scholarly journals Awkward comedy and performative anxiety

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alanna Goldstein

"As more and more of our daily social interactions are mediated and experienced through the screens of communication technologies, face-to-face moments of unmediated sociality has become the terrain for "awkward," unedited encounters, fraught with the potential for misunderstanding and communicative breakdown. Text messaging, instant messaging and social networking sites are increasingly replacing embodied forms of communication as the preferred method for building and maintaining even the most intimate of relationships. The ability to manage one's performance within these regulated and highly-edited communicative spaces consequently emphasizes the vulnerability of the embodied social self, engaging in real space and time. The potential for failure inherent to any embodied social interaction is increasingly prevalent as a theme across a variety of entertainment media, suggesting that concerns with embodied communication performances are widespread. In this paper I will illustrate how representations of this communicative breakdown and the resulting moments of "awkward" silence form the basis for a new sub-genre of television comedy that includes both the British and American versions of The Office, Peep Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Parks and Recreation and Modern Family, among others. I contend that the popularity of these programs is a function of their adoption of unique aesthetic elements that reflect and address anxieties surrounding changing communicative norms specific to life in a highly-mediated social environment"--From introduction.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alanna Goldstein

"As more and more of our daily social interactions are mediated and experienced through the screens of communication technologies, face-to-face moments of unmediated sociality has become the terrain for "awkward," unedited encounters, fraught with the potential for misunderstanding and communicative breakdown. Text messaging, instant messaging and social networking sites are increasingly replacing embodied forms of communication as the preferred method for building and maintaining even the most intimate of relationships. The ability to manage one's performance within these regulated and highly-edited communicative spaces consequently emphasizes the vulnerability of the embodied social self, engaging in real space and time. The potential for failure inherent to any embodied social interaction is increasingly prevalent as a theme across a variety of entertainment media, suggesting that concerns with embodied communication performances are widespread. In this paper I will illustrate how representations of this communicative breakdown and the resulting moments of "awkward" silence form the basis for a new sub-genre of television comedy that includes both the British and American versions of The Office, Peep Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Parks and Recreation and Modern Family, among others. I contend that the popularity of these programs is a function of their adoption of unique aesthetic elements that reflect and address anxieties surrounding changing communicative norms specific to life in a highly-mediated social environment"--From introduction.


2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathy J Reback ◽  
Deborah Ling ◽  
Steven Shoptaw ◽  
Jane Rohde

Men who have sex with men (MSM) who use methamphetamine experience high risks for HIV infection due to sexual transmission behaviors often engaged in when under the influence of methamphetamine. Methamphetamine-using MSM use various forms of information technology (IT) communication such as instant messaging, social networking sites, and websites to facilitate a sexual and/or drug “hook up.” Given the acceptability of IT communication in their daily lives, an IT intervention represents an appropriate strategy to reach and intervene with out-of-treatment, methamphetamine-using MSM. The aim of this study was to conduct formative work to develop a text messaging intervention to reduce methamphetamine use and high-risk sexual behaviors among out-of-treatment MSM, which involved conducting focus groups, community partners’ meetings, and a pre-test intervention. These activities culminated in the development of a two-week, text-messaging intervention that delivered real-time electronic correspondence based on the behavioral change theories of Social Support Theory, Health Belief Model, and Social Cognitive Theory. The focus groups, community meetings, and pre-test were used to identify the IT communication device, the text messages that best support risk reduction and healthier behavioral choices, and logo, flyer and website development. The input and feedback from the target population and community partners were critical to the successful development of a culturally appropriate intervention. The knowledge gleaned from the formative work of this study will be vitally helpful in designing future IT studies.


Author(s):  
Philip J. Salem

The researcher investigated face-to-face, telephone, email, private electronic, and public electronic communication networks. Private electronic communication networks develop through text messaging, instant messaging, and private chat, and public electronic communication networks emerge through the exchange of messages over blogs, social network sites, and Twitter. Results indicate individuals used different technology to develop different networks to assist them in different ways. Public electronic communication was unrelated to civic engagement.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 46
Author(s):  
Milton Sarkar

Globalization and the new media boom over the last couple of years have created a divide between the old and the new India. One of the most significant phenomena of this so-called new India is the emergence of English as a lingua franca but not in the proper form of it. In this digital age of online communication [email, text messaging (SMS), instant messaging (WhatsApp, Hike, AOL etc.)], Blogging, Microblogging (Twitter, Tumblr, FriendFeed etc.) and so forth writing (with word limit of, say 160/140) is bound to be smaller than it used to be earlier, but that must never mean that one is free to flout the rules of grammar wholesale. English used in the various sections of new media, especially in the Social Networking Sites [SNS(s)] is in a desperate plight. This article is a probe into the predicament of old English in new India.


2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 54-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reynol Junco ◽  
Jeanna M. Mastrodicasa ◽  
Alicia Vance Aguiar ◽  
Elizabeth Mae Longnecker ◽  
Jeffrey Nils Rokkum

The field of academic advising lags behind other similar fields in the use of technologically mediated communication modalities shown to improve academic outcomes. We investigated student satisfaction with undergraduate advising by examining the ways communication methods, such as social media, between student and advisor relate to student satisfaction. Results showed that although advisors rarely communicated with students via social media, text messaging, or instant messaging, the number of face-to-face advising meetings was positively predicted by advisor use of instant messaging and text messaging and negatively predicted by their use of Facebook. Furthermore, e-mail communication positively predicted a student's positive view of the advising experience, but communicating through Twitter predicted negative views of advising.


Author(s):  
Kathleen J. Hanrahan ◽  
Mathew T. Smith ◽  
Judith E. Sturges

Computer mediated communication is a part of everyday life for much of the population. People rely on email and instant messaging, post to chat rooms and blogs, and routinely use the Internet for a wide variety of functions. As a result, the options for qualitative study available to urban planners and researchers have expanded dramatically. This chapter examines the feasibility of online qualitative interviews. The chapter begins with an overview of the online options or venues (e.g., chat rooms, bulletin boards, social networking sites, email) currently available to the qualitative researcher. Next, issues of data quality in online interviews are discussed, and various online venues are compared to in person or face-to-face interview modes. Additionally, the authors discuss some of the central ethical and human subject protection issues involved in the online research landscape. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the potential for online qualitative interviews.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Doorley ◽  
Kristina Volgenau ◽  
Kerry Kelso ◽  
Todd Barrett Kashdan ◽  
Alexander J. Shackman

Background:Retrospective studies have found that people with elevated social anxiety (SA) show a preference for digital/online communication, which may be due to perceptions of enhanced emotional safety. Whether these preferences for/benefits of digital compared to face-to-face communication manifest in the real world has yet to be explored. Methods: We recruited samples of college students (N = 125) and community adults (N = 303) with varying levels of SA, sampled their emotions during digital and face-to-face communication using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) (Study 1) and a day reconstruction method (DRM) (Study 2), and preregistered our hypotheses (https://osf.io/e4y7x/). Results: Results from both studies showed that SA did not predict the likelihood of engaging in digital compared to face-to-face communication, and SA was associated with less positive and more negative emotions regardless of communication medium. Study 2 also showed that whether digital communication was synchronous (e.g., in real time via phone/video chat) or asynchronous (e.g., texting/instant messaging) did not impact the association between SA and emotions. Limitations: EMA and DRM methods, despite their many advantages, may be suboptimal for assessing the occurrence of digital communication behaviors relative to more objective methods (e.g., passively collecting smartphone communication data). Using event-contingent responding may have also yielded more reports of digital communication, thus strengthening our power to detect small, cross-level interaction effects. Conclusions:These results challenge beliefs that digital/online communication provides a source of emotional safety for people with elevated SA and suggests a greater need to address SA-related emotional impairments across digital communication platforms.


SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824402110322
Author(s):  
Ricarda Moll ◽  
Anna Jori Lücke ◽  
Rainer Bromme

In an increasingly interconnected world, many people handle large parts of their communication online, often via social networking sites (SNS). In contrast to face-to-face communication, messages on SNS are accessible by potentially unknown and large audiences. However, it is an open question what users actually perceive as a large audience, or else as many people in SNS contexts. Exploring this question from a psycholinguistic perspective, we investigated the meaning of vague quantifiers such as “few” or “many” with regard to audiences in different contexts in two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants assigned numbers to quantifiers describing audiences in online versus offline and private versus public contexts. In Experiment 2, including the same items as Experiment 1, participants rated the appropriateness of specific numbers of people that were described by a quantifier. Our results show, for example, that people assigned larger numbers to quantifiers for online than for offline contexts. This was also true when access to the information was supposed to be restricted which implies a (scalar) change of privacy expectations.


Author(s):  
Shannon K.T. Bailey ◽  
Bradford L. Schroeder ◽  
Daphne E. Whitmer ◽  
Valerie K. Sims

In recent years, text messaging (“texting”) has become the dominant method of communication for young adults. This prevalence of texting has led to research exploring the beneficial and detrimental behaviors associated with texting, indicating wide-ranging social and human factors implications. As texting continues to take precedence over other forms of communication and research begins to address texting behaviors, the question arises about whether people use other mobile instant messaging applications (“IM apps”) similarly. The current study expands on the research of texting behaviors by asking how similarly young adults view apps (e.g., WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, etc.) to texting. Results indicated that young adults in the United States use texting more frequently than text-based apps, but that these apps are viewed similarly to texting. The implication is that research addressing texting behaviors may apply to other forms of text-based communication; however, texting remains the most prominent mode of communication, justifying its own continued examination.


2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penny Thompson

Research suggests a negative relationship between frequent use of communication technologies, such as text messaging and social network sites, and academic performance, but the nature of the relationship needs to be explored in greater detail. This study explored the relationship between use of communication technologies and self-reported study skills. A total of 74 first-year university students completed the online Learning and Study Strategies Inventory and reported on how frequently they used text messaging, instant messaging, and online social networks such as Facebook. Correlation analysis indicated a negative relationship between frequency of communications technology use and the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory measure of Concentration. While the study does not prove a causal relationship, it provides more detail on the specific study skills challenges students may be facing when they interrupt their studying with frequent online social communication. This increased understanding can help educators tailor study skills interventions and support more directly to students’ needs.


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