Computer-Mediated Communication: who is mediating what?

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Computer-Mediated Communication who is mediating
what?

• John Bateman
• University of Bremen

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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

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StartingPoints
Computer asMachine
or Tool
adapted from Höller, Heinzpeter
"Kommunikationssysteme - Normung und soziale
Akzeptanz", Braunschweig 1993, S. 107 ff.
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Some Motivations

• anytime/ anyplace interaction
• re-use of materials for wider audience
• re-purposing of materials

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Information Re-Use Information Re-purposing
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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

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Classification of situations according to time
and place
Johansen 1992
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Approaches from Linguisticse.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

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Context
Language semantics, grammar, phonology,...
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Contrasting forms
In your reply to Davids message at 21-Jan-2000
092112 you said that sucks, but this is not
what you said at 21-Jan-2000 092030 to Pete.
Hey, you just told Pete it was OK.
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Contrasting forms
In your reply to Davids message at 21-Jan-2000
092112 you said that sucks, but this is not
what you said at 21-Jan-2000 092030 to Pete.
Hey, you just told Pete it was OK.
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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

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II The role and function of the user-receiver
learning, distance learning
Educator Student
Interactants Interactants
communication
Company Client
business
Workers Workers
CSCW
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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
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Customization Information tailoring
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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)

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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
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1972
Redistribution of Information across modalities
and across time
The plumage is white with a tinge of buff on the
head and neck and dark brown, almost black,
wing-tips. Immatures are first dusky all
over, later piebald or white sprinkled with dark
spots.
Plumage white, save the wing quills, which are
dark brown, not black as usually stated. The
fledgling blackish-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
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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.

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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?

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The GEM projectGenre 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?

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Relation between content, rhetorical organisation
and layout

• examine the page layout
• examine the rhetorical structure of the
  information as presented
• look for interrelationships

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Rhetorical Structure Theory RST
NUCLEUS
SATELLITE
so you dont get the wires mixed up.
Replace spark plugs one at a time
(Honda Civic car manual)
Example relation motivation
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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
readers desire to perform the action
presented in the nucleus
SATELLITE
so you dont get the wires mixed up.
EFFECT the readers desire to perform the
action presented in the nucleus is increased.
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A simple case
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Layout Structure blocks
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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
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Layout Structure of the Page
the page
G
A
B
C
D
E
F
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Content Analysis
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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
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Page Layout Elements
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Layout Structure
Types of element
Drawing
Intermediate
Caption
Textblock
eyes ears coat mouth teeth
claws
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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.

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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 (1997226) Glenberg, Wilkinson and
Epstein (1982) Memory and Cognition
10(6)597-602.
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IIIThe position and role of the computer
Person
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Exchange of Data mediated by Computer
Data
Data
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Exchange of Data mediated by Computer
Computer
Data
Data
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Example the Dartbio information systemArtist
Biographical Data
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Example the ILEX systemInteractive Web-based
Museum Explorer (University of Edinburgh)
Form-based information input interface
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University of Edinburgh ILEX System startup
page Automatic webpage generation from an
annotated data base
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New roles and functions for the information
preparer?
learning, distance learning
Educator Student
Interactants Interactants
communication
business
Company Client
Workers Workers
CSCW
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Symbolic Authoringe.g., Drafter project
http//www.itri.brighton.ac.uk/projects/drafterAg
ile project http//www.itri.brighton/projects/agil
e

• 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 selected language
• non-variation can be enforced, e.g., terminology

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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)

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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...

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USA Today development of the Weather Page
1981
1990
1994
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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