Virtual Communication: Social Interaction and Identity in an Electronic Environment

Although Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) is not a novelty, its current spread is casting a blaze of light on the new environments created by electronic communications. Trying to understand the characteristics of CMC and its effects on people, groups and organizations, the chapter outlines a framework for the study of computer-mediated communication. The chapter also considers the implications of these changes for current research in communication studies, with particular reference to the role of context, the link between cognition and interaction, and the use of interlocutory models as paradigms of communicative interaction: communication is not only – or not so much – a transfer of information, but also the activation of a psychosocial relationship, the process by which interlocutors co-construct an area of reality.