. “Conclusions...” • There are many places where linguistics and computational linguistics will come together in CMC • Understandings of both the ‘rhetoric’ (more written organisation) and ‘interaction’ (more spoken) are crucial • One of the most important pieces of ‘information design’ to be done is visualising the interaction process in a way that builds on how spoken language already works

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