Little Miss-Communication

Are internet communications more likely to be misunderstood than other mediums of dialogue? I've been the surprised onlooker over the last few days of a debate that flared up on tallskinnykiwi.com, the blog by Andrew Jones that I frequent from time to time. The debate itself related to gender discrimination, and whether or not it is acceptable to use the term “girls” to refer to young women. You can read a precursor post here and the post that lit the powderkeg here.

After a weekend being offline, Andrew has written an impressively humble reply that should give pause to his weekend critics, albeit well-meaning ones. One striking aspect of the dialogue over the weekend, however, was the constructions people placed on the non-response of Andrew on his own blog for a number of days. Within 15 hours of the “offending” entry being posted on the internet, someone leaving a comment on the blog referred to the fact that Andrew was yet to respond, implying he should have perhaps. (This was the 16th comment left on the entry by that stage.) At 26 hours it was suggested that the negative response should have been anticipated, and suggested that Andrew Jones' “almost revelling in the response worsens things.” Note that the basis for this attribution was a non-response, not any observable behaviour.

At 39 hours another person commenting wrote:

In fact, there was only one comment on Andrew's initial post that gently suggested his use of the term “girls” might be unsuitable, and while we don't know what email he got in the interim, recall again that he had not been online after posting his second entry... so, defensiveness?

None of this is a criticism of the people who left those comments — I think there is a more basic human behaviour at work here. The thing that captured my attention is the assumptions triggered by the sense of immediacy here... There seems to be something about electronic communications — blogs and txt, and to some extent email — that gives us the impression the other person is right there, right then. My belief that someone is imminently involved in the dialogue seems to mean that I then apply to these situations the interpretations I might apply to a verbal conversation — as if the other person had just stood there looking at me, and not responded. I think, “Why hasn't she replied to my txt? What does that mean?” Or in this case, “Why hasn't he replied to our comments on his blog?"

Admittedly, Andrew Jones posts regularly, and people might have expected him to be online most days. However, he also puts up new posts regularly, and the post generating the comments was the latest, so it was clear he hadn't updated the site. And there were moderate voices in the discussion. However, the discussion highlights the risk that mis-attributions of a person's unwillingness to respond may combine with the ease of keeping on sending further electronic communications that you can't take back, to generate some pain. Watch those mouse clicks, people! Meanwhile, may there's a research project in here for me, on social interpretations of immediacy and non-response in electronic communications.  : )