The Permanently Connected Group (PeCoG): An Investigation of Non-Professional Secondary Groups’ Communication via Mobile Instant Messaging Chats 3658432373, 9783658432379

Citation preview

Katharina Knop-Hülß

The Permanently Connected Group (PeCoG) An Investigation of Non-Professional Secondary Groups’ Communication via Mobile Instant Messaging Chats

The Permanently Connected Group (PeCoG)

Katharina Knop-Hülß

The Permanently Connected Group (PeCoG) An Investigation of Non-Professional Secondary Groups’ Communication via Mobile Instant Messaging Chats

Katharina Knop-Hülß Department of Journalism and Communication Research Hanover University of Music, Drama, and Media Hannover, Germany Zugl.: Hannover, Hochsch. für Musik, Theater und Medien, Diss., 2023.

ISBN 978-3-658-43237-9 ISBN 978-3-658-43238-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-43238-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer VS imprint is published by the registered company Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Abraham-Lincoln-Str. 46, 65189 Wiesbaden, Germany Paper in this product is recyclable.

I dedicate this work to Jochen, Marieke and our second child.

Acknowledgments

Writing a doctoral thesis is, by definition, the work of an individual person. That notwithstanding, however, I had the incredible good fortune to write my thesis embedded in a social environment that carried me through all the ups and downs of this year-long process. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people who supported me during this process, professionally and personally. First and foremost, I would like to very much thank Christoph Klimmt for his valuable support and encouraging guidance as my first advisor. An open door was always an invitation to spontaneously talk about challenges, large and small, that arose during the writing process. Even during the pandemic, discussing thesis problems was always just an email away. In addition to providing academic guidance, however, he always had an eye on me keeping a healthy balance. Last but not least, I’m also grateful for our similar preferences when it comes to good background music while writing. I would also like to express my gratitude to my second advisor Helmut Scherer for his guidance throughout the process of completing my thesis. Special thanks are due to Veronika Karnowski. She provided me with valuable input just when I needed it! Thank you to the students from the seminar through which I collected my data. Without their support, I would have never had the opportunity to work on my project the way I wanted to. Data collection was a true group effort! I also want to extend my gratitude to all the participants in my study that trusted me with their communication data. I am grateful to the entire IJK-family for the multitude of stimulating conversations, inspiration and both emotional and practical support they provided. Working at IJK takes place in a wonderful work environment filled with great people. I would like to thank especially Jule Scheper, Sophie Bruns, Dorothée Hefner, Elena Link, Daniel Possler, Anna Freytag, Katharina Emde-Lachmund,

vii

viii

Acknowledgments

Anja Dittrich, Magdalena Rosset, Sabine Reich, Aljoscha Paulus, Julia NiemannLenz, Eva Baumann, Nadine Müller, Corinna Kastner, Ines Schumann, and everyone else whose path at IJK crossed with mine. Over the years, I have met colleagues who, like me, possess a deep fascination for groups and their communication technologies. Thank you to Pranav Malhotra, Malin Fecke, and Johanna Schindler for invaluable conversations with a particular—and rare—group perspective. Most importantly, I need to say thank you to my friends and family. Thank you to Sarah von Hören, a remarkable fellow PhD student and mother, whose support and companionship have been incredibly helpful in keeping me motivated and focused throughout this journey. Thank you to Julia Winkler for broadening my horizons and perspective on so many levels. I value our friendship beyond words. Thank you to my friends outside of academia, who helped me see there is indeed a world beyond: Henni, Philip, Santje, Hauke, Edda, Martin, Laura, Mallorie (thanks for your language support!), Kristina, Christin, Antonia, Benjamin, Vero, Axel, Amelie. Thank you to my parents Bärbel and Michael, to my brother Tobias, to Beate, for their unwavering support and always believing in me. I started writing this list of people I am grateful for long before submitting my thesis. The greatest addition to this list that I could have wished for is my daughter Marieke. I am grateful beyond words for the immeasurable joy and enrichment she has brought to our lives. Last, I am deeply indebted to my husband Jochen Hülß without whom I would not be where I am today. Thank you for having my back, pushing me to excel, for encouraging me, for keeping me sane when I started learning R, for being a friend and a true partner in life. Aku mencintaimu.

German Summary

Die Kleingruppe stellt eine soziale Entität dar, die in besonderem Maße von allseits verfügbaren mobilen Kommunikationstechnologien profitiert. Mobile Instant Messaging Applikation (MIMAs) wie WhatsApp und Signal erlauben es Kleingruppen, mit Hilfe des Gruppenchatfeatures ihr Interaktionsrepertoire zu erweitern. Dieses eröffnet ihnen einen ständig verfügbaren Kommunikationsraum, in dem Mitglieder unabhängig ihrer jeweiligen Aufenthaltsorte Gruppenangelegenheiten und anderes diskutieren können. Die daraus resultierende permanente kollektive Erreichbarkeit (PCA) der Chat-Mitglieder hat Auswirkungen auf Gruppenprozesse wie die Koordination von Gruppenaktivitäten oder sozio-emotionale Belange der Mitglieder. Diese Arbeit exploriert die kommunikative Aktivität in MIMA-Gruppenchats von natürlich vorkommenden, zweckorientierten Gruppen aus nicht-professionellen Kontexten. Es wird ausgelotet, inwiefern eine solche Gruppe als permanent verbundene Gruppe (PeCoG) verstanden werden kann. Aus der Integration der Literatur zu interpersonaler und Kleingruppenkommunikation, sowie mobiler und computervermittelter Kommunikation werden mehrere Dimensionen der MIMA-Gruppenkommunikation hergeleitet. Basierend auf einer standardisierten Inhaltsanalyse von 11.515 Gruppenchat-Nachrichten aus 18 Kleingruppen, wird eine umfassende Analyse der Chat-Nachrichten vorgenommen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen eine enge Verknüpfung von Zweckorientierung und Sozioemotionalität, reguläre Gruppentreffen als Taktgeber der MIMA Chats, eine relativ breite Beteiligung von Mitgliedern und, nicht zuletzt, nahezu permanente Aufrechterhaltung des Kommunikationsbetriebs. MIMAGruppenchats stellen damit eine ressourcenschonende Kommunikationsumgebung für die Koordination von Gruppenaktivitäten dar. Von der durch sie ermöglichten PCA scheinen Nutzer*innen in Form kontinuierlicher Kommunikation Gebrauch zu machen.

ix

x

German Summary

So erweitert diese Arbeit Erkenntnisse zu individuellen Erreichbarkeitserwartungen um eine Gruppenperspektive (Bayer et al., 2016; Reinecke et al., 2018). Überdies zeigt sie PeCoGs als Manifestation des Neben- und Miteinanders medialer und kopräsenter Kommunikation auf Gruppenebene (Campbell, 2019; Klimmt et al., 2018). Vor allem aber zeigt sie das Potenzial der Kleingruppenforschung, aktuelle kommunikationswissenschaftliche Phänomene zu beschreiben. Die Arbeit plädiert dafür, den Fokus auf Individuen um die Ebene von Kleingruppen zu erweitern, auch unter der Prämisse, dass Gruppen permanent miteinander verbunden sind. Denn Kleingruppen sind bedeutsam für Individuen und bilden eine Blaupause für die Erforschung kollektiver Prozesse. Sie können daher unser Wissen darüber, wie Medien genutzt werden und welche Wirkungen daraus entstehen, bereichern.

Abstract

The small group constitutes a social entity that particularly benefits from the ubiquitously available connective possibilities of mobile communication technologies. Due to mobile instant messaging applications (MIMAs, e.g., WhatsApp, Signal), small groups can expand their interaction repertoire using their group chat feature. This provides small groups with a permanently and ubiquitously accessible communication place that allows members to relay and share information with all others at once, independent of everyone’s spatiotemporal location. The resulting permanent collective addressability (PCA) of chat members has implications for group processes (e.g., coordination of group activities, socio-emotional concerns of members). This thesis investigates the communicative activity in MIMA group chats of naturally occurring, goal-oriented groups in a non-professional setting. It explores the extent to which a group using such technology can be understood as a permanently connected group (PeCoG). Several dimensions of MIMA group communication are derived from an integration of research on interpersonal and small group communication and mobile and computer-mediated communication. A comprehensive analysis of chat messages is conducted based on a standardized content analysis of 11.515 group chat messages provided by members of 18 small groups. The results demonstrate a strong co-occurrence of task-orientation and socio-emotionality, regular group meetings as the pace-setters of MIMA chats, relatively broad member participation, and, last but not least, an almost permanent continuation of communication throughout the day. MIMA group chats thus represent a resource-efficient communication environment for coordinating group activities, whose permanent collective accessibility seems to be claimed by those using it. This thesis thereby extends findings on expectations to be permanently online and connected from the individual level (Bayer et al., 2016; Reinecke et al.,

xi

xii

Abstract

2018). It further shows PeCoGs as the group-level manifestation of the hybridity of mediated and face-to-face communication that constitutes our current communication reality (Campbell, 2019; Klimmt et al., 2018). What this work demonstrates above all, however, is the potential of small group research to describe current phenomena relevant to the field of communication science. The thesis argues for broadening the focus of communication research from individuals to the collective levels of social contexts and small groups, not only but also on the premise that these groups are permanently connected. After all, small groups provide a relevant context for individuals, constitute a blueprint for studying collective processes and can refine our knowledge of how media is used and which effects arise from this usage.

Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Explicating the Context of Technological Mediation: Changes in Everyday Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Definition of Relevant Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.1 Interpersonal Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.2 Technological Affordances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Permanent Individual Addressability through Mobile Media . . . . 2.2.1 Genesis: From Geographical Addressability to Permanent Connectedness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2 Consequences: New Contexts for Coordination, More Connections, and the Development of a Norm to be Available . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Situating MIMAs and MIMA Group Chats Within the Overall Context of (Mobile) Online Communication . . . . . . . 2.3.1 Classifying MIMAs as Social Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.2 MIMAs as Evolution of Texting and Instant Messaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.3 Identifying Affordances of MIMA Group Chats . . . . . . . . 2.4 Shortcomings of Current Research on MIMA Group Chats . . . . . 2.4.1 Previous Research and the Importance of Considering Communication Content and Process . . . . 2.4.2 The Need for a Small Group Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 Summary: MIMA Group Chats as Context of Technological Mediation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 11 12 12 16 18 18

21 23 25 27 30 35 36 40 42

xiii

xiv

Contents

3 Explicating The Social Context: Applying Small Group Research to the MIMA Group Chat Phenomenon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Definition of Relevant Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.1 Small Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.2 Group Interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Expansion of the Interaction Repertoire Through MIMA Group Chats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 The Group Chat Message: Result of the Interplay of Situation, Member, and Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Non-Professional Secondary Groups (NPSGs) as Research Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.1 Specification and Demarcation of NPSGs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.2 Benefits of Using MIMA Group Chats for the Specific Case of NPSGs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Summary: MIMA Group Chats Through The Lens of Small Group Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

45 47 47 49 56 59 65 65 68 69

4 Deriving Dimensions of MIMA Group Chat Communication . . . . . . 4.1 Coordinative Communication Content as Dimension . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Socio-Emotional Communication Content as Dimension . . . . . . . 4.3 Interaction Management as Dimension of Group Chat Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Temporality as Dimension of MIMA Group Chat Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Summary: Investigating NPSG’s MIMA Group Chat Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

71 73 76

5 Research Agenda of the Current Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Describing Content of MIMA Group Chat messages . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.1 Identifying a Typology of MIMA Group Chat Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.2 Distribution of Message Types According to Group Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Messages as Part of the Larger Group Interaction Repertoire (Temporality) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Messages as Part of Coherent Conversations (Sequentiality) . . . . 5.4 Messages as Contributions by Members (Participation Dynamics) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4.1 Participation Equality and Member Activeness . . . . . . . . . 5.4.2 Gender as Source Characteristic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 Conclusion and Overview of Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . .

91 92

83 87 88

92 94 96 98 103 104 107 109

Contents

6 Methodology of Empirical Investigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Research Design and Data Collection Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.1 Method Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.2 Recruitment Strategy, Research Material, and Sample Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.3 Ethical Considerations of Recruitment Strategy . . . . . . . . 6.2 Coding of Communication Content: Codebook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.1 Definition of Coding Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.2 Definition of Context Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.3 Procedure of Coding and Reliability Testing . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Measurements and Category Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.1 Formal Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.2 Topic Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.3 Coordinative Communication Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.4 Socio-Emotional Communication Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.5 Local Interaction Management: Conversation-Related Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Data Preparation and Cleaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 Data Analytical Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5.1 Specifics of the Current Data Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5.2 A Short Note on the Role of p-Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Results and Interim Discussions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Describing Content of MIMA Group Chat Messages . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.1 Distribution of Content Categories (RQ1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.2 Cluster Analysis to Extract Message Typology (RQ2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.3 Distribution of Messages Types According to Group Purpose (RQ3) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.4 Discussion on Message Typology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Messages as Part of the Group Interaction Repertoire (Temporality) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.1 Temporality (RQ4), Periodicity (RQ5), and Temporal Location of Messages (RQ6) . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.2 Discussion on Findings Regarding Temporality . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Messages as Part of Coherent Conversations (Sequentiality) . . . . 7.3.1 Identification of Thematically Related Conversations (RQ7) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

xv

113 114 114 116 120 121 121 122 123 124 125 125 128 130 133 135 137 137 138 139 140 140 144 153 156 166 166 169 173 173

xvi

Contents

7.3.2 Message Type and Conversational Position of Message (RQ8) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.3 Prediction of Message Types Through Preceding Messages (RQ9) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.4 Response Latency of Message Types (RQ10) . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.5 Discussion of Findings Regarding the Sequentiality of Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 Messages as Contribution by Members (Participation Dynamics) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.1 Participation Equality (RQ11) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.2 Messages Sent by Highly Active Members (RQ12) . . . . . 7.4.3 Gender Differences (RQ13) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.4 Discussion on Findings Regarding Participation Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5 Short Summary of Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

176 178 181 188 195 196 200 201 203 206

8 General Discussion of Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1 Central Findings and Insights on NPSG’s Chat Communication via MIMAs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2 Discussion of Empirical Investigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3 Theoretical Perspective on Group Chat Communication via MIMAs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4 Programmatic Perspective on Group Chat Communication via MIMAs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5 Paradigmatic Perspective: Communication Research and The Role of Small Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

209

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

237

210 215 221 225 234

Abbreviations

CMC FTF LSA MIMA NPSG TIP theory PCA PeCoG POPC

Computer-mediated communication Face-to-face Lag-sequential analysis Mobile instant messaging application Non-professional secondary group Time interaction process theory Permanent collective addressability Permanently connected group Permanently online permanently connected

xvii

List of Figures

Figure 3.1

Figure 3.2 Figure 3.3 Figure 3.4 Figure 3.5 Figure 7.1

Figure 7.2

Figure 7.3 Figure 7.4 Figure 7.5 Figure 7.6 Figure 7.7 Figure 7.8

Input-process-output model of group interaction, figure adapted from Hackman & Morris (1975) and Liston (2009) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Time, interaction, performance (TIP) theory of group interaction (McGrath, 1991) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Temporal problems of group interaction and their solution as postulated in TIP theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mock example of WhatsApp group chat of a choir group “Singing angels” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A theoretically based model of group communication via MIMA group chats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overview of analysis of MIMA group chat communication (illustration adapted from Solomon et al., 2021) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Graphical representation of prevalence of content categories across MIMA group chats maintained by NPSGs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scree plot for the hierarchical cluster analysis of the message types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Absolute number of messages sent by time of day (left figure) and weekday (right figure) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Message transition diagram of significant lag 1 transitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . General response latency in hours by message type . . . . . . . Topical response latency in minutes by message type . . . . . . Graphical representation of relative message contribution per group chat (combined box and scatter plot), sorted by group size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

50 51 55 60 64

140

143 145 167 181 184 185

199 xix

List of Tables

Table 4.1 Table 5.1

Table 5.2 Table 6.1 Table 6.2 Table 6.3 Table 6.4 Table 6.5 Table 6.6 Table 6.7 Table 6.8

Table 7.1

Dimensions of communication content of MIMA group chats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Task and Socioemotional Communication in Face-to-Face and Mediated, Recreational, and Instrumental Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overview of research questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Information on group-level characteristics of recruited groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Group chat activity across and per group chats . . . . . . . . . . . Overview of category ‘types of reference to previous messages’ with definition and examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overview of category ‘coordinative content’ with definition and examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overview of category ‘discursive quality’ with definition and examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Example of ‘relation to previous messages’ indicated by immediate vicinity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Intercoder reliability for conversation-related variables . . . . Absolute frequencies of the categories ‘relation to previous messages’ and ‘initiation of topics’ before data cleaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overview of prevalence of content categories in MIMA group chat messages, both across and within group chats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

89

95 111 118 119 126 129 131 134 134

136

141

xxi

xxii

Table 7.2

Table 7.3 Table 7.4 Table 7.5 Table 7.6

Table 7.7 Table 7.8 Table 7.9 Table 7.10 Table 7.11 Table 7.12 Table 7.13 Table 7.14 Table 7.15 Table 7.16 Table 7.17

List of Tables

Final cluster solution revealing ten types of messages sent in MIMA group chats with means of binary variables per cluster/ type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frequency of message types by group chats (sorted by size of message type) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Message type by group type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cross tabulation of message type by weekday . . . . . . . . . . . . Frequency of messages on days with most messages sent, and relative frequency of message types per meeting day in groups with official meeting day . . . . . . Cross tabulation of meeting day and message type in MIMA chats of groups with regular meeting day . . . . . . . Conversation characteristics across all 18 group chats . . . . . Relative frequencies of message type by message position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Transitional probabilities of a message type preceding another message type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Descriptive statistics for general and topical response latency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pairwise comparison of general response latency (mean differences in hours) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pairwise comparison of topical response latency (mean differences in min) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mean and standard deviation for both general and topical response latency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Membership participation per group chat, sorted by equality index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Message type and message position by member activeness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Message type by author gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

147 154 157 168

170 171 176 177 180 183 185 186 187 198 202 203

1

Introduction

Within a comparatively short time, mobile communication devices have occupied our social lives and immensely restructured our everyday lives (Ling, 2012). The introduction of mobile communication technologies has brought pervasive change in all aspects and levels of society: We as human beings can engage in more situations and more social contexts in which communication is possible, probably than ever before. What is more, these communicative instances can occur independently of our spatial whereabouts and at any time. In other words, individuals can be “permanently online and permanently connected” (POPC; Vorderer et al., 2018b, p. 3) to both their closest contacts, such as family and friends, but also their wider social network (Klimmt et al., 2018; Reinecke et al., 2018; Vorderer et al., 2018b). This “added layer of social engagement” (Campbell, 2019, p. 58) has been made possible by mobile media in general, but more particularly, by exchanging short textual messages via mobile phones. The ease of mobile phone use allowed text messaging to be integrated into all aspects of life so that users were able to swiftly coordinate their daily lives and engage in socio-emotional exchanges while being on the move (Ling & Yttri, 2002). This development, however, was taken to a new level with the introduction of mobile instant messaging applications (MIMA). In comparison to text messaging, WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat, and the like allow users to send each other messages enriched with multimedia content that furthermore does not have a price-per-unit as those messages are transmitted via the Internet—part of the reason why users have widely adopted MIMAs. Whereas texting might have been primarily a tool for younger people (e.g., Nardi et al., 2000), MIMAs are used across all life phases (Chan, 2018; Matassi et al., 2019). They are used, on the one hand, to keep in touch and maintain relationships © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023 K. Knop-Hülß, The Permanently Connected Group (PeCoG), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-43238-6_1

1

2

1

Introduction

with close others, such as friends and families, as well as with individuals’ wider social network (Aharony & Gazit, 2016; Kamal et al., 2016; Karapanos et al., 2016; Newman et al., 2019; Nouwens et al., 2017; O’Hara et al., 2014; Taipale & Farinosi, 2018), and, on the other hand, to aid in the coordination of everyday activities (Ling & Lai, 2016; Malhotra et al., 2018; Schuler et al., 2014). Messaging via MIMAs provides multimediality at a low cost, but further, they provide users with a very much appreciated feature that helps to explain their success: the group chat. Time and again, participants in various studies have emphasized the usefulness of MIMA group chats (Church & Oliveira, 2013; Kim & Lim, 2015; Ling & Lai, 2016; Matassi et al., 2019; Rosenfeld et al., 2018; Schuler et al., 2014; Sultan, 2014; Yoon, 2015; Yu et al., 2017). Comparing data from countries with different social media activity levels, Newman et al. (2019) found that about three-quarters of WhatsApp users were also part of at least one active group chat. Those included, for example, chats from hobby groups, local community groups, groups on health and education, as well as groups on news and politics. The research on MIMAs reveals that users strongly appreciate and attribute great importance to the group chat feature. What is striking, however, is that little research has addressed how mobile communication technologies, and MIMAs in particular, have impacted small group communication. The high diffusion of MIMA group chats1 has created a critical mass of people and groups affected by these applications. I argue that this technological development has brought profound changes in how members of small groups communicate. More precisely, in this thesis, I argue that small groups are a social entity that particularly benefits from the connective possibilities provided by mobile communication technologies, even to the point that they can become a permanently connected group (PeCoG). Consequently, this thesis explores the POPC phenomenon from a group perspective, thus extending previous work on the uses of mobile communication and the effects of being POPC on individuals (e.g., Freytag et al., 2021; Halfmann, 2021; Hall & Baym, 2012; Johannes et al., 2019; Klimmt et al., 2018; Reinecke et al., 2018; Schneider et al., 2022; Triê.u et al., 2019). Small groups can be defined as collections of three or more people who perceive themselves as a part of a group and engage in a more or less continuous process of interaction (e.g., Frey & Sunwolf, 2005; Matteson, 2009; Wittenbaum et al., 2004). It is, of course, not entirely new for groups of people to be able 1

Example of WhatsApp: More than 1 billion group chats have been created until the beginning of 2016 (Koum, 2016) and more than 1 billion people used WhatsApp on a daily basis in 2017 (WhatsApp Blog, 07.26.2017).

1

Introduction

3

to extend beyond their physical presence via communication technologies. Prior technological development has undoubtedly impacted the interaction of groups of people. Think of (print) newsletters, (home) telephone trees, e-mails, group bulletin boards, and social networking sites, which have all supplied groups with the means of extending their group’s presence beyond the physical presence of its members (e.g., boyd & Ellison, 2007; Licoppe, 2004; Short et al., 1976). However, MIMAs and their group chat feature provide several affordances that distinguish them from previous communication technologies and make them a convenient and globally used communication technology for groups. What stands out above all is that MIMA group chats provide a permanently and ubiquitously available communication space where its members can reach all members at once, at any time of day or night, independent of their spatial whereabouts. As Ling and Lai (2016) already pointed out, instead of relying on hub-and-speak situations—where one person serves as a hub, conveying information to other people individually—in MIMA group chats, a member can relay and share information with all other group members at once, independent of everyone’s spatiotemporal location. Investigating MIMA group chat communication is important for several reasons. For one, permanent collective addressability has implications for how groups and their members interact; what happens in a MIMA group chat has consequences for the small group. A rather obvious example involves setting the place and time for a meeting via the group chat, allowing members to attend a meeting in copresence. Sending messages before that copresent meeting further serves as a meme-based reminder for group members (Ling & Lai, 2016). Sending birthday wishes in the group chat will likely make the birthday celebrant feel appreciated—or old. Using positive emojis, saying thanks and please, will contribute to a positive communicative environment, which should pay into the group’s overall affective tone (Kelly, 2001). Moreover, essential group processes such as decision-making or negotiating power relations are made transparent for all group members so that previously individual decisions and actions “become part of the group’s consciousness as they are worked into the continual flow of network interaction” (Campbell, 2015, p. 6). These examples underline a consensus in communication science long before the introduction of MIMA: communication is consequential (e.g., Craig, 1999). As groups are constituted through communication (Frey, 1994b), each message sent in a group chat aids in the communicative construction of that group. Thus, the flow of messages sent in a MIMA group chat impacts group processes. Understanding group processes associated with technology use requires a profound knowledge of how these technologies are used (e.g., Bonito & Sanders, 2009; Campbell, 2015). In the case

4

1

Introduction

of MIMA group chats, the analysis of messages sent in a chat allows for revealing insights into the use of mobile communication technologies by groups. By examining this communicative activities of group members, group processes can thus be studied. In this thesis, I will therefore adopt a small group perspective by asking and exploring the overall research question: How do members of small groups communicate in their MIMA group chat? Up until now, apart from a few exceptions on family communication via MIMAs (Kamal et al., 2016; Taipale & Farinosi, 2018; Yu et al., 2017), political communication via public political discussion groups (Kligler-Vilenchik, 2019; Resende et al., 2019), and private communities (Swart et al., 2019), most studies that examined MIMA group chats did so from an individualistic perspective; that is, they looked at how individuals use and perceive group chats. What is missing in the current literature is a perspective that addresses MIMA group chats as the extension of the interaction repertoire of a small group and, thus, as a tool that enables “the ongoing performance of group relations” (O’Hara et al., 2014, p. 1137). Such a perspective would make it possible to integrate knowledge from small group research to better understand the dynamics of MIMA group chat communication and its implications. Furthermore, much has already been written about WhatsApp and the like, but not so much about what is being written within those group chats. Most studies on the uses and effects of MIMA group chat communication rely on some form of self-reporting (e.g., Chan, 2018; Kim & Lim, 2015; Knop et al., 2016; Malhotra et al., 2018; Matassi et al., 2019). Put differently, the communicative activity in MIMAs, in general, and group chats, more specifically, is rarely systematically investigated. MIMA group chat communication thus remains a ‘black box’—which is a paradox, considering individuals engage in this activity on a daily basis (Montag et al., 2015; A. Seufert et al., 2022). As pointed out above, communication is constitutive for interpersonal relationships, in general, and small groups, in particular (Frey, 1994b; Friemel, 2013). Looking into the black box would thus help in understanding the use and effects of MIMA group chat communication and its role in the constitution of small groups. The current thesis addresses both these shortcomings by applying theories of small group research to the phenomenon of communication via MIMA group chats. I will present theories of small group interaction, connect these to research on (mobile) communication technologies, and apply them to the use case of communication via MIMA group chats. Second, this thesis sets out to investigate group members’ communicative behavior, which manifests in messages exchanged via MIMA group chats. I will systematically describe and explore the communicative behavior of group members in their long-term MIMA group

1

Introduction

5

chat. This will be based on a standardized content analysis of group chat logs. The research example I use is, what I call, non-professional secondary groups (NPSG). The specifics of NPSGs will be defined in Section 3.4. In short, these are goal-oriented groups whose common purpose can be situated in the broad realm of civil society, for example, comprising social clubs but also resourcesharing groups. They are based on the voluntary interaction of their members and are usually limited in both financial and temporal resources. As I will elaborate on below, I argue that they benefit particularly from using MIMA group chats. Refining the overall research question of this thesis, I thus ask: How do group members of NPSGs communicate in their long-term MIMA group chat? Contribution to and Positioning Within the Field This thesis takes on a small group perspective and is thereby concerned with an understudied subject, namely small group communication. The study of small groups is spread across different disciplines (e.g., subfields of both sociology and psychology such as group sociology, social psychology, sport psychology, or business-related fields that study groups in organizational contexts), with authors describing the small group literature as “broad” (Matteson, 2009, p. 14) and conceptually and empirically “fragmented” (Berdahl & Henry, 2005, p. 19). Small group research naturally also branches out into communication science, for example, with research on opinion leadership (E. Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955), norm development (e.g., Cialdini et al., 1990; E. Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955), on watching TV together (e.g., Nee & Barker, 2020; Sang et al., 1992; Zillich, 2014), social identity and intergroup contact (Tajfel, 1982), for example, in media effects research (Trepte, 2006). However, these theoretical perspectives and findings are scattered and not connected by an overall theoretical framework (Berdahl & Henry, 2005). Moreover, within communication research, the focus is oftentimes put on the individual within a group context (cf., overview on social identity in media effects research; Trepte, 2006) or on inter-group contexts (Tajfel, 1982). Only a few undertakings make intra-group considerations (for a recent example of group communication research, cf., Schindler, 2023). Researchers concerned with this specific context of communication have thus criticized that the small group plays a rather subordinate role in the communication discipline (Putnam, 1994). The lack of attention to the specific context of small group communication can, in part, be explained by the discipline’s traditional focus on mass communication, which has long been prevalent, especially in the German communication science (DGPuK, 2008); the context in which this thesis is written. In the international context, the field of small group communication

6

1

Introduction

has been a subject of research, which has, however, never been organized in a sustainable way2 . The internationalization of communication science (DGPuK, 2008; Domahidi & Strippel, 2014) has led the field to become more open and diverse, with its research objects and interests shifting also towards non-mass communication phenomena, especially since the boundaries between interpersonal communication and mass communication have been blurred (Lang, 2013; Walther, 2017; Walther & Valkenburg, 2017). In combination with the technological advancements already described, the small group deserves new attention. The position of small group research within the communication discipline stands in contrast to the relevance of this social context for both individuals and social interaction as well as society. In fact, small groups hold a unique position within our social structure (Schwonk, 1999): From a macro perspective, groups share certain similarities with society as a whole (e.g., division of labor, shared resources) and can thus serve as a blueprint for studying collective processes. From a micro perspective, the various groups to which individuals belong exert social influence on their members, as very early research on small groups has shown (e.g., Asch, 1951; E. Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955). They further provide an important source to satisfy an individual’s needs, such as their need for affiliation (Levine & Moreland, 2006). What makes small groups even more important for the field of communication is the fact that groups are constituted by communication, or as Frey vividly phrased it, “Communication is the lifeblood that flows through the veins of groups” (Frey, 1994b, as cited in Frey, 1994a, p. 2). This leads to some even arguing that the small group should be the “fundamental unit for communication research” (Poole, 2013, p. 607). While I certainly do not want to discount research that does not consider small group communication as the basic unit of analysis, I share the sentiment that the small group as a social entity should be brought (back) to the attention of communication research. In my view, the technological developments outlined above make it imperative to deal with small groups because the (technological) context of communication, the central subject of the discipline, has profoundly changed in the past decades.

2

There is, for example, no ICA division that addresses communication within small groups, the topic is instead scattered and—if at all—addressed in divisions such as family communication and organizational communication. Furthermore, the search terms “small group” yielded no relevant results in Publizistik, the German communication journal of the DGPuK, nor in the journal Medien und Kommunikation; and also only yielded very little hits in the Journal of Communication from 2000–2018, with Ling and Lai (2016) and Walther and Bunz (2005) as relevant exceptions (as of January, 2019).

1

Introduction

7

As I already pointed out, the introduction of communication technologies has always expanded the social availability of human beings, thus providing new contexts for communication. Mobile devices have further expanded the ways in which individuals come into contact with each other in various social situations (Campbell, 2013; Vorderer et al., 2018a). The argument which I provided above and will develop further in this thesis is that these technological developments have brought profound changes in how members of small groups can interact with each other. In a way, these developments encourage us to (re)address the small group. Consequently, by addressing small group communication in the context of mobile Internet, this thesis contributes to the theory development in a hitherto little explored area, namely the implications of mobile communication for small groups, which manifests in a group’s usage of a MIMA group chat. Drawing on and integrating theories from small group research, mobile communication, and computer-mediated communication (CMC), the research object will be theoretically situated, and a preliminary model of MIMA group chat communication will be developed. The empirical study presented in this thesis, that is, the standardized content analysis of group chat logs then serves to enrich and refine this preliminary model. The study is, therefore, descriptive and exploratory in nature. The phenomenon of interest in this research may thus be innovative, but the empirical approach chosen is not; rather, it can be methodologically and epistemologically situated within critical rationalism. More specifically, it mostly builds on the sociopsychological tradition that understands communication as “expression, interaction, and influence” (Craig, 1999, p. 142). This thesis further allows for making inferences on the intertwining of online and offline communication, a more general question that is of importance to mobile communication research (Karnowski, 2020; Kaufmann & Palmberger, 2022; Vorderer et al., 2015). Another merit of this thesis will be to outline a research program based on the findings from the empirical study to (re)encourage the study of small group processes within communication research. Therefore, this work will lay the groundwork for future studies addressing the effects of MIMA group chat communication. Such studies on effects can then also provide the basis to develop recommendations for the NPSGs’ communication via MIMA group chats. For example, recommendations could address the quality of decision-making processes or power negotiations, but also socio-emotional aspects, such as using group chat communication to make members feel emotionally connected and attached to their group. Summary of the Current Work The current work is structured as follows: The literature review starts by providing an answer to the general question of how communication technologies have

8

1

Introduction

changed our everyday communication (Chapter 2). As this thesis is concerned with a specific type of interpersonal communication, in this chapter, interpersonal communication is defined, and its functions are explicated. I next explicate the context of technological mediation using the concept of technological affordances (S. K. Evans et al., 2017; Gibson, 1979). Building on affordances and the spatiotemporal constraints inherent to the prototypical mode of interpersonal communication, I briefly summarize the historical development of communication technologies and their implications for how individuals make meaningful connections with each other beyond the here and now. I then introduce MIMAs and describe how these applications have been integrated into everyday life, reviewing previous research on MIMA use. Next, I elaborate on the apparent importance of the MIMA group chat feature by explaining its novelty in comparison to previous communication technologies that individuals can use in order to establish connections among more than two people. Using previous research, I identify several affordances of MIMA group chats. chapter two concludes by discerning two major shortcomings of previous research and deriving two desiderata, namely, the need to a) integrate small group research into theorizing on MIMA group chat use and b) investigate the actual observable communicative behavior. In chapter three, I address the first proposition to integrate small group research and review relevant theories and research from that area, which is then employed to conceptualize MIMA group chat use as an expansion of a group’s interaction repertoire. First, I define small groups and conceptualize group interaction. I draw on and describe two theoretical perspectives on group interaction that are often employed in small group research, namely the symbolic-interpretative perspective on group dynamics (Frey & Sunwolf, 2004) and the functional group perspective (McGrath, 1991). The latter perspective provides several functions that will be connected to the communicative functions introduced in chapter two. Next, I draw on previous conceptualizations of the group interaction process and apply this and further insights from research on mobile communication, computer-mediated communication, and small group communication to the use case of communicating via a MIMA group chat. This form of group interaction is conceptualized as an expansion of a small group’s interaction repertoire that provides a new social context in which group members can engage in group interaction. Last, I specify and demarcate the group type which will be empirically investigated in this thesis, namely non-professional, secondary groups (NPSGs). The purpose of chapter four is to derive dimensions of NPSG communication via a MIMA group chat. These dimensions are based on functions identified in research on interpersonal communication as well as small group research in Chapters 2 and 3, as well as insights on group research. The four dimensions that will be explored are

1

Introduction

9

coordination, socio-emotionality, interaction management, and temporality. chapter five serves as preparation for the empirical investigation. For this, I will relate the MIMA group chat communication dimensions to the affordances identified in chapter two and derive specific research questions that will then guide the empirical investigation. Group communication via MIMA group chats presents a multi-layered phenomenon, with messages being nested in conversations that are nested in groups. In addition, each message is sent by a member of a group; messages are thus also nested in members who are again nested in groups. These four partially hierarchically intertwined levels guide the systematic description of these group chats. At the heart of this dissertation lies the empirical identification of message types based on theoretically derived content properties (message level). In addition, these MIMA group chat message types will be further described by specifying their temporality (group context), sequentiality (conversations), and authorship (members). Taking into account the multi-layered nature of the phenomenon, I first address the question: What message types can be identified based on message content? Next, acknowledging that MIMA group chat communication is only part of the interaction repertoire of a small group, I address the question: How are message types embedded in the larger context of the group? I then focus on the level of conversations and ask: To what extent are these message types part of coherent conversations? Last, I take the members who send the messages into account and ask: How does the frequency of message types vary as a function of authorship? The second research gap pointed out above (investigation of content and process) is addressed with group observations in the form of a standardized content analysis of group chat logs, which will be dealt with in chapters six and seven. The goal of this investigation is to describe and systematize group chat content using theoretically derived dimensions. chapter six provides methodological information on this endeavor. In chapter seven, I will report and discuss the results of my analysis. chapter eight provides a general conclusion where a research program will be developed, limitations will be discussed, and a conclusion will be drawn. Based on the empirical answers to the previously posed questions, I will develop a research program on how to utilize and integrate small group research into research on mobile online group communication.

2

Explicating the Context of Technological Mediation: Changes in Everyday Communication

From 2001 until 2018, the rate of global mobile-cellular telephone subscriptions has risen from 20 to 107 percent (exceeding 100 percent due to double possession of devices), with active mobile-broadband subscriptions worldwide (i.e., wireless or mobile internet) having increased from under ten to almost 70 percent within the last seven years (International Telecommunication Union, 2019). As these numbers report global developments, they show that this is by no means a phenomenon of industrialized countries. As I pointed out in the introduction, the integration and adoption of mobile communication devices have tremendously changed our everyday living across the globe (Ling, 2012). One aspect of this global phenomenon is the use of MIMAs in general and the use of MIMAs by small groups in particular. The goal of this thesis is to systematically describe communication content sent via MIMA group chats. This type of communication poses a case of interpersonal communication within a specific context, namely first, the context of technological mediation through mobile instant messaging applications, and second, the context of small groups. While the second context of small groups will be introduced and elaborated on in Chapter 3, the following Chapter 2 will explicate the context of technological mediation. I will illustrate how communication technologies have changed our everyday communication to explain how it came to be that to “not be available or to not have an operational phone, is in a small way shirking our social responsibility“ (Ling, 2018, p. 14). As this thesis aims to describe communication content via MIMA group chats, I will first define interpersonal communication and introduce the archetypical act of face-to-face (in the following FTF) communication. I will then illustrate how the (technological) mediation of communication has allowed us to overcome the constraints of space and time inherent to FTF encounters and then lead over to © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023 K. Knop-Hülß, The Permanently Connected Group (PeCoG), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-43238-6_2

11

12

2

Explicating the Context of Technological Mediation …

the implications of the introduction of telephones, first landline phones, and later mobile communication devices. The concept of technological affordances will be introduced as it helps to explain those implications. I will then situate MIMAs in the overall context of mobile online communication by first classifying them as social media. Next, I will introduce texting and instant messaging as predecessors of MIMAs and argue for the novelty of MIMAs. For this, I identify several affordances of MIMA group chats, the most notable being the affordance of permanent collective addressability. A review of the literature on the use of MIMAs will reveal that users highly appreciate the group chat feature. However, as I will show, previous research on this aspect of mobile communication suffers from several shortcomings. Building on these shortcomings, I substantiate my specific research interest in group communication via MIMA group chats. The ultimate goal of this chapter is thus to work out the position of MIMA group chats within the overall context of everyday (mobile) communication and to thus explicate the context of technological mediation of MIMA group chats.

2.1

Definition of Relevant Concepts

2.1.1

Interpersonal Communication

Humans are inherently social and “have a pervasive drive to form and maintain at least a minimum quantity of lasting, positive, and significant interpersonal relationships” (Baumeister & Leary, 1995, p. 497). A precondition for those meaningful connections to others lies in relating to others through interaction and, more specifically, communication. As Cooley pointed out, communication is “the mechanism through which human relations exist and develop” (Cooley, 1909, p. 61). In this thesis, interpersonal communication is defined as a complex, situated interaction process which takes place in a known relational context and which contains the functional and purposeful exchange of symbols in order to generate shared meanings; through these exchanges, social structures emerge from a longitudinal perspective (Burleson, 2009; Friemel, 2013). I will elaborate on the definitional elements of communication in the following. Shared meanings and language In this definition, meanings are understood as internal states such as thoughts, feelings, and ideas conveyed and interpreted by communicators (Burleson, 2009). Interaction does not entail the mere reaction to the behavior of others but requires

2.1 Definition of Relevant Concepts

13

the interpretation of another person’s action, which leads to the creation of meaning (Mead, 1934; Weber, translated by Runciman, 1995). This is achieved through the use of signs and symbols1 . The use of signs and symbols distinguishes communication from interaction, which constitutes a particular case of interaction (Mead, 1934). Following Mead (1934), signs and symbols are gestures that allow interaction partners to interpret a specific action in the same way (e.g., a person yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded soccer stadium and people fleeing the scene as a consequence). This consequently enables these interaction partners to generate shared meanings. The most important system of signs is language which provides individuals with the means for orientation to make sense of their surroundings (P. L. Berger & Luckmann, 1966/1990; McGlone & Giles, 2011; Mead, 1934; Merten, 1977). In a broader sense, communication is therefore also understood as human symbolically mediated interaction serving as the mechanism by which individuals coordinate their behavior (Bloomfield, 1983; Mead, 1934). Moreover, the use of signs and symbols allows individuals to create meaning beyond the ‘here and now,’ thereby expanding social availability (P. L. Berger & Luckmann, 1966/1990; Bloomfield, 1983). For example, people can talk about the great hunting ground on the other side of the mountain ridge (i.e., without actually being there) or talk about other people who are not present. Communication is functional and purposeful Interpersonal communication is further described as functional and purposeful in that every communicative act contributes to the solution of a problem (Friemel, 2008)—independent of whether communicators are consciously aware of underlying social goals or not—and thus achieves both short and long-term objectives that might not always be discernible from its communicative content (Bonito & Meyers, 2011). The terms function and purpose have often been used interchangeably, a shortcoming criticized by Dance (1985), who advocated distinguishing clearly between the two concepts. He defined function “as a relationship wherein one quality is so related to another quality that it is dependent on and varies with it … if this, then that” (p. 64). As an example, he used the connection between an open flame and the light it is accompanied by: If there is a flame, then there will be light. The function of the flame is thus light. In contrast, he referred to 1

Referring to semiotics, it is emphasized that signs and symbols are not the same. In the broadest sense, a sign is everything that gives the interpreter of the sign a meaning that is not the sign itself, while a symbol is a sign that is arbitrarily associated with the object it refers to (e.g., Bloomfield, 1983). However, as this distinction is not of greater relevance in the following and as these terms are oftentimes used interchangeably, the term symbol will be used to refer to both signs and symbols.

14

2

Explicating the Context of Technological Mediation …

purpose as the “presence or absence of intent” (p. 65) in using communication. As such, the terms purpose, motive, and intent are used synonymously. Using the open flame as a torch would thus be the purposeful employment of the open flame utilizing its function to bring light to a dark cave that is to be explored. In this understanding, functions lie beneath purposes; that is, communication has functions independent of communicators’ intent. As I will later introduce group purpose, it is essential to make this distinction. Assuming that communicators can purposefully employ communication corresponds to a conception of man that assumes human beings as autonomous, reflexive-rational subjects that have the ability to act purposefully, that is, with intent (cf., Groeben, 1986; cf. also Weber and social action, Runciman, 1995). As will be shown in Chapter 4, communicative functions can be used to describe group communication via MIMA group chats. Several typologies exist that categorize communicative functions according to what they focus on (for a systematic overview cf., Friemel, 2013). In the following, I focus on a categorization introduced by Burleson (2009) because it corresponds to theories and findings from research on mobile communication, CMC, and group communication which this thesis will build upon (see Sections 3.1.2 and 4). Notably, a communicative utterance can fulfill more than one function, in which case there is multifunctionality (e.g., Hirokawa, 1994). This will be elaborated on later (Section 3.1.2). Burleson (2009) distinguishes three broad dimensions of communicative functions: interaction management functions geared at maintaining the interaction in question (e.g., turn-taking), relationship management functions (e.g., relationship initiation and definition, conflict management), and instrumental functions which are aimed at the coordination of activities and commonly define the thematic focus of an interaction (Burleson, 2009; Burleson et al., 2000). I call this function the coordination function, with coordination defined as “the act of managing interdependencies between activities performed to achieve a goal” (Malone & Crowston, 1990, p. 7). As Ling and Yttri (2002) emphasized, coordination is a fundamentally social function that gains relevance in the context of navigating modern social life (figuratively, but also literally, e.g., in terms of using public transportation in modern cities). Communication is a complex and situated (contextual) process Last, communication is defined as a complex, situated process. It is complex because it requires various steps of message production and processing, careful social coordination, and has social implications, and it is situated because it always takes place in a specific situation in a specific context that impacts the way individuals establish connections with each other (Burleson, 2009). The context

2.1 Definition of Relevant Concepts

15

of communication situations can comprise several dimensions, such as the physical setting that communication takes place in, the relational/social setting; that is, who are the communicators and how are they related, and the institutional setting (e.g., work, church, home) (Burleson, 2009; Humphreys et al., 2018; Zhang & Zhang, 2012). Think, for example, of an intimate conversation between a couple of lovers at the dining table, a heated discussion between several colleagues in the break room, or a family planning about dinner on Christmas Eve that takes place via a group chat on WhatsApp. While these three scenarios greatly vary regarding their social context (relationships of the respective parties, circumstances of interaction), they are all cases of interpersonal communication; that is, symbols are functionally and purposefully exchanged in a specific social context. As Burleson (2009) pointed out, when considering different social settings, such as dyadic communication or communication in groups, “what varies is the context but not the fundamental nature of communication itself” (p. 158). Following this notion, two particular social contexts of communication will be taken into account in this thesis. On the one hand, this pertains to the context of technological mediation through mobile instant messaging applications (elaborated on in the remainder of this chapter), and on the other hand, to the context of small groups (introduced and elaborated in Chapter 3). The archetypical context of interpersonal communication pertains to the physical setting and “typically transpires between two people engaged in face-to-face interactions who use both verbal and nonverbal channels and have access to immediate feedback” (Burleson, 2009, p. 148). Communication in a face-to-face context (in the following: FTF) is thus characterized by the immediacy of interaction; that is, the absence of technological mediation and the resultant availability of all social context cues. Several theories that emerged as a response to new technological communication environments deemed FTF communication superior to any other type of mediated communication for the creation of shared meanings, impression formation, the perception of the social context, and communication in general (e.g., media richness theory introduced by Daft & Lengel, 1986; social presence theory introduced by Short et al., 1976). This thinking was grounded in the importance of nonverbal cues anchored in symbolic interactionism (Cooley, 1909; Mead, 1934). Most importantly for the current thesis, FTF communication comes with the constraints of requiring communication partners to be at the same place at the same time—constraints that can be and have been overcome by the (technological) mediation of communication. In fact, today, being limited in the social availability to each other stands in stark contrast to the previously mentioned notion that to “not be available, or to not have an operational phone, is in a small way shirking our social responsibility” (Ling, 2018, p. 14). In the

16

2

Explicating the Context of Technological Mediation …

following, I draw on the concept of technological affordances to explicate how communication technologies as context shape interpersonal communication.

2.1.2

Technological Affordances

In order to understand how communication technologies shape interpersonal communication, it is helpful to draw on the concept of technological affordances. Affordances further help to make research across different social media platforms comparable. The first to coin the term affordances was Gibson (1979), who proposed affordances in the context of ecological environments. In his understanding, affordances were “broadly described as possibilities for action” that agents perceive in the environment (S. K. Evans et al., 2017, p. 36). The concept of affordances has been widely used in communication research to understand how individuals make use of technology; however, as S. K. Evans et al. (2017) pointed out, this use has been highly heterogeneous. The authors suggested a relational view of affordances and appealed “for conceptually defining communication affordances in terms of the multidimensional relationship between the object or technology and the user, and how that relationship offers possible (and actual) outcomes (i.e., what emerges from the user’s interactions with the object)” (S. K. Evans et al., 2017, p. 39). In contrast to technological affordances, a technology’s features are the “discernible components or attributes of the environment and its objects” (Humphreys et al., 2018, p. 2800) and structure a technology’s use without determining it, thereby providing the technological basis for affordances. An example of a feature that was (incorrectly) introduced as an affordance of mobile media is portability which describes the “perception of physical characteristics such as size and weight, as well as those evaluated through use, such as battery life” (Schrock, 2015, p. 1236) and which allows users to employ mobile communication devices while being in motion. As portability merely describes an attribute of the technology and not the relationship between object and user, it does not qualify as affordance (S. K. Evans et al., 2017). For features to be embodied and to become sets of affordances, individuals need to perceive those features and make use of them. Additionally, individuals can also enact affordances. In cases where individuals pursue specific gratifications, they will turn attributes of an object or an environment into a feature and thus generate affordances (Humphreys et al., 2018). Humphrey and colleagues use a pair of trees in a park to describe the enactment of affordances:

2.1 Definition of Relevant Concepts

17

Two girls seeking to entertain themselves in a park with a game of soccer may enact the shoot-in-between-ability that is provided by two trees. In absence of this soccer game, it would not occur to anyone to consider the two trees a feature of the park—at least no more than any other of the unlimited possible combinations of trees or other objects present. (Humphreys et al., 2018, p. 2800)

The inclusion of both enacted and embodied affordances is important to account for various types of technology use. While developers and designers of technologies might not always have specific ways of usage in mind when designing features, users will eventually adapt those technologies and find new possibilities to act with them; that is, enact affordances (cf. also, DeSanctis & Poole, 1994; Scherer, 2002). The concept of affordances is thus important because it helps to understand how individuals make use of the features of technologies. Previous research has pointed out that affordances can be regarded as multi-level constructs depending on the social entity in question (for a discussion, see Rice et al., 2017). The social entity relevant to this thesis is the small group. I thus draw on conceptualizations of group-level affordances “whereby a group’s social aspects and norms interact with an object’s properties to facilitate specific kinds of group relations” (Rice et al., 2017, p. 109; based on Bradner et al., 1999). Moreover, to connect this to the previously discussed concept of purpose2 , purpose refers to the dimension of intent in technology use. This is, of course, highly dependent on their affordances. Regarding the situational context discussed above and its connection to affordances, mobile communication devices can be used practically anywhere at any time and thus in various situational settings (Campbell, 2013; Humphreys et al., 2018; Vorderer et al., 2018b). As others have pointed out, the same object (i.e., technology) can offer various affordances to users in different contexts (Faraj & Azad, 2012; Rice et al., 2017). Recognizing the importance of the situational context for mobile communication technologies, Humphreys et al. (2018) therefore 2

Looking at how affordances relate to functions as defined above for interpersonal communication, it is important to note that affordances describe the relationships between an agent and features of an environment or object (i.e., the technology in question) and describe specific action possibilities. In contrast, functions pertain to the relationship between two qualities that are dependent on another. As such, a function can be independent of an individual and does not create action possibilities. It rather describes the connection between two characteristics. Following this, technology, of course, also has functions. For example, a mobile phone usually comes with the feature of a flashlight application. If this application is turned on, then there will be light. However, whether the flashlight application is used to explore a dark cave, feel save on the way home, or search for a set of keys, depends on the use of this application. As I focus on communicative functions, a more in-depth analysis of the relationship between function and affordances lies beyond the scope of this thesis.

18

2

Explicating the Context of Technological Mediation …

include the situational context as a constituent element for sets of affordances which—as pointed out by Burleson (2009) for the case of interpersonal communication—also shapes how individuals make use of technology. To reiterate, situational context can be categorized into the physical, the social, and the institutional setting (Burleson, 2009). The usefulness of including situational context becomes apparent when regarding the mobility of mobile phones (Campbell, 2013): “an object’s mobility is not just another affordance in the sense of portability but a constitutive part of the embodiment and enactment of all kinds of affordances based on—and varying with—the respective situational contexts” (Humphreys et al., 2018, p. 2802). To illustrate, making a call via a mobile phone might be technically possible wherever there is service, but might not be allowed or appropriate in each and every social setting (e.g., during a conversation with a superior, at the movie theater). The situational context thus also informs the current thesis on group communication via MIMAs primarily used on such mobile devices. In summary, technological affordances are the possibilities for action provided by specific technological features or combinations thereof that correspond to the goals and abilities of an individual in a particular social context. Going beyond the archetype of interpersonal communication, technological affordances have to be taken into account when theorizing about how the context of technological mediation shapes communication. They allow to conceptualize the phenomenon of interest, namely group communication via a MIMA group chat, and help to understand how individuals, or in the case of this thesis, group members make use of communication technologies. The affordances of this specific communication technology will be elaborated on below.

2.2

Permanent Individual Addressability through Mobile Media

2.2.1

Genesis: From Geographical Addressability to Permanent Connectedness

Building on the previous discussion of affordances, in the following chapters, I will illustrate how the context of technological mediation through mobile instant messaging applications shapes interpersonal communication. For this, I will first briefly outline how the technological development of telephones and personal

2.2 Permanent Individual Addressability through Mobile Media

19

computers, laptop computers, and mobile phones3 has led to a logic of permanent “individual addressability” (Ling, 2018, p. 12) where individuals can establish connections to each other at any place and anytime. From stationary… Both landline telephones and personal computers enabled individuals to connect to each other beyond spatial and temporal immediacy, which consequently expanded social availability among individuals. When made accessible to a broader population in the first half of the 20th century, landline telephones allowed for synchronous communication among people who were at different locations by using “geographically fixed locations that afforded communication” (Ling, 2018, p. 12), such as telephones installed at work, at home or telephone booths in public spaces. While these communication technologies expanded social availability by lifting the constraints of being at the same location to interact, they only provided “geographical addressability” (Ling, 2018, p. 12): In order to call each other, telephone users needed to be at a certain location. The same rationale applies to the development of personal computers in the 1980ies: It enabled individuals to engage in (mostly written) CMC that was independent of space and time to the extent that messages could be sent to anyone with access to a computer at any time. However, again, contact could only be established via a computer which had to be at a geographically fixed location. Of course, several users could be reached via one shared computer, but these people still had to use a geographically fixed machine. …to portable… The constraint of having to be at a certain place in order to establish contact was loosened when call forwarding and paging systems were introduced; however, after having received a message from another communicator, for example, via a pager, individuals eventually needed to ‘come to the phone’ in order to establish contact (Ling, 2018). The next step towards permanent addressability can be seen 3

Of course, as stated before, communication via symbols enables individuals to talk about something beyond the here and now by referring to something that is not currently present or happening. The invention of writing systems allowed to store information (which ultimately enabled abstract thinking and the development of advanced civilization) and dramatically expanded social availability through communication by allowing the first type of asynchronous communication, namely, writing letters (Martin, 1994). Time and space could thus be separated when individuals wanted to relate to one another without being at the same place and time. For the current thesis, I will focus on the technological developments presented above.

20

2

Explicating the Context of Technological Mediation …

in the invention of laptop computers. Again, laptop computers can be used to connect with others, but in contrast to landline telephony and personal computers, these devices are portable and can be carried around and thus used in various places which are not geographically fixed (Campbell, 2013)—however, before the introduction of broadband and 3G network internet only insofar that these places provided wireless internet. …to mobile When mobile phones were introduced in the 1990ies, the logic of reaching another individual from fixed locations was soon replaced by a logic of permanent “individual addressability”4 (Ling, 2018, p. 12). Mobile phones are portable media, which, in contrast to laptop computers, afford the possibility to be flexibly used while being in motion (Campbell, 2013). As such, mobile phones allow individuals to establish contact directly by calling each other from anyplace at any time. Mobile communication thus “softens the constraints of space and time, lowering the threshold for interacting with others, information, and content” (Campbell, 2019, p. 58)—a phenomenon not restricted to the developed world, as mobile phone diffusion has approached global saturation (e.g., Campbell, 2015; International Telecommunication Union, 2019). This technological development has culminated in the introduction of smartphones which are high-tech mobile phones that have the computing capacity and functionality of laptops and personal computers but come with the advantage of being small enough to be carried around and to be used while in motion. Wearable technologies, that is, “miniature sensors that can be unobtrusively attached to the body or can be part of clothing items” (Bonato, 2005, p. 2), expand the functionality of these devices even further. Together with the diffusion of broadband and 3G network internet, these technological developments have led to the prevalence of mobile communication. For individuals, it is now possible to receive (and spread) conventional mass communication messages at any time and place on the one hand and messages of interpersonal communication on the other hand. Geographical addressability has thus been changed into a state of permanent individual addressability (cf. also, Mascheroni & Vincent, 2016; Vorder & Kohring, 2013). Previous research has identified this “perpetual contact” as an important affordance of mobile communication technologies (cf. also, Mascheroni & Vincent, 2016; Vorder & Kohring, 2013). 4

Letters and e-mails also possess this affordance of individual addressability, however, in the case of e-mailing and letters, without a mobile device, this is not accompanied by a potential permanence of this addressability.

2.2 Permanent Individual Addressability through Mobile Media

2.2.2

21

Consequences: New Contexts for Coordination, More Connections, and the Development of a Norm to be Available

The use of mobile communication devices, smartphones in particular, has become deeply embedded in our everyday lives. The technological development outlined in the previous chapter has given way to new forms of social connectedness and social rhythms (e.g., Campbell, 2019; Ling, 2012, 2018). Mobile communication has changed everyday logistics and coordination, and it has altered how information is shared and how relationships are maintained (Klimmt et al., 2018; Ling, 2012; Vorderer et al., 2018b; Vorderer et al., 2015). Due to their individual addressability, individuals now have permanent access to each other, which has brought an added layer of communication with close and weaker ties with both positive and negative implications for close relationships (Chan, 2018; Rieger, 2018). One aspect of everyday logistics that was significantly affected by the introduction of mobile communication pertains to the coordination and management of everyday activities. As LaRose (1998) found, the landline telephone was traditionally used for coordination purposes (e.g., confirmation of appointments, organization of activities and other affairs), a functionality that was extended by mobile phones (Ling, 2004). Ling (2004) argued that mobile communication undermined time-based coordination (i.e., setting up a meeting place and time beforehand and actually meeting there and then) by allowing people to call and text each other on a multitude of occasions and thus enabling individuals to make last-minute changes to their plans. The fact that mobile phones allowed for individual addressability enabled users to engage in more fine-grained and shortterm planning. Ling and Yttri (2002) termed this phenomenon micro-coordination which encompasses activities to organize and manage day-to-day activities in a timely, flexible manner and to “iteratively coordinate social interaction” (Ling & Lai, 2016, p. 836). Examples of this behavior are calling shortly before a meeting to announce one’s delayed arrival due to being stuck in traffic, calling a spouse on their way home to ask them to stop at the store for some milk, or meeting at a place at an approximate time and calling each other to actually find one another. It is important to note that in its original formulation, micro-coordination was only possible among two communicators. This changed with the introduction of MIMAs, which has added a new dimension to micro-coordination (Ling & Lai, 2016; more on this below, Section 4.2.1).

22

2

Explicating the Context of Technological Mediation …

With regards to the maintenance of relationships, early research during the ‘cell phone era’ postulated that mobile phones would particularly support perpetual contact with close friends and family (for a review of this research strand, cf., Campbell, 2019). One theoretical concept to explore this increase of cohesion among close ties is the sense of connected presence articulated by Licoppe (2004). Connected presence is established through brief and frequent exchanges via voice calls and texting, where communication content is not as important as simply expressing connectedness (these exchanges can be called interstitial communication and resemble phatic communication; Utz, 2018). This mode of connected presence serves as a resource to cultivate and strengthen relationships (Campbell, 2015; Licoppe, 2004), with ritual interaction such as sending good night messages every evening as one of the mechanisms to establish connected presence (Ling, 2008). This early research postulated that the increase in cohesion among strong ties would come at the expense of connections with the wider social network, a notion that Campbell (2015) characterized as network privatism. This belief rested on the assumption put forth by Kobayashi and Boase (2014) that “the resources people have to spend on personal communication are finite” (p. 682). An increase in cohesion in strong ties would thus leave no resources to spend on weak ties. However, in a review of research about social connectedness and mobile communication, Campbell (2015) showed that while the proposition of increased social cohesion among strong ties such as friends and family through mobile communication had received ample empirical support, evidence for the proposition about a loss of connection to diverse, weak and new ties of one’s social networks as a result of mobile communication was indecisive. He concluded that evidence points to the mobile sphere “as an added layer of communication that tips the balance of social contact in ways that add to the intimate sphere… but without detracting from the outer realm of network contact” (Campbell, 2015, p. 18). Other research from the ‘smartphone era’ complemented this and revealed that mobile communication allows “connecting inside and outside of core networks” (Campbell, 2019, p. 52, italics in original), with calling and texting identified as preferred means to maintain contact with close ties, and access to social networking sites, mobile games, locative-based media, and other services for more diverse connections (Campbell, 2019; Chan, 2018; Rainie & Wellman, 2014; Schrock, 2016). As a consequence, individuals have developed a notion of taken for grantedness (Ling, 2012), both on the level of having the technological means to be connected (such as access to the internet or to power outlets to charge a phone; Klimmt et al., 2018) and also on the level of being available to others, of reaching

2.3 Situating MIMAs and MIMA Group Chats Within the Overall Context …

23

others anywhere and anytime: individuals now think, act, and experience life with the expectation to always be able to connect to and be contacted by their social networks, as well as have access to online information (Klimmt et al., 2018; Ling, 2012; Vorderer et al., 2018b; Vorderer et al., 2015), a phenomenon which has been termed “permanently online and permanently connected” (POPC; Vorderer et al., 2018b, p. 3) or “always on” (Turkle, 2008). The pervasiveness of mobile communication technologies has consequently altered communication expectations. It is expected to be available anywhere and anytime, and to abstain from online communication constitutes an effort (Ling, 2018; Reinecke et al., 2018). This norm to be available (Bayer et al., 2016) also applies to contexts that used to be considered incommunicado (e.g., at the doctor’s office, on a train, or even on a plane), which seem to no longer or barely exist today. Consequently, individuals engage in more connections and more communication than ever before, which, in turn, further fuels heightened expectations of availability and connectedness. For some users, the internalization of these expectations has led to the development of new cognitive structures (cf., online vigilance; Reinecke et al., 2018), which is based on the assumption that using one’s smartphone “is possible and goalserving virtually everywhere and anytime” (Klimmt et al., 2018, p. 19; italics in original). Considering that these connections consist of various forms of interpersonal communication, it can be concluded that mobile communication technologies have dramatically broadened the opportunities and situational contexts in which the communicative functions (coordination, relationship management, and interaction management) are or can be purposefully exercised.

2.3

Situating MIMAs and MIMA Group Chats Within the Overall Context of (Mobile) Online Communication

In the previous chapter, I laid out the technological developments that enabled permanent individual addressability and reported some of the social consequences of this affordance. In the following, I will introduce the specific communication applications that are of central interest in this study, namely mobile instant messaging applications (MIMAs). The development of the 3G network, the mobile Internet, as well as the introduction of the first iPhone in 2007 allowed new ways of phone use (e.g., Ling, 2018). Among those new opportunities was the distribution of MIMAs. The first globally successful MIMA WhatsApp was introduced in 2009 and remains the most important messaging app today, with Facebook

24

2

Explicating the Context of Technological Mediation …

messenger, WeChat, and Telegram as strong competitors (Newman et al., 2020), with varying popularity of these commercial providers across different countries (cf., Newman et al., 2019). Interestingly, the adoption of MIMAs is particularly low in the US, where individuals still mostly rely on sending text messages via SMS (Ovide, 2022). As will be discussed below, MIMAs combine features from text messaging and instant messaging while overcoming their limitations (e.g., Church & Oliveira, 2013; Knop et al., 2016; König & Bahlo, 2014; Ling & Lai, 2016). Within a short period of time, MIMAs have been integrated into users’ everyday lives to such an extent that a norm to be available developed (cf., Section 2.2.2). Individuals that might have been initially hesitant to adopt the technologies have been (or still are being) socially coerced into using a MIMA communication platform in order to not be socially excluded (e.g., Ling & Lai, 2016; Matassi et al., 2019). I argue that the permanent individual addressability discussed in the previous chapter has specific implications for small groups, which stems from their use of MIMAs, more specifically, their use of the group chat feature provided by MIMAs. Time and again, interview participants in various studies have emphasized the usefulness of MIMA group chats5 (Church & Oliveira, 2013; Kim & Lim, 2015; Ling & Lai, 2016; Matassi et al., 2019; Rosenfeld et al., 2018; Schuler et al., 2014; Sultan, 2014; Yoon, 2015; Yu et al., 2017). For example, Newman et al. (2019) found that about three-quarters of WhatsApp users are also part of at least one active group chat. The authors further found that these group chats were formed for various reasons: WhatsApp users were part of group chats concerned with hobby groups, local community groups, health and education groups, news and politics groups, and to a lesser degree also in parenting groups (based on data from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Malaysia, Spain, Turkey, UK, USA). This diverse use of group chats corresponds to findings that categorized MIMA group chats by their purpose; that is, whether they were formed for organizational purposes or the mere social interaction among more than two people (Ling & Lai, 2016), or whether they were formed for a “unique event” (e.g., organizing a birthday present), a “repetitive event” (e.g., soccer training), or “no event” (e.g., a group of family members; M. Seufert et al., 2015, p. 233). The MIMA group chat feature thus allows groups of people to extend beyond their physical copresence. The extension of groups of people beyond 5

Of course, these studies also showed that there are challenges associated with MIMA group chats, such as an increase in stress perceived as a consequence of being permanently available to others (referred to as entrapment; Chan, 2018, p. 256; also cf., Karapanos et al., 2016). However, as these are effects of group communication via MIMAs, they will not be elaborated on in detail in the following.

2.3 Situating MIMAs and MIMA Group Chats Within the Overall Context …

25

their physical presence via communication technologies is, of course, not a new phenomenon. First, independent from technologically-mediated communication, interpersonal communication among some (but not all) members of a group can make the membership to a group salient to those members talking about it (i.e., two or more members talking about the group without all of the members present) and therefore allow for small group interaction beyond the presence of all group members. In addition, previous communication technologies such as (print) newsletters, (home) telephone trees, e-mails, group bulletin boards, and social networking sites have all supplied groups with the means of extending their group’s presence beyond the physical presence of its members (e.g., boyd & Ellison, 2007; Licoppe, 2004; Short et al., 1976). Likewise, mobile feature phones (i.e., early mobile phones that were more restricted in their functionalities than smartphones, also coined as dumb phones) enabled group members to contact each other individually anywhere at any time, thus allowing them to extend the group beyond the mere spatial and temporal copresence of its members—with Ling (2008) calling mobile communication a “phenomenon of the small group” (p. 172). As will be elaborated on below, texting and instant messaging also provided a means of connecting beyond the physical copresence of groups of people. While prior technological development thus has certainly had an impact on the interaction of groups of people, MIMAs (and their group chat feature) provide several affordances that distinguish them from previous communication technologies and make them a convenient and globally extensively used communication technology for groups. In the following, I will first elaborate on MIMAs as social media and then briefly review two predecessors of MIMA group chat communication, namely, 1) texting as a mode of mobile communication because, as Campbell (2019, p. 58) pointed out, it was not the introduction of smartphones which led to an increase in social engagement: “If anything, texting did.” I will connect this to 2) instant messaging as a mode of CMC, both of which can be seen as predecessors of mobile instant messaging applications (cf., Taipale & Farinosi, 2018), and conclude with the MIMA group chat feature. Last, I will connect these illustrations to identify several affordances of MIMA group chats.

2.3.1

Classifying MIMAs as Social Media

MIMAs can be classified as social media. The advent of advanced online communication infrastructures, such as (early) social network sites, confronted the field of communication with new definitional and paradigmatic challenges as formerly

26

2

Explicating the Context of Technological Mediation …

distinct categories of mass versus interpersonal communication converged in these new media environments (boyd & Ellison, 2007). Building on earlier definitions, Carr and Hayes (2015) defined social media as “Internet-based, disentrained, and persistent channels of masspersonal communication facilitating perceptions of interactions among users, deriving value primarily from user-generated content” (p. 49). These definitional criteria are also met by MIMAs. First, MIMAs are Internet-based computer applications that are installed on mobile devices (even though browser-based usage is possible with most applications, cf., Facebook messenger, WhatsApp Web). MIMAs are further characterized by channel disentrainment; that is, they allow users to participate in the flow of messages whenever they can commit to it because the communication channel itself is persistent (in contrast to a face-to-face conversation). Carr and Hayes further define social media as facilitating the perception of interactivity. In the case of instant messaging via MIMAs, users exchange messages via chat windows, which makes interaction between users key and, thus, interactivity more than mere perception. As Li (2016) reports from a content analysis of the most popular instant messaging applications, these (group) chat features are shared by most applications; however, applications differ in specific features, with, for example, some offering scheduling tools and video call features. It is important to acknowledge that while MIMAs such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and WeChat mostly started as an instant messaging application, they have been further developed, with some now including features that resemble those of other social media such as SNS (e.g., status option in WhatsApp) which only evoke a perception of interactivity. Furthermore, professional players make use of MIMAs to distribute content among users such as news organizations or companies (cf., messenger marketing; Marino & Lo Presti, 2019). In those instances, the perception of interactivity comes into play. However, as the current thesis is concerned with describing group communication via MIMA group chats, these features, as well as other developments that are not connected to the instant messaging functionality of MIMAs, such as payment options via MIMAs (cf., WeChat), will not be further taken into account. Users draw benefits from using MIMAs by interacting with other users and stay motivated to use MIMAs because of that (cf., user-generated value). However, it can also be argued that continued usage is not only motivated by interacting with others but rather by the fear of missing out on not interacting with others (Przybylski et al., 2013). In addition, in the case of WhatsApp, the global leader of MIMAs as of January 2020 (Newman et al., 2020), associating the use of the service with mobile phone numbers brought enormous network effects by socially coercing users into using the messaging app (Ling & Lai, 2016). In any case, MIMAs fulfill the criterion of user-generated value. The last definitional

2.3 Situating MIMAs and MIMA Group Chats Within the Overall Context …

27

criterion pertains to masspersonal communication, which describes “instances where mass communication channels are used for interpersonal communication, interpersonal channels are used for mass communication, and when individuals simultaneously engage in mass and interpersonal communication” (Carr & Hayes, 2015, p. 52). Conceptualizing MIMAs as social media will help to connect findings from other types of social media to the specific context of small groups. I thereby follow Carr and Hayes (2015), who proposed “to more closely theorize the association between a medium and the communication it conveys” (p. 51). In addition, I will derive several affordances of MIMA group chats so that this research is connectable to other research on communication technologies.

2.3.2

MIMAs as Evolution of Texting and Instant Messaging

The diffusion of mobile feature phones has not only changed when and where individuals can contact each other but has also brought a new way of contact, namely, text messaging, or short, texting. Texting entails the exchange of short messages (SMS) via mobile phones—thus also allowing individual addressability to some extent—with initially up to 160 characters which were entered on a small phone keypad, usually using one or two thumbs, and having a price per unit (Ling & Baron, 2007). Texting allowed for both (quasi-)synchronous and asynchronous communication and was therefore important in expanding social availability in that users could decide when they wanted to reply to a message. The first text message originated in the UK in 1992, with the service originally not intended for private communication but for commercial use only (Crystal, 2008). However, with the commercialization of the GSM mobile phone network in 1993, text messaging soon became very popular in Europe and later in Asia, being used especially by younger people (Grinter & Palen, 2002; Nardi et al., 2000) and even surpassing voice calling due to the lower costs of text messages (Ling & Baron, 2007). The ease of use of mobile phones allowed to integrate and embed messaging into all aspects of life and was employed for coordinative purposes, as well as socio-emotional exchanges (Ling & Yttri, 2002). Interestingly, the diffusion of texting was much slower in the US, where instant messaging—another form of electronically-mediated one-to-one communication (in the following: IM or IMing)—was more prevalent (Ling & Baron, 2007). IM, for example, via ICQ or Yahoo! Messenger, can be regarded as an early form of social media (Carr & Hayes, 2015) as it entails the Internet-based

28

2

Explicating the Context of Technological Mediation …

(quasi-)synchronous exchange of written messages between two or more communication partners via a personal computer (Verheijen, 2013). In comparison to text messages sent via a mobile phone, messages sent via IM neither have a price per unit nor an upper word limit and were originally entered on a computer keyboard (possibly with ten fingers instead of two on the phone) and thus tied to a physical location, namely a personal computer (Ling & Baron, 2007) which therefore only provided geographical addressability. IM was first introduced at several US-American universities in the 1980ies and became popular in a broad part of society around the turn of the millennium (Verheijen, 2013). Because IM required a personal computer and a stable Internet connection and the diffusion thereof was higher in the US, it was first more popular in the US than in Europe, but IM eventually also broke ground in Europe and has since been used in a variety of online contexts such as social networking sites or online games (Verheijen, 2013). To summarize, both text messaging via mobile phone and IM via personal computer are forms of CMC that allow for interaction with different degrees of synchronicity, ranging from real-time interaction to sending messages with large delays in response; however, only IMing can be regarded as social media which comprises—per definition—web-based services. Both types of communication thus helped to increase social connectedness by allowing to establish contact with other people that were not physically present. Due to the portability of mobile phones, texting also provided new situational contexts for both coordination and relationship management. However, both communication modes also came with specific limitations. For texting, the cost was initially an issue; moreover, it was limited to textual information of short length and, more important for the context of this thesis and elaborated below, it was limited to dyadic communication (Ling & Lai, 2016). The most important limitation of original instant messaging was that it was only possible on stationary computers, thus only allowing individuals to be addressable at a geographically fixed location (see above). As pointed out above, MIMAs build on these communication modes: MIMAs allow users to send each other messages enriched with multimedia content (e.g., emojis and emoticons, hyperlinks, audio and video files, as well as locative information), both in real-time and asynchronously. These messages are stored in a chat history and available and visible every time users return to a conversation. MIMAs are usually installed and primarily used on (portable) mobile devices, enabling users to send messages while they are in motion (Campbell, 2013; Taipale & Farinosi, 2018) and thus providing instant messaging on a portable mobile device (Taipale & Farinosi, 2018). Furthermore, communication via MIMAs does not have a price-per-unit as messages are transmitted via

2.3 Situating MIMAs and MIMA Group Chats Within the Overall Context …

29

the Internet, so cost is no longer an issue (O’Hara et al., 2014). This is not to imply that MIMAs were a disruptive innovation. As the previous illustrations showed, they were rather the result of a continuous development building on paging systems, texting, multimedia messaging services (MMS), and IM. Ultimately, MIMAs thereby overcame the limitations associated with original texting and instant messaging on personal computers. Whereas texting might have been primarily a tool for younger people (e.g., Nardi et al., 2000), MIMAs are used across all life phases (Chan, 2018; Matassi et al., 2019), on the one hand, to keep in touch and maintain relationships with close others, such as friends and families, as well as with individuals’ wider social network (Aharony & Gazit, 2016; Kamal et al., 2016; Karapanos et al., 2016; Newman et al., 2019; Nouwens et al., 2017; O’Hara et al., 2014; Taipale & Farinosi, 2018), and, on the other hand, to aid in the coordination of everyday life’s activities (Ling & Lai, 2016; Malhotra et al., 2018; Schuler et al., 2014). The studies referred to here all undergird that MIMAs facilitate individuals’ day-to-day living. As previously pointed out, one reason why MIMAs facilitate social life to such an extent pertains to the fact that messages in MIMAs can not only be exchanged in dyads but also in multiparty group chats in which more than two people can participate and exchange messages. I argue that the group chat feature of MIMAs is a central feature that, by overcoming the limitation of texting to dyads, has specific social implications for small groups. It enables groups of people to extend their group beyond the physical copresence of its members, which is central to the current thesis. Thinking of texting via short message services, this allowed for mobile communication independent of time and space. While this was helpful to small groups by allowing them to include group members that were absent and organize meetings (Ling, 2008), it was only possible in dyads (see above). When more than two people wanted to interact as a group, they had to use a hub-and-speak mode where one person would serve as a hub and convey information to other people individually, either by text messages or individual phone calls (Ling, 2008; Ling & Lai, 2016). This limitation was not present in instant messaging, which allowed for multiparty interaction, but which was primarily based on stationary computers and oftentimes not persistent. Moreover, social networking sites also allow for different types of multiparty interaction; however, these group features are not as convenient for group discussions (for example, group interaction is usually organized by topics that change position on the discussion board depending on the discussion activity). In contrast, MIMAs as a form of mobile communication have been deeply engrained in our social lives (Ling & Lai, 2016) and combine the most convenient features of these previous technologies: Instant messaging on mobile devices, which allows

30

2

Explicating the Context of Technological Mediation …

for interaction among all group members at once, at any place and any time. In the following, I connect the definitional criteria of MIMAs as social media and the above illustrations on predecessors of mediated group communication to identify several affordances of MIMA group chats.

2.3.3

Identifying Affordances of MIMA Group Chats

Above, I introduced the concept of technological affordances, “broadly described as possibilities for action” that agents perceive in the environment (S. K. Evans et al., 2017, p. 36). It is important to point out that “there can be no final, exhaustive set of affordances” (Rice et al., 2017, p. 123). Therefore, the list to follow is in no way meant to be comprehensive but rather depicts the ones deemed most important for the current thesis. The affordances to be discussed next are accessibility and bandwidth (Fox & McEwan, 2017), interactivity (Sundar, 2008), persistence (Treem & Leonardi, 2012), editability (Treem & Leonardi, 2012), and permanent collective addressability (Ling, 2018; Schrock, 2015). Accessibility One explanation for the popularity of the group chat feature lies in the ease with which these chats can be formed (Church & Oliveira, 2013; Ling & Lai, 2016) and their “low threshold for participation” (Knop-Huelss et al., 2018, p. 132). In order to create a MIMA group chat, an individual user creates a group, assigns a group name (and optionally a group picture and group description), and then invites their contacts to the group chat. As a default setting, the group creator is the administrator, although most applications allow users to assign administrator rights to other members. All group members can see the chat window with all messages sent since they joined the group, a list of all chat members (administrative roles are displayed when assigned), and a repository of shared media such as images and videos. Ease of use, or rather, accessibility, has previously been identified as a technological affordance and describes the “capability of easily achieving or reaching communication, regardless of time, place, structural limitations, technological literacy, or other constraints” (Fox & McEwan, 2017, p. 304). Bandwidth Communication via MIMAs is a certain type of CMC and thus shares the typical characteristics there of (Knop et al., 2016; Walther, 1996). First and foremost, communication via MIMA group chats comes with reduced social context cues:

2.3 Situating MIMAs and MIMA Group Chats Within the Overall Context …

31

In contrast to FTF interaction, where communicators are physically available to each other, CMC lacks nonverbal cues, which are important for carrying socioemotional and relational information and providing immediate feedback. Communication technologies vary in the structural features, more precisely, their multimediality, that enable the transmission of social cues; the “breadth of social cues potentially transmitted in a channel” (Fox & McEwan, 2017, p. 302) has thus also been defined as an affordance. MIMAs offer multimedia functionality, with messages potentially consisting of textual information, graphicons (i.e., emoticons and emojis; Derks, Bos, & Grumbkow, 2008), images (cf., memes; Rieger & Klimmt, 2019a), audio and audiovisual files, location information, links to websites and other files (Carr & Hayes, 2015). Interactivity MIMAs provide disentrained and persistent communication channels (Carr & Hayes, 2015). Communication via MIMAs can thus occur both synchronously as well as asynchronously. On the one hand, due to fast networks and short transmission times, MIMAs allow for near synchronous communication (Church & Oliveira, 2013; Park & Sundar, 2015): Communicators can send a message which is immediately transmitted and visible in a chat window displayed on all communicators’ devices. This message can instantly be replied to, which can lead to a sequence of immediate back and forth resembling the turn-taking process of FTF interactions (Sacks et al., 1974) and presenting an example of fine-grained synchronization of group activity (see temporal problems below, Section 3.1.2). On the other hand, MIMAs also allow for asynchronous communication where users reply with a certain response latency (Kalman et al., 2006), that is, hours or days after a chat member has sent a message. Sundar (2008) conceptualizes this back and forth as interactivity, an affordance that is realized when messages thematically relate to each other. Of course, interactivity is generally present in all types of interpersonal communication (cf. Chapter 2 on interpersonal communication). However, in the literature, it has been defined as affordance in a more narrow way. As Ariel and Avidar (2015) pointed out, “interactivity is not an inherent attribute of a medium that is defined by its technological characteristics. Rather, interactivity … is an attribute of the process of communication itself” (p. 24). Thus, the technological characteristic of a medium enables interactivity to a certain degree (Ariel & Avidar, 2015) which corresponds to the very nature of affordances as action possibilities.

32

2

Explicating the Context of Technological Mediation …

Persistence Thematically relating messages to previous messages is possible because all messages sent are stored and visible in the chat room. This corresponds to the affordance of persistence (Treem & Leonardi, 2012). Following Treem and Leonardi (2012, p. 155), I understand communication as persistent “if it remains accessible in the same form as the original display after the actor has finished his or her presentation.”6 Dependent on the type of MIMA used, chat messages, as well as shared media, and a list of all chat members are generally visible to group members either since they joined the group or since the group chat was formed, as pointed out in relation to the accessibility affordance. Editability Closely connected to this is the affordance of editability, which “is a function of two aspects of an interaction: communication formed in isolation from others, and asynchronicity … [and] refers to the fact the individuals can spend a good deal of time and effort crafting and recrafting a communicative act before it is viewed by others” (Treem & Leonardi, 2012, p. 159). When users want to send a message via MIMA, they first type it on their phone and then hit the send button, for example, allowing them to take advantage of selective self-presentation (cf., Walther, 1996, further discussed below). This leads to another important characteristic (or using the terminology of affordance research: outcome) of CMC: control (Knop et al., 2016). On the one hand, chat members have “expressive control” (Reid & Reid, 2010, p. 4) over how they present themselves, as they can reflect on and edit their message before sending it. However, as soon as the message is sent, it is stored in the chat room and thus available to all chat members. Depending on the type of MIMA, informational control (Feaster, 2010; Fox & McEwan, 2017) after the message is sent is thus rather low7 . The preceding affordances discussed as relevant for MIMA group chat communication are affordances that have mostly been defined on an individual level; that is, they describe the relationship between technology and one individual actor. As such, most of the above could also be applied to MIMA dyadic chat communication. However, more generally speaking, affordances are multi-level constructs 6

Some applications have introduced features that allow message content to be viewed only once, e.g., WhatsApp’s view once image feature. 7 Applications differ in their ‘erase feature’. For example, WhatsApp allows users to delete messages, however, only within a short time period after they were sent (March 2018: 68 minutes). Some MIMAs also allow editing of messages after they have been sent (e.g., Telegram).

2.3 Situating MIMAs and MIMA Group Chats Within the Overall Context …

33

that are dependent on the social entity in question; as pointed out by Rice et al. (2017), they can thus also describe the relationship between technology and the characteristics of a group of people. These group-level affordances then enable specific types of interaction among those group members. The social entity of interest in this thesis is the small group. Therefore, the previously discussed affordances should also be understood as group-level affordances. More importantly, broadening the scope of affordances to be applicable to groups draws attention to what I deem the most important affordance of MIMA group chats, namely permanent collective addressability (PCA). Permanent collective addressability I argue that the affordance of permanent collective addressability sets MIMA group chats apart from previous ways of interacting beyond the spatiotemporal constraints of a group. In contrast to those, MIMA group chats provide “persistent online places for messages to be created, transmitted, and consumed regardless of which individuals are online” (Carr & Hayes, 2015, p. 51). In other words, collections of individuals are presented with a permanently and ubiquitously available shared virtual social space—“both symbolically and materially” (Matassi et al., 2019, p. 11)—where chat members can interact without being physically present at the same place at a certain time (Knop-Huelss et al., 2018). MIMAs allow for permanent availability and accessibility to each other because MIMA group chats are available for their members 24/7. This affordance not only encompasses that every group member can actively participate in their group communication, but it also implies that every member can passively read those messages. This means that even though some members might not actively participate in the group chat, due to the persistence of MIMA content, they can still take part in the group experience. Going further, it can even be argued that group members’ participation in the group experience is at least partially involuntary. A message sent in the group chat involves other members’ phones receiving that message and drawing attention to it in a more or less intrusive way. Depending on a phone’s setting, message notifications can range from an acoustic signal with the message’s content appearing on a member’s lock screen to a simple highlight of the group chat within a member’s MIMA home screen (i.e., notifications turned off). In any case, depending on a group member’s POPC-related mobile phone habits, they are likely to notice the communicative activity within the group chat at some point in time and can only evade it by actively abstaining from all online communication (Reinecke et al., 2018). More specifically, a member with heavy mobile phone use is probably more likely to

34

2

Explicating the Context of Technological Mediation …

notice a new group chat message earlier than a member who only occasionally uses and checks their phone (Johannes et al., 2019). Following S. K. Evans et al. (2017), PCA thus constitutes an affordance because it presents a relationship between the group chat feature and members who can variably use the affordance. It further represents the group-level extension of perpetual contact (as used by Mascheroni & Vincent, 2016) which refers to the possibility of ubiquitous access to interaction partners, independent of time and space, made possible by the portability of mobile devices. It further builds on Licoppe’s (2004) notion of connected presence introduced in Section 2.2.2, where communication partners engage in frequent, short message exchanges to establish a feeling of being together. What is essential, though, is to recognize the possibility of action; that is, the potential to engage with one’s group, not the action engagement. PCA further has to be distinguished from ambient-mediated sociation (Ling & Lai, 2016), developed in a study on MIMA group chats, and presents an extension of connected presence. Ambient-mediated sociation is understood as “pervasive social awareness afforded by messaging apps” (2016, p. 844) and describes the use of social media “to broadcast and monitor information exchanges with our social contacts” (Ling & Lai, 2016, p. 844). However, in contrast to PCA, it takes on the perspective of the individual that is embedded in various types of social interaction and is made aware of those, for instance, within their own MIMA home screen. PCA has various implications for the coordination and maintenance of social entities larger than dyads which will be laid out in detail in Chapter 3. A short note on anonymity Albeit anonymity has long been a defining affordance of CMC (cf., S. K. Evans et al., 2017), it does not play a role in the context of MIMAs because members are identifiable by their phone numbers. Even though privacy settings might prevent the immediate revelation of one’s identity, in the long run, chat members will learn the other members’ identities eventually during their ongoing group interaction. However, the physical absence of a group chat’s members might still pose a challenge to members who need to engage in the process of audience imagination; that is, they need to mentally conceptualize to whom they are sending messages (Litt, 2012). Further complicating this are findings by Mannell (2020), who showed that group chat social, technical, and conversational boundaries varied greatly across social situations. As Knop et al. (2016) pointed out, it is unlikely

2.4 Shortcomings of Current Research on MIMA Group Chats

35

that all group members equally and simultaneously participate in a discussion on [MIMAs] and are thus equally salient in the mind of the discloser . . . It is therefore possible that imagined audiences in [MIMAs] are based on those members that are the most active within the group or maybe hold a particular status. (Knop et al., 2016, p. 1079)

On social networking sites, these mental conceptualizations are often based on those contacts that individuals engage with the most, while contacts that are less visible are not considered—leading to mismatching of imagined and actual audiences known as context collapse (Vitak et al., 2015). In contrast, the MIMA group chats in question are usually smaller than the sum of contacts on an SNS, and thus audience imagination could be easier to accomplish.

2.4

Shortcomings of Current Research on MIMA Group Chats

An increasing amount of research shows that permanent connectedness via mobile devices and via MIMAs, as well as surrendering to the social pressure of always being online and available to others, has both positive and negative ramifications: On the one hand, it promotes a sense of connectedness and belonging and enables rich online interactions (Hall & Baym, 2012; Triê.u et al., 2019). On the other hand, users reported an increased level of stress from communication devices, lower levels of productivity, as well as more negative feelings (Freytag et al., 2021; Hall, 2017; Sonnentag et al., 2018; Thomée et al., 2011; Vorderer et al., 2016). Understanding such cognitive and affective processes associated with communication technology use, however, requires a profound knowledge of how these technologies are used (e.g., Bonito & Sanders, 2009; Campbell, 2015). In the case of MIMA group chats, the same holds true not only for individuals but for gatherings of people that engage in communication via these applications. However, we currently know very little about the actual communicative activity that small group members exhibit in their respective MIMA group chat. Previous research on MIMAs and MIMA group chats has provided some insights into the use and the implications of these applications (e.g., Aharony & Gazit, 2016; Kamal et al., 2016; Kim & Lim, 2015; Knop et al., 2016; Ling & Lai, 2016; Malhotra et al., 2018; Resende et al., 2019; M. Seufert et al., 2015; Swart et al., 2019; Taipale & Farinosi, 2018; Yu et al., 2017). Most notable is the seminal study by Ling and Lai (2016), who gave a first overview of how the use of MIMA group chats impacts group interaction. The most important

36

2

Explicating the Context of Technological Mediation …

finding of their qualitative focus group study with MIMA users in Singapore and Taiwan pertains to the potential of MIMAs to facilitate the coordination of everyday tasks (micro-coordination 2.0) while also highlighting the need to fulfill socio-emotional functions of group interaction via MIMAs (e.g., sending birthday wishes). Although their study is one of the first to profoundly explore the phenomenon of MIMA group chats from a communication science perspective, from my point of view, it has two shortcomings that are reflected in other studies on MIMA use and MIMA group chats. First, studies on MIMA group chats rarely observe the communicative behavior at hand, that is, the content of messages exchanged via the application. Second, the studies in question, unfortunately, all lack an integration of the vast knowledge from small group research to better understand MIMA group chat communication and its implications for group processes and group outcomes. In the following, I lay out these limitations and argue for the importance of overcoming them.

2.4.1

Previous Research and the Importance of Considering Communication Content and Process

As previously mentioned, research has shown that MIMAs are used across all life phases (Chan, 2018; Matassi et al., 2019) in order to maintain relationships with both close others as well as with individuals’ wider social network (Aharony & Gazit, 2016; Kamal et al., 2016; Karapanos et al., 2016; Newman et al., 2019; Nouwens et al., 2017; O’Hara et al., 2014; Taipale & Farinosi, 2018). In this regard, research in the context of family communication has particularly highlighted the aforementioned overcoming of the hub-and-speak mode. For example, Kamal and colleagues (2016) showed that kin keepers, that is, specific family members who make efforts to maintain the social bonds between members of a family and the family as a whole, also carried out their kin-keeping role in WhatsApp group chats of extended families. There, those family members—mostly women—would initiate family interaction via the group chat, thus potentially reaching all members at once and creating a “perpetual presence” (p. 11) instead of having to contact family members individually. Other research is in line with this, showing that, for example, college students who no longer lived at home appreciated their family group chats for being able to contact both their parents at once (Aharony & Gazit, 2016) or, the other way around, parents being able to reach their children (Yu et al., 2017). In addition, WhatsApp was perceived as the perfect means to have short and fast exchanges of seemingly trivial information, which resembles phatic communication that was said to promote social coherence

2.4 Shortcomings of Current Research on MIMA Group Chats

37

among family members (Taipale & Farinosi, 2018). This corresponds to findings by Knop et al. (2016), who compared within-group self-disclosure in copresence and MIMA group chats, and found that survey participants reported higher levels of self-disclosure in the offline setting, even though participants reported more communicative instances in the MIMA settings. Regarding the question of how group members communicate in their MIMA group chats, this study showed that while the group chats were used frequently, they were not the preferred context for disclosing personal information. Further adding to this evidence, Swart et al. (2019) found leisure-based groups (a soccer team, a fraternity) to exchange (inter)personal information and gossip in MIMA group chats in order to create a feeling of togetherness. On the other hand, group chats are used to aid in the coordination of everyday life activities (Ling & Lai, 2016; Malhotra et al., 2018; Schuler et al., 2014). There are two studies on micro-coordination via group chats. Ling and Lai’s (2016) study that was introduced above and supported by Malhotra et al.’s (2018) findings on the coordination of social dining among Singaporean youths. Both studies showed that users employed MIMA group chats especially to do short-term, iterative coordination of activities (e.g., announcing a delayed arrival). However, group chats were also reported to be used for less short-term coordination, for example, the planning of events that are further in the future (Ling & Lai, 2016; Malhotra et al., 2018; O’Hara et al., 2014), an aspect also reported by the kinkeepers in the study mentioned above who used the group chat to coordinate family activities and to diffuse information (Kamal et al., 2016). Interestingly, MIMAs and MIMA group chats have also become a context for the consumption of news content, playing a role in the spread of (mis)information (Newman et al., 2019; Resende et al., 2019). While intriguing, this aspect of MIMA communication is not explicitly considered in the context of this thesis which focuses on the basic functions of communication within group chats. However, the consumption of news, as well as information seeking and diffusion of information content, adds another dimension to the relevance of understanding the use of MIMAs in general and MIMA group chats in particular. What is important, however, is that these communicative exchanges not only aided in organizing group activities or the mere exchange of information but also paid into the social context of the group itself. For example, members of a household sharing group chat reported using their group chat to coordinate practical issues but pointed out that those messages simultaneously added to the social fabric of the collective using the group chat (O’Hara et al., 2014). The authors emphasized the phatic nature of WhatsApp communication in that every exchange would pay into the aforementioned social fabric.

38

2

Explicating the Context of Technological Mediation …

The findings reported here show that MIMA group chat communication can be mapped upon the communicative functions of coordination and relationship management introduced above (cf., Section 2.1.1). This is, of course, plausible, as mobile-mediated communication is a form of interpersonal communication and should thus also enable the fulfillment of basic functions of interpersonal communication. Addressing the overall question of how small group members communicate in their group chat, these results show that group members will likely address the coordination of (group) activities, as well as the socio-emotional context of their groups. While these studies on the use of MIMAs and group chats are informative, it is striking that they rely mainly on self-reporting either obtained through large surveys (Chan, 2018; Knop et al., 2016; Li, 2016; Sultan, 2014; Waterloo et al., 2018), semi-structured or in-depth interviews of individuals (Kim & Lim, 2015; Schuler et al., 2014; Yu et al., 2017) and focus groups (Ling & Lai, 2016; Malhotra et al., 2018; Swart et al., 2019), or a combination of several interview methods (Church & Oliveira, 2013; Matassi et al., 2019; Rambe & Bere, 2013). Research from information science has drawn on chat log data from MIMAs to develop models of group formation (Qiu et al., 2015) and others; however, similar to the studies just mentioned, communication content was (intentionally) not taken into account (Rosenfeld et al., 2016; M. Seufert et al., 2015). While these studies provide important insights into how users perceive their group chat use, they, for example, do not provide insights into how communicative functions are fulfilled in this communication context. There are two examples of studies that systematically investigated the actual group chat messages sent via a MIMA-like application. Farnham and Keyani (2006) explored how the use of a self-developed group-based text messaging system influenced levels of social awareness among group members and the coordination of group activities. In order to understand their participants’ user experiences, the authors employed a methodological mix of questionnaires, observations, and, most importantly for the current thesis, also examined communication content sent via group chats, for which they found that content was mainly directed at the coordination of social events. However, the results also revealed that messages directed at the social bonding of the group increased over time as users grew accustomed to the new communication environment. This distinction can be mapped upon the communicative functions of coordination and relationship management introduced above and is thus informative for the current project. In a similar vein, Counts (2007) examined a group-based mobile messaging system similar to MIMAs before their introduction to the market, comparing the experience of group members using this system with people using dyadic

2.4 Shortcomings of Current Research on MIMA Group Chats

39

messaging. His findings provided insights into the content of messages sent in these group chats, revealing a high amount of socio-emotional communication containing greetings, status updates, joking, and experience sharing. Group chat messaging, however, was also made up of coordination. He further found that participants using the MIMA-like group chat reported higher levels of cohesiveness and connectedness among members in comparison to the condition without group messaging (Counts, 2007, p. 92). While both these studies were conducted before the introduction and diffusion of smartphones and MIMAs and thus before the pervasive diffusion of mobile communication and permanent connectedness, their findings give insights into the social benefits of a group-based mobile messaging system and are therefore educational for the current project but have to be regarded against this backdrop. There are other studies that investigated communication content yet with a particular communication topic in mind: Messages sent via MIMAs were taken into account in ethnomethodological approaches to understanding the use of group chats at the workplace (McGregor et al., 2019; Mudliar & Rangaswamy, 2015), chat logs were used to enrich interview data in the context of family communication (Kamal et al., 2016), political discussions in semi-public groups (Kligler-Vilenchik, 2019) and the spread of (mis)information via MIMA group chats (Resende et al., 2019). Moreover, some studies examined MIMA chat content from a linguistic perspective to uncover underlying conversational practices (Arens, 2014; Dürscheid & Frick, 2014; Petitjean & Morel, 2017), thus investigating Burleson’s (2009) interaction management function of interpersonal communication. At the point of writing this, there is no empirical study that systematically investigates the content group members exchanged via MIMA group chats based on a theory-driven approach that would allow thoroughly shedding light on the communicative behavior of members of small groups communicating in their longstanding MIMA group chat8 . Reasons for not investigating communication content are likely the ethical and research economic challenges associated with obtaining actual communication products, that is, the MIMA chat logs. For a discussion of the ethical considerations and implications of investigating group chat content, readers are referred to the method section: Section 6.1.3. Counts (2007) and Farnham and Keyani (2006) circumvented the research economical

8

The body of research has grown tremendously since the beginning of this project and its empirical implementation. The literature review mostly refers to studies published until the year 2019, new literature is reported only in spotlights. There are a few studies that have since looked at group chat messages using content analysis methods (e.g., Baden et al., 2020; Kligler-Vilenchik et al., 2020). These will be called upon in the discussion.

40

2

Explicating the Context of Technological Mediation …

and ethical issues mentioned above by developing their own group-based messaging systems, which they then tested within their personal networks and examined the resulting chat logs with their participants’ consent. However, while their studies give interesting insights into the communicative behavior in MIMA-like group chats, they do not allow to be generalized to today’s context of deeply engrained mobile communication. As pointed out in the introduction, MIMA group chat communication thus remains a ‘black box.’ However, if we take the claim of communication as a mechanism for the constitution of human relations seriously, we should open ‘the black box’ of interpersonal communication (Friemel, 2008) and group interaction (R. A. Meyers & Seibold, 2012a) and look inside that box in order to better explain and predict both positive and negative effects of this type of media use. The current investigation will address this shortcoming and will provide a systematic, theory-driven investigation of communication content exchanged via MIMA group chats used by naturally occurring groups—which is currently missing. The literature on small group research can provide the theoretical foundation to guide such a theory-driven investigation of communication content.

2.4.2

The Need for a Small Group Perspective

Communication is inherently social and occurs in a known relational context (Burleson, 2009; Friemel, 2013). The relational context for communication via group chats is the collection of people who are part of the group chat. I argue that, to a certain degree, this collection of people can be considered a small group. Despite the prevalence of group chat use, there have been few attempts to investigate the phenomenon of MIMA group chats through the lens of small group research. Thus far, most studies that examined MIMA group chats did so from an individualistic perspective, that is, looking at how individuals use and perceive group chats. There are a few studies where groups are regarded as the object of investigation, for example, the study of family communication via MIMAs (Kamal et al., 2016; Taipale & Farinosi, 2018; Yu et al., 2017), of political communication via public political discussion groups (Kligler-Vilenchik, 2019; Resende et al., 2019) and via private communities (Swart et al., 2019). However, none of these studies applied insights from small group research, which is unfortunate because, as O’Hara et al. (2014) aptly pointed out, the significance of MIMA group chats does not lie “in their initial formation but in the ways they enable the ongoing performance of group relations” (O’Hara et al., 2014,

2.4 Shortcomings of Current Research on MIMA Group Chats

41

p. 1137). The current investigation will address this shortcoming and conceptualize MIMA group chats as part of the interaction repertoire of small groups (elaborated in Section 3.2), which will allow the integrating of findings from small group research into the phenomenon of MIMA group chat communication. Whether, or rather, to what extent chat members perceive themselves as members of a small group that exists independent from the group chat is an empirical question yet to be answered. The minimal group paradigm (cf., Diehl, 1990) suggests that individuals assigned to groups based on random criteria quickly develop a perception of being part of an ingroup in contrast to an outgroup. Building on this argument, MIMA group chat characteristics should enhance the perception of being part of a group among chat members (Knop-Huelss et al., 2018). First and most straightforward, in most MIMAs, the group chat feature is called ‘group’ and not ‘group chat,’ which should encourage a perception of groupness. Second, by deliberately adding other users to a group chat and consequently curating an official member list, group boundaries are objectively communicated, which “creates perceived facticity of the social connection among its members” (KnopHuelss et al., 2018, pp. 130–131)9 . Third, every time a user checks their phone and sees a message that was sent within the group chat, this user’s group identity should be made salient (for an overview on identity salience, cf., Postmes, Spears, et al., 2005). The extent to which group chat members see themselves as part of a small group should also highly differ across group chats. Take, for example, a group chat of a study group at university versus a group chat with best friends versus a group chat with a high number of people organizing a birthday present for a related friend. These people connected via a group chat would probably have varying degrees of belongingness which are likely to influence groupness perceptions. While these theoretical assertions to answer the question of groupness perception are definitely intriguing, the goal of this thesis is not to test these assertions. Instead, I will reverse this small group argument and look at pre-existing small groups which, at some point in their group’s history, started to use MIMA group chats as an additional communication channel. Building on Ling’s (2008) argument that mobile communication is a “phenomenon of the small group” (p. 172) and challenging the generality of his later assertion that MIMA users might wrongfully apply small group dynamics to messaging groups (Ling & Lai, 2016, p. 839), I argue that there is currently a lack of a perspective that draws on small group 9

Mannell (2020) challenged the assertion of explicit group boundaries and their effects on group dynamics and introduced an alternative conceptualization of group boundaries as “plural and porous” (p. 274) in order to account for users’ experiences that run contrary to the assumption of explicitness.

42

2

Explicating the Context of Technological Mediation …

research to explain the use of MIMA group chats. Additionally, knowledge about a group’s properties (e.g., size, purpose, structure), as well as general groupspecific characteristics (e.g., multilevel interdependencies), helps to understand the role MIMAs play in “the ongoing performance of group relations” (O’Hara et al., 2014, p. 1134). In this thesis, I will therefore focus on long-term group chats that can be regarded as an extension of the interaction repertoire of small groups. I am particularly interested in small groups that use MIMA group chats as one possible communication channel among a repertoire of interaction opportunities that are both copresent (i.e., regular and irregular group meetings where members are in the same space at the same time) and mediated (i.e., among others: MIMA group chat communication), and where, consequently, members “can place one another into a common contextual framework” (Ling & Lai, 2016, p. 839).

2.5

Summary: MIMA Group Chats as Context of Technological Mediation

In the preceding chapters, I showed how communication technologies have profoundly changed how individuals, as inherently social beings, make meaningful connections to others. Interpersonal communication was defined as a complex, situated interaction process which takes place in a known relational context and which contains the functional and purposeful exchange of symbols in order to generate shared meanings; through these exchanges, social structures emerge from a longitudinal perspective (Burleson, 2009; Friemel, 2013). In general, communication as “the mechanism through which human relations exist and develop” (Cooley, 1909, p. 61) is not dependent on communication technologies. Following Burleson (2009), I recognize that while the situational context of communication impacts how individuals connect to each other, its nature of generating shared meetings does not change. The concept of technological affordances helps to describe how technologies impact communication. As the research interest of this thesis is to systematically describe communication via MIMA group chats, affordances will help to theoretically derive relevant research questions. As elaborated on above, communication describes a functional process where every communicative act fulfills a function. These functions can be categorized along the three dimensions of interaction management, relationship management, and coordination (Burleson, 2009). Regardless of the context and the communication technology used, these communicative functions always have the potential to be fulfilled. However, depending on the context and the realized affordances, the

2.5 Summary: MIMA Group Chats as Context of Technological Mediation

43

extent to which functions are fulfilled varies. In other words, every communicative act has a relationship management component, but depending on the context in which this act takes place, the relationship is maintained to varying degrees (cf. also Watzlawick et al., 1967). The same applies to the interaction management function, as well as coordination. Affordances are useful in explaining how well certain technological contexts are suited to fulfill the functions of interaction management, relationship management, and coordination. More precisely, the affordances of MIMA group chats—accessibility, bandwidth, persistence, editability, interactivity, and permanent collective addressability—are helpful in explaining how these communicative functions are fulfilled in MIMA group chats. I then briefly outlined the development of communication technologies and how they dramatically increased the situations in which individuals are able to establish social connectedness, which successively expanded social availability and individual addressability of human beings, leading to heightened social expectations to always be available to others. An important means for establishing social connectedness today is provided by mobile instant messaging applications such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat, with texting and instant messaging as predecessors of the type of communication made possible by MIMAs. These applications have been deeply engrained into the daily lives of their users, adding an additional layer of social connections and facilitating the coordination of everyday logistics. A review of research on MIMA use revealed the importance of the group chat feature, which was explained as a consequence of MIMAs’ high usability and their offering of an effortlessly accessible, permanently available shared virtual social space where members can participate in the exchange of messages and where all members can be included in group-relevant processes and decisions. This space for the exchange of messages poses a specific context for communication which should, on the one hand, impact the collective encounters and relationships ‘in the offline world’ and, on the other hand, the communication process itself—without, of course, changing its fundamental nature (cf., Burleson, 2009). The context of small groups will be introduced and elaborated in Chapter 3, with the goal of using these insights to derive dimensions (Chapter 4) and specific research questions (Chapter 5), which will then be used to systematically describe the communication content of MIMA group chats and to answer the overall research question of this thesis of how group members communicate in a MIMA group chat. As I laid out in the last section of this chapter, previous research on MIMA group chats has two major shortcomings: a lack of examining content and communication process as a manifestation of communicative behavior and a lack of consideration of small groups as a relational context of communication. To

44

2

Explicating the Context of Technological Mediation …

overcome these shortcomings, this thesis will investigate group members’ communicative behavior, which manifests in messages exchanged via MIMA group chats. It will systematically explore and describe the communication content of MIMA group chats. The goal of the following chapter is, therefore, to provide the theoretical foundation from small group research that will allow deriving dimensions of communication content and specific research questions in the chapter thereafter.

3

Explicating The Social Context: Applying Small Group Research to the MIMA Group Chat Phenomenon

From the day people are born, they act not alone but in the context of small groups. People are generally born into a family where they experience care and support and where they can develop their identity. Later in life, they become members of other small groups that mostly serve instrumental purposes and where membership has not been inherited but whose members joined the group more or less voluntarily: They go to Kindergarten and to school, maybe do a traineeship or attend university and then start to work where they usually interact with a number of other people. During their leisure time, people engage in club activities (e.g., join a soccer team or a choir group), go to church, or do regular volunteering (e.g., join a non-governmental organization). People can come together temporarily to work on projects in their leisure time (e.g., rehears with others to perform one specific theater play, organize and execute a fundraising event to collect donations for wildlife refuges), and people can decide to share resources with specific others (e.g., live in apartment sharing communities, form commuting groups who share a car or train to work). It is apparent that small groups play a pivotal role for individuals and that investigating and understanding small groups as an object of investigation is, therefore, both intriguing and important. First, small groups hold a special position within our social structure (Schwonk, 1999): from a macro perspective, groups share certain similarities with society as a whole (e.g., division of labor, shared resources) and can thus serve as a blueprint for studying collective processes. Of course, small groups are also distinct social entities, with one of the most obvious differences between a small group and society as a whole being–– aside from size––that members of a small group usually know each other at least to some extent. Second, from the perspective of individuals, small groups play an © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023 K. Knop-Hülß, The Permanently Connected Group (PeCoG), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-43238-6_3

45

46

3

Explicating The Social Context: Applying Small Group Research …

integral part in human behavior and well-being (e.g., Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Many day-to-day activities are carried out in a group context (see above). The various groups that individuals belong to exert social influence on their members as “anchorage points for opinions, attitudes, and values” (E. Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955, p. 47) and provide an important source to satisfy an individuals’ needs, for example, the need for affiliation (Levine & Moreland, 2006). Last, communication is essential for small groups: they are formed through and maintained by the interaction of their members, “making groups, ultimately, a communication phenomenon” (Frey & Sunwolf, 2005, p. 175)1 . Even though previous research on MIMA use has revealed the importance and appreciation of the MIMA group chat feature (cf., Section 2.4), there is little research on how mobile communication technologies, and MIMAs in particular, have shaped small group communication. The current thesis, therefore, addresses this shortcoming by applying theories of small group research to the phenomenon of communication via MIMA group chats. The goal of this thesis is to systematically describe and explore the communicative content group members provide in MIMA group chats. Chapter three hence serves as the introduction of the required theoretical foundations from small group research and thus explicates the social context of MIMA group chat communication. In the remainder of this chapter, I want to accomplish two things: First, I want to conceptualize small group communication via MIMA group chats. For this, I first define small groups and describe two theoretical perspectives on group interaction that are often employed in small group research (Section 3.1.1). Next, I draw on previous conceptualizations of the group interaction process (Section 3.1.2). I then apply these insights to the use case of communicating via a MIMA group chat (Section 3.2) which I conceptualize as an expansion of a small group’s interaction repertoire providing a new social context for group members to engage with their group. The technological affordances introduced in Section 2.3.3 will be connected to these elaborations, and I will argue for how they shape the fulfillment of communicative functions in this communication environment. Secondly, I want to specify the group type that will serve as a use case to be empirically investigated in this thesis, namely, non-professional secondary groups.

1

Frey (1994) put this nicely: “Communication is the lifeblood that flows through the veins of groups. Communication is not just a tool that group members use; groups are best regarded as a phenomenon that emerges from communication” (Frey, 1994b, p. x, as cited in Frey, 1994a, p. 2).

3.1 Definition of Relevant Concepts

3.1

Definition of Relevant Concepts

3.1.1

Small Groups

47

The definition of interpersonal communication introduced in Section 2.1.1 states that communication takes place in a known relational context. This relational context can take on many forms and impacts communication without changing its fundamental nature (Burleson, 2009). To illustrate, simply increasing the number of communicating partners increases complexity because, with each individual, the number of possible connections between those individuals increases (Bostrom, 1970). While this might lead to the development of specific communication rules and the evolution of certain roles (e.g., Rimal & Lapinski, 2008), the process of generating meaning through the exchange of symbols remains the same. The relational context of interest here is the small group. A small group is defined as a collection of three or more individuals who perceive themselves as a group, who pursue a common purpose, and who are part of a more or less continuous communication process (e.g., Frey & Sunwolf, 2005; Matteson, 2009; Wittenbaum et al., 2004). There are different positions on whether two people can already be considered as a small group (e.g., Carron et al., 1998, as cited by Carron & Brawley, 2000; McKenna & Green, 2002), however, increasing the number of communication partners to more than two has, among others, implications for the development of communication roles (e.g., Levine et al., 2001) and group norms (cf., also earliest experiments on group conformity, Asch, 1951, 1956; Rimal & Lapinski, 2008). I thus only consider entities with at least three people as a group. These individuals further need to be part of a continuous communication process where interaction occurs repeatedly, and they need to perceive themselves as being part of a collective (cf., Tajfel, 1982). These criteria set small groups apart from random collective encounters, such as several strangers at a train station platform who share the same, but not common purpose, to get on a train. Even in the case that those individuals share the same train every day, they are unlikely to perceive each other and themselves as part of a group— unless they explicitly organize as a train ride-sharing group, which would also add the dimension of sharing a common goal. This definition of small groups is informed by several theoretical perspectives of small group research—namely, the functional perspective and the symbolic-interpretive perspective—which will be discussed next. The first theoretical perspective, which informs the definition of small groups but which also underlies many research findings reported in this thesis, is the

48

3

Explicating The Social Context: Applying Small Group Research …

functional 2 perspective of group life (Hackman & Morris, 1975; Hirokawa, 1994; McGrath, 1991). It comprises several theories that all aim at identifying and explaining factors that have some influence on group performance outcomes (e.g., high quality decision-making or successful problem-solving; Hirokawa, 1994). Group processes are regarded as being functional to group outcomes (Bonito & Sanders, 2009). Group outcomes are thus the central explanandum and are assumed to arise out of a causal linear relationship of inputs, processes, and outputs (Hackman & Morris, 1975). The idea of an input-process-output relationship is, of course, an oversimplification of group interaction (McGrath et al., 2000). In addition, this thesis is not concerned with group outcomes but with the communication process itself. Despite these two aspects, the input-processoutput idea grounded in functional group theories provides a useful framework for assorting arguments and will thus be drawn upon for describing small group communication via MIMA group chats (cf., Section 3.3). The symbolic-interpretive perspective (Frey & Sunwolf, 2004)—also called the communication perspective on group life or naturalistic paradigm—stems from communication research on small groups and accentuates communication as “the lifeblood that flows through the veins of groups” (Frey, 1994b, p. x, as cited in Frey, 1994a, p. 2). Corresponding to the above-described understanding of communication as symbolically mediated coordination of behavior, communication is understood as a process of message creation and message sharing (Frey & Sunwolf, 2005). This conceptualization stresses two aspects of communication. On the one hand, communication is understood as the process through which small groups emerge. There is no reified, physical equivalent which is the group. A group is a symbol that was socially constructed (Frey & Sunwolf, 2005); it is thus not only a site for but also a product of communication. On the other hand, it is understood as the throughput in a causal input-throughput-output relationship of group life and regarded as information-exchange in the form of symbolic action used by group members to convey experiences connected to the group. This corresponds to the idea of an input-process-output relationship put forth in the functional perspective of group life, but the nature of communication as socially constructing is taken into account. Communication is therefore understood as “the essential defining feature––the medium––of a group” (Frey & Sunwolf, 2005, 2

A more adequate term for functional might be function-focused, so that it can be clearly distinguished between function as characteristic of the research object (e.g., a chat message’s function) and function-focused as characteristic of the research paradigm focusing on the object’s functions. In the literature, function is used synonymously to describe both research object and paradigm, I will thus follow the literature and also use the term function to describe both.

3.1 Definition of Relevant Concepts

49

p. 161). Communication makes phenomena possible that are often examined in group research (e.g., decision-making, social influence). Think of a gathering of people who want to come together to sing and decide to form a choir. By initiating regular communication among members, a perception of unity emerges, group boundaries with regard to who is part of the group and who is not agreed upon, power relations and social influence emerge, decision-making processes take place and other related aspects. In order to conceptualize communicating via MIMA group chats, it is important not only to define small groups but also to conceptualize the general group interaction process. In the following, I first introduce a conceptualization of group interaction based on two prevalent group interaction frameworks and then apply these frameworks to the special type of interaction relevant to this thesis, namely, communicating via MIMA group chat.

3.1.2

Group Interaction

The group interaction process For this thesis, group interaction is defined as members’ interdependent acts which transform individual-, group-, and environmental-level inputs to outputs through activities that are directed towards achieving multiple collective functions, specifically productivity, member support, and group well-being. This definition is based on two functional group theories, namely, the Input-Process-Output (IPO) framework (Hackman & Morris, 1975; McGrath, 1964) and the time, interaction, and performance (TIP) theory developed by McGrath (1991). With this definition, I conceptualize group interaction as the sequential relationship of an input-processoutput causality, directly in accordance with both the IPO framework and TIP theory (see Figure 3.1). However, as will be addressed throughout this thesis, I also acknowledge the communicative construction of groups as put forth in the symbolic-interpretative perspective on groups (Frey & Sunwolf, 2004)3 . The elements of this definition, as well as the underlying theoretical assumptions, will be elaborated on in the following. 3

I hereby also acknowledge that conceptualizing group interaction as the sequential relationship of an input-process-output causality can only be regarded as very rough approximation of the group interaction process which oversimplifies the complex, adaptive, systematic nature of small groups—which is taken into account by other theoretical perspectives (cf., Arrow et al., 2000). However, as will be shown in the following chapters, the IPO framework, together with TIP theory, provides a very useful scaffolding for describing communication content sent via MIMA group chats.

50

3

Explicating The Social Context: Applying Small Group Research …

Input factors for the interaction process can be distinguished on three levels: 1) individual-level factors, such as the group members’ age, gender, personality, and attitudes; 2) group-level factors, such as the group’s size, tenure, purpose, and structure, and 3) environment-level factors, such as the context of the group within its environment, as well as the context of interaction (Hackman & Morris, 1975; McGrath, 1964). Whereas in its original formulation of the IPO framework, the actual interaction process was treated more like a black box, a meticulous account of the interaction process is provided by TIP theory.

Figure 3.1 Input-process-output model of group interaction, figure adapted from Hackman & Morris (1975) and Liston (2009)

A central assumption to both TIP theory and this thesis pertains to the fact that group members engage in functional and purposeful activities; that is, members always pursue certain objectives when engaging in group interaction (cf., also Section 2.1.1). In accordance with TIP theory, I conceptualize a member’s single act as the smallest unit of group interaction (McGrath, 1991). Each interaction act can be characterized along three properties: a) type of the act; that is, how does each act relate to what a group is currently doing; b) source of the act; that is, who (the source) acts towards whom (the target), and c) a time of the act; that is, when is the start and end of an act, what is its duration. These single acts are not isolated units of interaction but interdependent, in that one act is a reaction to a preceding act and an origin for a succeeding act as it will produce a reaction by other members and serve as an orientation for others to act. It is, therefore, important to consider interaction acts with their situated meanings in the context of preceding and succeeding acts. This conceptualization is highly

3.1 Definition of Relevant Concepts

51

important for the subsequent arguments and will be heavily drawn upon for the conceptualization of communication via MIMA group chats. These single interaction acts constitute group activities. In TIP theory (see Figure 3.2), McGrath (1991) distinguishes between three nested types of group activities that group members purposefully engage in: projects, tasks, and steps. At the highest level, there are group projects which are activities pursued in order to reach a goal connected to the group’s overall purposes (purposes are further specified below). The second level comprises tasks which are activities required to fulfill a project, and the lowest level comprises steps which are activities geared toward completing a task. Groups will simultaneously engage in several activities connected with multiple projects, which pay into a group’s contribution functions.

Figure 3.2 Time, interaction, performance (TIP) theory of group interaction (McGrath, 1991). (Own illustration)

52

3

Explicating The Social Context: Applying Small Group Research …

What is important to note is that in its original formulation, TIP theory uses the terms function and purpose interchangeably. However, in accordance with Dance (1985), I distinguished between the two concepts in that purpose always implies intention, whereas function describes the strong relation between two qualities (if this, then that, see Section 2.1.1). In other words, group interaction always pays into the solution of specific problems, which then leads to specific outcomes. While this might always be intentional to some extent, the different dimensions introduced in the following are better characterized as functions and not as purposes. In addition, it makes sense to distinguish between the two concepts in order to properly use the term group purpose. I use group purpose to refer to the primary reason for a group to exist (e.g., singing together for a choir or playing soccer for a soccer team). McGrath (1990) stated that with each interactive act, groups as social entities make contributions on different levels, namely to the environment they are embedded in, their constituent parts (i.e., their members), and to the social entity of the group itself. These contribution functions (or multiple collective functions as listed in the definition above) already appear in the IPO framework, although not named as such. Two levels of outputs of the interaction process are distinguished according to their contribution to 1) a group’s productivity and 2) social outcomes, which can occur on the group level (e.g., cohesion), and the individual level (e.g., members’ attachment to the group). The distinction between productivity and socio-emotional components of groups has been anchored within group communication research since Bales’ (1950) influential interaction process analysis (IPA). This culminated in Bales’ (1953) seminal equilibrium theory (Beck et al., 2017; Nam et al., 2009; Peña & Hancock, 2006; Poole, 1999), which states that group interaction must both have a task-related and a socioemotional dimension for groups to be effective because group members have both task and socio-emotional needs and that this co-occurrence of both dimensions needs to be balanced (= in an equilibrium)4 . TIP theory also takes this into account, but doubts are expressed as to whether there always has to be an equilibrium of task-orientation and socio-emotionality (Arrow et al., 2000; McGrath, 1990, 1991). Moreover, TIP theory expands on this categorization by retaining the productivity function and dividing the latter category of social outcomes into a member-support function and a group well-being function. As just pointed out, 4

For example, when group members try to solve a problem (task dimension), they need to also address socio-emotional issues that arise out of potential disagreement about a problem solving strategy. Joking around can be one possible solution to releasing tension among group members which would otherwise hinder effective problem solving.

3.1 Definition of Relevant Concepts

53

the three functions describe the contributions of group interaction on three different levels5 . Productivity refers to the relation between the group as a whole and its environment and describes the degree to which a group accomplishes its tasks and projects. Member support reflects the relation of members to the group and refers to the group’s ability to satisfy its members’ needs and how they are embedded within the group. It thus describes the contribution of group interaction to individual group members. Group well-being reflects the relations between group members and refers to the degree to which a group’s activities contribute to the creation of a continuing entity. It thus primarily describes a contribution to the group as a whole, or rather, the relationship between the members. The three contribution functions are “analytically distinguishable” (McGrath, 1991, p. 151); however, they are intertwined, and it is thus rather difficult to precisely attribute certain interaction acts to specific contribution functions, as the following examples illustrate. A soccer team has the overall purpose of ‘playing soccer together (successfully).’ The learning of defensive and offensive strategies could be regarded as projects which contribute primarily to the group’s productivity function. Zooming in on the weekly soccer practice on Wednesday night, ten minutes into the training, the task at hand of all present members will be playing dodgeball for warm-up. Each player contributes interaction acts, such as throwing dodgeballs and running around in order to not get hit. Fifteen minutes later, the players and the coach are all gathered to learn a new offensive strategy (task at hand: learning the strategy). Most interaction acts will be contributed by the instructing coach, who was previously tasked with developing a new strategy. Intermediate questions by attentive players will also add interaction acts to the task at hand. However, funny anecdotes contributed by the team’s joker do not contribute to the current task but still serve to position the joking player within the group and thus contribute to the member support function. Someone passing around drinks for refreshments would also be regarded as engaging in an act not contributive to the task of “learning of offensive strategy” but could contribute to the group’s well-being. Additionally, there might come a time in the team’s history when the team has to deal with problems of member commitment, maybe because the soccer team is losing all their matches and members are no longer motivated or because a new team leader is not accepted. In this case, the group could engage in the project “strengthening member commitment,” which would operate in parallel to learning new tactical strategies. Albeit difficult to untwine 5

Of course, through different aggregation logics, individual-level contributions can be transformed into collective-level contributions and vice versa (cf., Esser, 1993), but here, the main contribution level is indicated.

54

3

Explicating The Social Context: Applying Small Group Research …

interaction acts and their contributive functions, these will be helpful for the conceptualization of communication via MIMA group chats (cf., Section 4.3.1). As can be seen from the previous examples of a soccer training session, interaction within a group can take on more than one form. It is also not restricted to gatherings where all members are present but can also refer to members who contribute to the group without being present (e.g., when only half of the team comes to practice because the other half of the members are sick) as long as it is accessible to the whole group so that group members can potentially react. When, for example, the soccer coach prepares the next training session at home, the preparation itself cannot be regarded as group interaction. As soon as the preparation is accessible to other group members (e.g., information about the next session sent out in advance via e-mail or group chat), it can be considered as group interaction. In sum, group interaction consists of discrete but sequentially related units of interaction which contribute to several group functions. These acts should be regarded in the context of preceding and succeeding acts but can be analyzed independently. The temporality of group interaction The sequentiality of interaction acts alludes to the temporality of group interaction6 . On the one hand, time is an important context factor that sets certain constraints for group interaction and can thus be conceptualized as an input factor or independent variable for explaining group interaction; on the other hand, group interaction follows certain temporal patterns and can thus be conceptualized as process-factor or dependent variable (McGrath, 1990, 1991; McGrath & Kelly, 1992). Both aspects are reflected in the three common temporal problems of groups and their solutions introduced in TIP theory (McGrath, 1990), laid out in the following (cf., Figure 3.3). The temporal problems can be regarded as input-factors for group interaction, whereas the solutions to these problems can (mostly) be understood as process-factors of group interaction.

6

Different phases of group development, more precisely, formation, execution, and dissolvement, impact group interaction (Arrow et al., 2000). Active long-term group chats, however, will only be used by groups who are beyond the formation phase and not yet in the phase of dissolving. Therefore, group development phases will not be further considered in this thesis.

3.1 Definition of Relevant Concepts

Temporal problem

55

Solution

temporal ambiguity

scheduling

conflicting temporal interests

synchronization of activities

shortage of temporal resources

allocation of temporal resources

Figure 3.3 Temporal problems of group interaction and their solution as postulated in TIP theory. (Own illustration)

First, temporal ambiguity refers to the uncertainty of future events, which is why groups engage in scheduling. Group members need to carefully coordinate and agree on scheduled meetings that take place regularly, such as rehearsal or practice, and irregularly, such as a concert or a soccer tournament. Second, groups have conflicting temporal interests, which refers to the fact that groups oftentimes need to coordinate more than one activity at a time or need to take a specific action at a certain time. In addition, group members are also embedded in a variety of other social contexts that are time-demanding. In order to minimize conflicting temporal interests, groups can synchronize their activities which includes segmenting and distributing activities and negotiating norms on how these tasks should be sequenced. Successful synchronization essentially leads to dynamic teamwork. However, synchronization can also refer to more fine-grained aspects of group interaction, such as turn-taking in group communication in an orderly manner (Sacks et al., 1974) or the coordination of physical activities which is important, for example, for musical groups or sports teams (Harrison et al., 2003). Third, groups have a shortage of temporal resources, a problem they solve by allocating their temporal resources. On the one hand, this requires the group to plan which group member contributes what to activities; on the other hand, this also pertains to the more general question as to which activities a group wants to commit to in the first place. Relation between communicative functions and contribution functions What becomes apparent from these arguments is that, just like communication, group interaction is functional. Because communication is understood as a special

56

3

Explicating The Social Context: Applying Small Group Research …

case of interaction (cf., Section 2.1.1), the above also applies to communication within a group: group members transform individual-, group-, and environmental level inputs to outputs through interdependent exchanges of symbols to generate shared meaning and which are directed towards achieving multiple collective purposes, specifically productivity, member support, and group well-being. The distinction from Chapter 2, namely, coordination, relationship management, and interaction management as functions of interpersonal communication, can clearly be found in both IPO and TIP theory. Group interaction has a dimension that contributes to the coordination of interdependent activities (productivity function), and it has a dimension that is geared at socio-emotionality (member support and group well-being). Interaction management cannot be mapped upon these distinctions in a similar vein but is still applicable. This will be discussed in Section 4.3. This fine-grained description of group functions highlights a central difference between communication within a small group and between two people, namely issues of levels inherent to group interaction. Members cannot only engage in relationships with each other, but they can also relate to the group as a whole. Moreover, the group per se has a connection to its environment. This issue will be further elaborated on in Section 3.3).

3.2

Expansion of the Interaction Repertoire Through MIMA Group Chats

To better understand how group members use MIMA group chats, I conceptualize group communication via MIMAs as a specific group activity that is integrated into the interaction repertoire of a group. I will elaborate on this expansion in the current chapter. In the chapter thereafter, I will turn inwards to describe this specific group behavior as a member action resulting from the interplay of member, situation, and group. Sending messages via MIMA group chats describes one specific communicative act of a group that takes place via a particular communication channel that has specific characteristics and thus provides specific affordances (see Section 2.3.3). While users have been shown to view MIMA chats (not necessarily group chats) as never-ending conversation (O’Hara et al., 2014, p. 1136), it is important to keep in mind that communication via MIMA group chats represents only a particular fraction of how group members engage in group activities. First, the group will also hold copresent meetings; that is, gatherings where most of the group members are physically in the same place. Apart from copresent meetings, group members might also use an additional, more formal online communication

3.2 Expansion of the Interaction Repertoire Through MIMA Group Chats

57

channel such as emailing to convey important information. This is especially relevant for groups in which not every group member is part of the group chat, in which case sharing information only via the MIMA group chat would exclude those non-chat members. These activities, that is, both the copresent as well as the technologically mediated interaction, constitute the group’s interaction repertoire which comprises all activities and contexts where group members engage in multiparty interaction. It is, therefore, helpful to think of communication via MIMA group chats as an expansion of the possibilities group members can employ to interact with one another. Communication via MIMA group chats hence describes one particular element of a group’s interaction repertoire, which consists of the functional and purposeful transmission of symbols via a socially shared online communication environment where all group chat members can read and reply to messages. When examining communication content in MIMA group chats, it is therefore important to keep in mind a group’s comprehensive interaction repertoire and to acknowledge that it occurs alongside copresent interaction. Both copresent interaction and messages sent via MIMA group chat are communication environments that enable group interaction but that are characterized by specific features and thus provide specific affordances. Copresent interaction of groups is characterized by the physical presence of its members and their non-mediated interaction, whereas interaction via MIMAs is technologically mediated and independent from the physical presence of its members. More in detail, the copresent interaction of groups highly depends on the group’s purpose and current projects, its meeting structure (weekly, monthly, irregular), and environmental context. Soccer practice is very different from the weekly meeting of a youth group committee or the occasional coming together in the kitchen of an apartment-sharing community. In comparison, communication via MIMAs is mediated and mostly consists of text (more on the characteristics of communication via MIMAs in Section 2.3.3). This makes the formal features of communication via MIMAs comparable across groups of all purposes. Of course, different groups will use their group chat differently (cf., DeSanctis & Poole, 1994; Scherer, 2002); that is, they will develop group-specific conventions and develop norms on how to use their group chat (cf., Farnham & Keyani, 2006). Variations in chat use across groups will be discussed in Section 5.1.2. From a formal perspective, however, the chat room window of a soccer team does not differ from the chat room window of a youth group committee: One underneath the other, speech balloons containing textual, audio, audiovisual, or visual messages with the aforementioned meta-information of author and time of message are posted in the chat room, which is then permanently accessible and available to its chat members (cf.,

58

3

Explicating The Social Context: Applying Small Group Research …

persistence and permanent collective addressability). This is important because it makes groups with very different purposes comparable and common patterns observable, even though many group researchers state that universal patterns of group behavior are difficult—or even impossible—to discern across groups (e.g., Arrow et al., 2000). The previously derived group-level affordances of MIMA group chats provide the theoretical framework for this comparison: accessibility and bandwidth (Fox & McEwan, 2017), interactivity (Sundar, 2008), persistence (Treem & Leonardi, 2012), editability (Treem & Leonardi, 2012), and permanent collective addressability (Ling, 2018; Schrock, 2015). Understanding MIMA group chat communication as the expansion of a group’s interaction repertoire underlines that, as communication is the process through which small groups emerge (Frey & Sunwolf, 2005), the constant flow of messages in MIMA group chat contributes to the ongoing process of constituting the group. Relationships are maintained both in face-to-face encounters and through mediated interaction, or in other words, [o]nline encounters, then, are not so much discrete, bounded entities and connections to remote others in the digital; they are instead constitutive of an ensemble of encounters that comprise our various relationships in and through the real and the virtual (O’Hara et al., 2014, p. 1133).

One manifestation of this expansion lies in the emergence of latent conversation threads where one topic meanders through different communication environments (Vorderer et al., 2015). For example, after their regular training session on Wednesday night, the already mentioned soccer team might start a face-toface discussion on having a barbecue the weekend after next. They continue the discussion on who will bring what in their MIMA group chat and set a place and time for it at the next training session. On Saturday afternoon, members use the chat to ask for directions and last planning details. The chat conversation abruptly ends at 4 pm when all members have arrived at the barbecue location. This is not to say that communication has ceased, but rather, the situational context has changed, and the group interaction process is still ongoing in a setting other than the MIMA group chat. What this example aptly demonstrates is the fact that mobile communication technologies have provided both individuals and small groups with new social contexts and situations in which to get in touch with each other (Campbell, 2019; Ling, 2018). However, across all these social contexts, each communicative act contributes to the group’s constitution. After having situated MIMA group chat communication in its broader context, I will now zoom in and describe this specific communicative act in more detail.

3.3 The Group Chat Message: Result of the Interplay of Situation, Member, …

3.3

59

The Group Chat Message: Result of the Interplay of Situation, Member, and Group

Actively participating in a MIMA group chat, that is, sending a message, is a predefined communicative act (cf., Figure 3.4) shaped by the applications’ features which provide various affordances. A group member will type a message in their device where it can be edited as long as it has not been sent (cf., editability). Applications differ in whether they allow editing messages after they have been sent (cf., persistence). Messages are not restricted to textual information but can also contain images, audio and audiovisual files, location information, links to websites, and other files (cf., bandwidth). Once the message is sent, it will appear as a speech balloon in the group’s chat below previously sent messages. Apart from the explicit message content, this balloon contains information on the time and date of the message, as well as the sender. Depending on the MIMA used and one’s privacy settings, the sender’s name, pseudonym, or phone number is displayed. This means that the sender of a message is clearly identifiable in that each message can be attributed to a particular member. In some cases, the author of a message might not be recognizable because they use an indistinguishable pseudonym. The sent message can be read by all group members in the chat (cf., permanent collective addressability)—and, technically, also by others who are not part of the chat but read the messages on someone else’s mobile device. Other group chat members can then reply by typing and sending a message themselves (cf., interactivity). Having provided a practical description of sending a message in a MIMA group chat, I will now synthesize the above to theoretically enrich the act of sending a group chat message from the perspective of a group member. When a member sends a group chat message, they can either do so as a response to previous messages, thus contributing to an existing topical focus, or they can initiate a new conversation and thus add a new topic. In the moment of sending a message, this member will be in a specific social situation which is in some (temporal and causal) relation to copresent group activities. Put differently, they will send the message before, during, or after a (copresent) group activity, for example, on the way to choir rehearsal, with information about a delayed arrival. On the one hand, this group member has individual characteristics (such as their writing style and affinity for using MIMAs) and, more importantly, holds a specific position within the group (e.g., group leader). On the other hand, group members will have negotiated group-specific norms that indicate the amount, frequency, and topic of messages appropriate to be sent in the group chat (cf., Hogg & Reid, 2006; Knop-Huelss et al., 2018). Both individual characteristics, as well as group characteristics, will inform the sending of a message in a group

60

3

Explicating The Social Context: Applying Small Group Research …

Figure 3.4 Mock example of WhatsApp group chat of a choir group “Singing angels”

chat. It is thus a member action that results from the interplay of a person (i.e., group member), situation, and group. In group research, the person, situation, and group can be modeled as input factors that occur on different levels and are influential for the interaction process. As elaborated in Section 3.1.2, each member action contributes to the group functions of group productivity, member support, and group well-being. The elements of situational context, member, and the group will be briefly explicated in the following. Situational context. The situational context proposes an important input factor for member action in general and—as a constitutive element of communication (cf., Section 2.1)—for group chat communication in particular. The situational context of a group chat message is influential on the previously introduced context dimensions of the physical, the social, and institutional setting (Burleson, 2009).

3.3 The Group Chat Message: Result of the Interplay of Situation, Member, …

61

For one, it pertains to the spatial whereabouts and the social situation of both the member who sends the message (e.g., whether they are alone at home, with other people or even with other group members; Karnowski & Jandura, 2014), as well as the other group members who receive the message (e.g., whether a group meeting is taking place or not). In addition to this ‘offline’ context of the members, the messages that have been previously sent also provide a situational context. A member can send a message that contributes to a conversation, or they can initiate a new topic. This is particularly relevant when considering communication content sent via MIMA group chats. Furthermore, as an interaction environment that enables a certain type of computer-mediated communication among group members, a MIMA group chat also shapes the member action of sending a message and should thus be considered as another type of situational context (see discussion on technological affordances and context, Section 2.2.1). MIMAs, in general, also need to be considered as a space where individuals are made aware of all their social contacts and groups every time they enter the home screen, where all previously active chats are visible. The chat message in a specific group chat thus needs to be regarded against the background of the perpetual reception of messages from an individual’s network (cf., ambient-mediated sociation, Ling & Lai, 2016). Member. When group members join a small group, they bring along individual-level input factors such as their predispositions (e.g., gender, age, attitudes, skills, and knowledge; cf., Arrow et al., 2000), past life experiences, and, relevant in the context of MIMAs, their personal communication traits (e.g., individuals’ proclivity to participate in group communication; Frey & Sunwolf, 2005) and online communication behavior (e.g., technological affinity, experiences with MIMAs in general, online vigilance; cf., Reinecke et al., 2018) and their MIMA privacy settings (e.g., do they allow their phone number to be displayed or not). As they become full members of the group (Moreland & Levine, 1984), they find their position within the group and develop commitment and attachment to the group (e.g., do they hold a formal or informal leadership position, how important is the group membership for their personal identity; cf., Arrow et al., 2000). These individual-level factors are a selection of factors that shape a member’s propensity to send a message in the group chat; that is, the likelihood that they will either reply to previous messages or introduce a new topic to the group chat, as well as the way they will participate in the group chat. What is further important is the basic assertion that human beings have limited resources of energy and time; they thus have to engage in the principle of energy conservation and will thus invest in those communication opportunities that will most likely return benefits for themselves (Hall & Davis, 2016).

62

3

Explicating The Social Context: Applying Small Group Research …

Group. Small groups have to agree upon appropriate and inappropriate behavior within their group (Rimal & Lapinski, 2008). These group norms develop over time as a product of social interaction (Rimal & Lapinski, 2008) and should guide communication via the group chat. As Knop-Huelss et al. (2018) already pointed out, a group that starts to use a MIMA group chat needs to negotiate and establish norms on how group members use this additional communication environment, especially “regarding the amount and frequency of communication and the appropriate time passing between replies (response latency)” (p. 133), as well as the content that is discussed (e.g., the acceptance of topics not pertaining to the group’s purpose). For members to act upon these norms, they need to be made salient for group members, which should occur with every message sent in the group chat (cf., Hogg & Reid, 2006; Knop-Huelss et al., 2018). I suggest that for communication via MIMA group chats, among others, the group’s purpose plays a determining role in the social construction of these norms and is thus important to examine (see discussion below, Section 5.1.2). The group chat message. Together, the situational context, members, and the group set the ground for the flow of messages sent in the MIMA group chat. Each message can be considered as a specific interaction act and can be described using the terminology provided by TIP theory, namely, source, target, time, and type (cf., Section 3.1.2 and McGrath, 1991): A message has a source which is the individual member who sends the message. The target is always the group as a whole. This is not to exclude messages where members explicitly address specific group members by name (cf., Figure 3.4, third message directed at ‘Josh’). However, even in those cases, the other group members can read the message and thus implicitly become the target or at least the audience for the message. The time stamp in the speech balloon clearly shows the time the message was sent and gives the message a temporal location. The message also has a certain type; that is, symbols are used to relate to what the group is currently doing. In Chapter 4, I will further elaborate on the message type by explicating several dimensions of communication content. To summarize the above, a group chat message results from the interplay of a member, their situational context, and the group. It further represents an interaction act in its own right with specific characteristics; it is also part of a group’s larger interaction repertoire, it is part of more or less coherent conversations, and it is a contribution by a group member. These perspectives on MIMA group chat messages will be drawn upon to structure the research agenda in Chapter 5 and, consequently, the empirical investigation presented in Chapters 6 and 7. The arguments elaborated above are summarized and visualized in Figure 3.5. I want to highlight that this illustrates a central premise of research on group

3.3 The Group Chat Message: Result of the Interplay of Situation, Member, …

63

phenomena, namely, issues of levels of analysis that “are an inherent part of group research” (Moritz & Watson, 1998, p. 285). According to Arrow et al. (2000), group activities occur at least on three levels, namely, the elements that make up a group (i.e., members), the group as a social entity, and the (situational) context or environment that a group is embedded in. The interplay of these elements describes member action at the lowest level, which includes “all the everyday activities of group members as they carry out their [group] work” (Arrow et al., 2000, p. 90). In the context of communication via MIMAs, this entails the messages sent back and forth in the group chat or, more precisely, the communicative behavior of members in the setting of the group chat. These elements will be explicated in the following. The phenomenon to be examined in this thesis is group communication in MIMA group chats. As such, the first and also the lowest level of interest pertains to the level of messages. A single message represents a single member’s communicative act and can be described according to its type, time, source, and target. Multiple messages that are topically related and refer to a common topic result in a conversation. Messages can thus be nested in conversations which, in turn, represent a level of analysis that results from a particular aggregation logic. Messages are furthermore nested in members, which represents another level of analysis. As described above, each member brings their own set of skills, knowledge, expectations, and attitudes to a group, and they will hold a particular social position within the group. While individual behavior will be influenced by an overall group norm, differences between members with regard to their participation in the group chat are to be expected. The highest level of analysis is the group level. As explicated above, each group will develop its own norms for addressing different aspects of group life in a MIMA group chat. Therefore, differences are to be expected between groups. Figure 3.5 visualizes these elements and their emergent relation.

3

Figure 3.5 A theoretically based model of group communication via MIMA group chats. (Own illustration)

64 Explicating The Social Context: Applying Small Group Research …

3.4 Non-Professional Secondary Groups (NPSGs) as Research Example

3.4

Non-Professional Secondary Groups (NPSGs) as Research Example

3.4.1

Specification and Demarcation of NPSGs

65

As pointed out above, MIMA group chats are formed for various reasons. I already established that for this investigation, I am interested in long-term group chats (cf., Section 2.4.2). I now want to further specify the group type in question, namely non-professional secondary groups (NPSGs). I will then demarcate it from voluntary associations and illustrate how this specific type of group can benefit from MIMA group chats, making these groups a suitable use case for analysis. In general, small groups can be categorized according to their primary purpose. A soccer team has the common purpose of playing soccer, a choirs’ members sing together, a task force in a company aims at accomplishing a given task, a cabin crew on an airplane is employed to ensure the safety and comfort of the passengers, a group of best friends serves to provide social support to its members, and so on. Non-professional I will focus on small groups that are centered on a common purpose situated in the broad realm of the non-governmental sector, namely, civil society. Civil society is broadly regarded as the social sphere which comprises public associations, organizations, and gatherings (e.g., clubs, social movements). These associations are based on the voluntary interaction of citizens and are (usually) independent from the government and the economy. Civil society is also distinct from the private sphere; thus, families and groups of close friends are not regarded as part of it (cf., Adloff, 2005). This focus on the non-private, non-professional area of life, therefore, excludes groups where the relationships within the group are the goal of the group in themselves (primary groups such as families and groups of friends), but also groups from an educational or professional context (e.g., learning groups, work teams). Secondary The descriptor ‘secondary’ in NPSGs stems from early small group research, which distinguishes between primary groups consisting of close, personal, and intimate long-term relationships such as family and close friends and secondary groups consisting of more impersonal relationships (Cooley, 1909/2017). In contrast to primary groups––which provide a framework of close and intimate

66

3

Explicating The Social Context: Applying Small Group Research …

relationships among their members and constitute an important place for identity development––secondary groups are formed to pursue certain goals and are joined by individuals voluntarily. Membership is thus not inherited as in a family but is more or less a choice of its members (Cooley, 1909/2017). Secondary groups form in all areas of life outside of the private sphere, such as peoples’ educational and professional life, but also in their non-professional life (Cooley, 1909; Sills, 1968). Characteristics of NPSGs NPSGs share many similarities with voluntary associations (VA; e.g., Knoke & Prensky, 1984; Lai, 2014; Smith, 2015). In the following, I briefly outline the concept of voluntary associations and apply the appropriate characteristics of VAs to NPSGs. Research on VAs stems from organizational research, which is an interdisciplinary research area but is rooted mostly in sociology (Sills, 1968; Smith, 2015). From this perspective, Sills (1968) describes VAs as “nonstate, common-purpose organizations with voluntary memberships” (n.p.), which depend on freedom of association. VAs are organizations that pursue a not-forprofit purpose (e.g., a moral, religious, benevolent, or political purpose) and are based on the volatile participation of their members (Sills, 1968). In contrast to members of work groups, the majority of members of VAs are usually not financially compensated for their participation (i.e., no monetary incentive) because they are avocational and non-governmental (Sills, 1968). Instead, members are committed to an association because its purpose meets their values or interests (normative incentive) and because members benefit from interpersonal relationships and the emotional attachment to the group (affective incentive; Knoke & Prensky, 1984). Another important characteristic of VAs relates to the hierarchical structure of these associations: The ultimate power in VAs is held by the majority of their members, who usually elect leaders, such as board members or officers (Sills, 1968; Smith, 2015). However, this also means that VAs are usually of subordinate importance to the everyday lives of their members (Lai, 2014). As such, VAs face challenges of growth and survival due to comparatively limited human and material resources (Knoke & Prensky, 1984). The broad range of VAs includes both relatively large and highly formalized organizations such as trade unions, churches, and charities, but also smaller collectives such as clubs and neighborhood associations. There is a significant overlap between VAs and what I conceptualize as NPSGs: In both cases, member participation is voluntary and without monetary incentives, which means that in most cases, participation is of subordinate importance to an individual’s everyday life. As a consequence, the resources of

3.4 Non-Professional Secondary Groups (NPSGs) as Research Example

67

VAs and NPSGs are limited. VAs and NPSGs are both situated in the broad realm of civic society and are neither governmental, economic, nor private (in the sense of families and friends). However, NPSGs are distinct from VAs in that the latter can be rather large (e.g., trade unions) and come with a high degree of formalization. Thus, not every VA can be considered a small group. NPSGs can be understood as a certain type of VAs, namely small group VAs. As such, both their size and degree of formalization are on the lower end of the continuum. It also needs to be stressed that the purpose of NPSGs is not restricted to altruism but can also be purely recreational (e.g., soccer team) or resource-sharing (e.g., apartment sharing). Essentially, however, NPSGs are goal-oriented small groups with a purpose situated in the realm of civic society. A soccer team shall again serve as an example for the type of groups that are of interest for this study. A soccer team is a secondary group that pre-exists ‘offline.’ If one or more members decide to form a MIMA group chat, individual smartphone behavior is constitutive for the online-representation of the small group via a MIMA chat: Each group member needs to individually use onlinecommunication for the small group to be connected online via a MIMA group chat. Once the group chat is formed, the chat members are not unknown to each other but “can place one another into a common contextual framework” (Ling & Lai, 2016, p. 839) because they have previously interacted outside of the MIMA group chat during group meetings. By focusing on goal-oriented groups in the non-professional context, I will thus exclude groups where the relationships within the group are the goal of the group in themselves (primary groups such as families and groups of friends), as well as groups from an educational or professional context (e.g., learning groups, work teams)7 . While it is not my intention to discard the importance of group chats for other group types, I argue that NPSGs provide a suitable use case to investigate what communication content group members provide to the group chat

7

In a professional context, computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) systems have long been used to support multiparty communication among coworkers (cf., Walther, 2013; Asencio et al., 2019). Especially newer technological solutions (e.g., Microsoft Teams, Slack) provide functionalities similar to MIMAs, however, these systems a) have a much broader array of functionalities and b) need to be distributed, for example, by an employer as they are usually not preinstalled on users’ phones. They are thus not entirely comparable to WhatsApp and the like. Moreover, while smaller businesses might benefit from MIMAs as a cost-efficient way of staying in touch with employees and customers, data protection laws (e.g., the GDPR in the European Union) highly limit their applicability in a professional setting. The same holds true for the use of MIMAs in an educational setting. I therefore exclude MIMA use in these contexts in this thesis.

68

3

Explicating The Social Context: Applying Small Group Research …

in order to fulfill communicative functions. This claim will be further expanded in the following.

3.4.2

Benefits of Using MIMA Group Chats for the Specific Case of NPSGs

There are several characteristics that make this type of group the prototypical use case for MIMA group chats. First, secondary groups are goal-oriented; therefore, one important aspect of group life concerns the coordination of activities to complete group projects and pursue the group’s goals. As pointed out above, MIMA group chats facilitate the coordination of everyday tasks (Ling & Lai, 2016). Small groups can, for example, use MIMAs to coordinate group meetings and discuss important group issues. As a consequence, all types of “decisions and actions that were once an individual matter become part of the group’s consciousness” (Campbell, 2015, p. 6). At the same time, the satisfaction of socio-emotional needs is essential for NPSG survival because group members join these groups voluntarily, and if their needs are not met, group members might simply leave the group (Arrow et al., 2000; McGrath et al., 2000). Furthermore, both the financial and temporal resources of NPSGs are limited. These groups are not necessarily part of an organizational setting where they are equipped with tools and practices to coordinate their interaction (tools for organizational communication: e.g., Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Watson Workspace). This limitation can be overcome by MIMAs because, first, they are low in cost as they only require a network connection to send messages. Second, it is likely that most members already use MIMAs in their day-to-day life; therefore, no extra effort needs to be made to convince members to use the application, and members are easily able to participate in this type of communication. Moreover, in NPSGs, there is a low level of formalization. MIMA group chats propose an egalitarian way of communication as messages are all alike in their layout and not prioritized per se. With NPSGs, there is often no formalized institution that prescribes rules of group behavior. Rules, or rather norms, are constituted through a communicative process (cf., Frey & Sunwolf, 2005). This is of special importance for NPSGs, where the normative practice is lived practice.

3.5 Summary: MIMA Group Chats Through The Lens of Small Group Research

3.5

69

Summary: MIMA Group Chats Through The Lens of Small Group Research

To summarize, in this chapter, I applied small group research to the phenomenon of MIMA group chats and illustrated how small groups can expand their interaction repertoire by using the communication environment of MIMAs group chats. I first conceptualized small groups and group interaction (see Sections 3.1.1 and 3.1.2). In this context, I transferred functions of communication to functions of group interactions, thus integrating communication and small group research. This will be important for deriving the dimensions of MIMA group chat communication in the following chapter. I then characterized communication via a MIMA group chat from two perspectives. First, as group behavior with particular characteristics and specific temporal patterns in itself, and second, as specific group behavior that is integrated into the interaction repertoire of a group. I developed a preliminary model which describes the MIMA group chat communication and thereby provided the necessary tools to conceptualize group communication of NPSGs via a MIMA group chat. I argued for the novelty of this communication context and its benefits for NPSGs.

4

Deriving Dimensions of MIMA Group Chat Communication

The current thesis started with the following overall research question: How do group members of NPSGs communicate via their longstanding MIMA group chat? The previous two chapters laid out the theoretical foundation (context of technological mediation and small group research) to answer these questions. Building on the theoretical background outlined in the preceding chapters, the goal of the current chapter is to further prepare the operational research questions, which will then guide the empirical investigation. In the following, I will do so by first deriving dimensions of MIMA group chat communication. As discussed above, group interaction, in general, and group communication, in specific, are always functional and purposeful. However, as I am neither interested in exploring why messages are sent nor in what messages need to be sent in order to reach a specific outcome (VanderVoort, 2002), but rather in describing what is written, I refrain from directly using functions to describe communication. Instead, I use the previously identified communicative functions (Section 2.1.1) and group contribution functions (Section 3.1.2) as a starting point from which to derive dimensions. Drawing on those functions allows for deriving specific dimensions that describe communication via MIMA group chats. These dimensions are coordinative communication content, socio-emotional communication content, and global and local interaction management. I will elaborate and further differentiate these dimensions in the following. At the end of this chapter, I will be able to offer a theory-based perspective on how members of NPSG communicate in their longstanding group chats that will then allow exploring such communication empirically. Group research has long agreed that groups comprise both task- and socioemotional components, with the focus of past research on task-related aspects © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023 K. Knop-Hülß, The Permanently Connected Group (PeCoG), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-43238-6_4

71

72

4

Deriving Dimensions of MIMA Group Chat Communication

(Frey, 2009). As a consequence, group communication content has often been regarded along these two main dimensions (e.g., Bales, 1950; McGrath, 1991). However, as has been shown in the previous chapters, communication among group members is much more complex than these two broad dimensions. In this thesis, I draw on Burleson’s (2009) distinction of communicative functions of coordination, relationship management, and interaction management and TIP theory’s contribution functions (McGrath, 1990) of productivity, member support, and group well-being to account for the complexity of communication within groups to some extent. More specifically, what has previously been described as “certain common task [emphasis added] problems arising out of their relation to an outer situation” (Bales, 1950, p. 34) corresponds to the communicative function of coordination, whereas “certain problems of social and emotional [emphasis added] relationships arising out of their contact with each other” (Bales, 1950, pp. 34–35) corresponds to the relationship management function as introduced by Burleson (2009). Task communication is referred to as that type of communication that contains comments about working on the task, whereas non-task communication contains comments which refer to non-task content and “expressive issues in the group” (Straus, 1999, p. 175). While the interaction management function is not included in this distinction, it will be regarded as a dimension in its own right and play a role in the following elaborations (cf., Section 4.3). Many studies employed this understanding of task-oriented vs. socio-oriented communication in the context of laboratory groups that were given one specific task to solve. In this thesis, I replace the term task communication with coordinative communication, which refers to messages relating to the planning, execution, and evaluation of group projects and their subsequent tasks and steps. This term is more applicable to a naturally occurring group in which many different projects and tasks have to be addressed throughout the group’s history (McGrath, 1991). It further matches the distinction of communicative functions (see Section 2.1.1). As explicated above, projects are very diverse and can pay into different group outcomes. Coordinative communication thus includes, for example, planning for the next training session but also planning for the next group barbecue. On the other hand, socio-emotional communication refers to “the reciprocal processes of how partners regard one another and how they express that regard” (Walther & Bunz, 2005, p. 830). In an FTF setting, this type of communication includes those verbal and nonverbal messages which “create the social fabric of a group” (Keyton, 1999, p. 192). In the context of CMC, this comprises all textual and non-textual messages creating this social group fabric. Again, socio-emotional communication can be directly related to the group’s purpose (e.g., praise after

4.1 Coordinative Communication Content as Dimension

73

winning a show choir competition) but also unrelated to the purpose (e.g., sending birthday wishes to a group member)1 . As can be seen, communicative functions are interrelated with a group’s project. Messages that contain coordinative or socio-emotional content are not only restricted to relate to the group’s initial purpose but can also relate to the social context of the group. For example, a soccer team will not only write messages that are related to the group purpose of “playing soccer together,” but members are also likely to send messages with coordinative content related to the next party they want to attend as a team. Moreover, messages can also be related to members independent from a group’s context (e.g., using group as resource to spread information or get advice cf., Vorderer et al., 2015). While McGrath (1990) explicitly stated that all group activities contribute to all production functions to some degree, he also pointed out that there “is a distinctive but parallel set of stages for activities related to the group’s production function (often thought of as the group’s task-instrumental activities), and for activities related to its member support and the group well-being functions (often considered, together, as the group’s socio-emotional or expressive or interpersonal activities)” (1990, p. 27). In order to account for the interrelation of communicative functions and a group’s project, I introduce the dimension “topic reference” as global interaction management dimension (see below). Local interaction management, referring to a finer-grained level of communication, will be introduced in Section 4.3. The following subchapters will enrich all dimensions of MIMA group chat communication.

4.1

Coordinative Communication Content as Dimension

To reiterate, coordinative communication refers to messages that relate to the planning, execution, and evaluation of group projects and their subsequent tasks and steps and thus aid in the coordination of group projects. Coordination is defined as “the act of managing interdependencies between activities performed to achieve a goal” (Malone & Crowston, 1990, p. 7). It is important to note that this broad definition also includes the coordination of projects which are primarily geared towards the group well-being and member-support function. As stated in TIP theory and above, communicative acts can be regarded as contributors to 1

Other authors use the term task/instrumental vs. expressive/relational communication to refer to the distinction between coordinative and socio-emotional communication (e.g., Ling & Lai, 2016, Ling & Yttri, 2002; Walther & Bunz, 2005), however, this thesis employs the aforementioned terms for the sake of clarity.

74

4

Deriving Dimensions of MIMA Group Chat Communication

specific tasks which can contain content related to all three group functions (see Section 4.3 topic reference). As also mentioned above (cf. Section 2.3.3), MIMAs facilitate individuals’ day-to-day living and aid in the coordination of everyday life activities (Ling & Lai, 2016; Malhotra et al., 2018; Schuler et al., 2014). Communication via MIMA group chats should therefore consist of coordinative content. Information Intent: The Planning of Events and Tasks Of course, the group chat cannot help in the actual training to play soccer successfully because it is an activity in the realm of activities geared towards regulating behavior which requires the physical presence of its members. The group chat can be useful when the purpose of the activity is to achieve a consensus and to manage conflict (e.g., who is willing to play during the next match, where should the barbecue take place; why did no one stay behind to clean up after the barbecue was over), or to process information within the group (e.g., information on the place and time for the next match; Arrow et al., 2000). The latter refers to planning which is one aspect of structuring group behavior and activities that depends on the complexity of the task at hand and the time available (Tschan & McGrath, 2009). Group chat messages can contribute to the coordination of group projects when they are aimed at the coordination (i.e., planning) of regular and irregular events and tasks geared towards the group’s purpose. ➩ Planning is proposed as a dimension of coordinative communication. Planning can be achieved by asking questions and giving answers. This important aspect of coordination in groups is recognized in Bales’ seminal interaction process analysis (IPA; 1950, 1953). In IPA, coordinative communication consists of six categories, three of which are comprised of questions, and three of which are comprised of answers, all aimed at coordinating a certain task. These messages are assumed to be of neutral affective valence. More specifically, Bales distinguished between the following subcategories: (a) asking for an opinion (e.g., “What do you think about this strategy?”), (b) asking for a suggestion (e.g., “Can anyone suggest a good place for buying sports gear?”), (c) asking for task information or orientation (e.g., “Can someone explain again when we want to use the defensive strategy?”), (d) giving an opinion (e.g., “I think we should play more offensive next Sunday”), (e) giving a suggestion or command (e.g., “You can go

4.1 Coordinative Communication Content as Dimension

75

downtown to buy sports gear”), and (f) giving task information or orientation (e.g., “We will start using the new strategy right away”). ➩ Information intent (i.e., the posing of questions and giving answers) is proposed as a dimension of coordinative communication. However, whereas at first glance, MIMA group chats should be helpful for the group’s coordination, findings by Ling and Lai (2016) showed that group chats can also pose special challenges due to the way they are designed: the immense message flow in MIMAs can lead to disrupted turn adjacency and thematic decay leaving group members with confusing conversation threads (Ling & Lai, 2016). Nonetheless, a basic research question is posed to assess the occurrence of coordinative communication content (see Chapter 5). The Special Case of Micro-coordination One aspect of coordination which has been extensively investigated in the context of MIMA group chats is micro-coordination (Ling & Lai, 2016; Malhotra et al., 2018). In its original conceptualization, dyadic micro-coordination refers to “how people used the mobile phone to work out every day logistics, to ‘soften’ schedules, and to iteratively coordinate social interaction” (p. 836). In the context of MIMA group chats which enable group members to reach all group members (who are part of the group chat) at the same time (cf., PCA), micro-coordination was shown to be an integral part of the usage of MIMAs. As Ling and Lai (2016) pointed out, micro-coordination “has become structured into our everyday uses of mobile communication” (Ling & Lai, 2016, p. 837): People heavily rely on their smartphones to help them manage their day to day living, for example, by arranging and changing meetings at short notice with the expectation that those they are planning with can be reached via their mobile device at any time. For MIMA group chats, this means that one member can inform all other members who can then read and respond to those short-notice coordination information. Micro-coordination is more short-term based than the more general dimension of planning that also comprises long-term planning. ➩ Micro-coordination is proposed as a dimension of coordinative communication.

76

4.2

4

Deriving Dimensions of MIMA Group Chat Communication

Socio-Emotional Communication Content as Dimension

In general, socio-emotional communication refers to those messages which express how group members regard one another and which aid in creating ties among members and thus the social fabric of groups. Group research has shown that emotions “are at the core of social interactions in groups” (Curseu et al., 2015, p. 219) as they are “a necessary part of the pacing of the group as it progresses toward its group goal” (Kelly, 2001, p. 168) and aid in the coordination of group projects (cf., Bales, 1953). The bandwidth associated with CMC (cf., Section 2.3.3) has led early researchers to question whether it was at all possible to convey socio-emotional information via CMC. According to the cues-filtered out perspective (which subsumes social presence theory, and media / information richness theory; e.g., Daft & Lengel, 1986; Short et al., 1976), CMC should always be more impersonal than FTF because it lacks the cues which convey social information and is thus less socially-oriented by design (Culnan & Markus, 1987). Research assumed that because of the absence of social context cues, CMC was not suited to convey social information because these types of interaction “transmit less of the natural richness and interaction of interpersonal communication than face-to-face interaction. Therefore, users of CMC systems exhibit fewer of their natural communication behaviors” (Rice & Love, 1987, p. 87). This assumption was corroborated by findings that in comparison to FTF, CMC contained less socio-emotional content than task-oriented content (for an overview, cf., Walther, 1996). However, social information processing theory (SIP; Walther, 1992) postulated that the key difference between CMC and FTF was not “the amount of social information exchanged [but] the rate of social information exchange” (p. 10). While there might be less social information in a message conveyed through CMC initially, users adapt and learn to convey this information via a linguistic system (Tidwell & Walther, 2002), for example by using non-standard punctuation (e.g., “?!?”), lexical surrogates (e.g., “hmm”), as well as emoticons (e.g., “:-)”) and emojis (e.g., ) (Vandergriff, 2013). Through this communicative adaption, it is possible to express socio-emotionality both explicitly (“I like you”) and implicitly (using a heart emoticon “