Communication Theory Media, Technology and Society

This mobility is highly evident in the phenomenon of the widening

generation gap between adults and adolescents (see Holmes and Russell,

1999). The empowerment which adolescents experience by way of CMC

immersion is intensified by the fact that it dramatically exaggerates the

generation gap between them and pre-CMC generations. This gap rests

on both the widening differentials in technical competence and the fact that

many parents and teachers find CMC alien in the ways in which it pro-

motes individual forms of adolescent self-construction. In addition, broad-

band interface technologies such as the Internet lead to rapid identifications

with global concepts of citizenship. The cultural mores which emerge

from the interface of adolescent and technology subsume the narrow

rigidity which previously characterized family norms and conventional

forms of discipline and pedagogy which exist within the classroom.

The new sense of the personal which emerges through CMC immer-

sion establishes itself in differing ways. On the one hand, the investment

of an adolescent’s identity in avatars attenuates embodied or face-to-face

relationships, whilst, on the other, it enhances the personal qualities of

being an autonomous information consumer. Here the status of adoles-

cents as by far the strongest take-up group of CITs becomes particularly

heightened in the age of virtual communities.

TTaakkiinngg ssoommee ccuueess ooffff--lliinnee –– ccoonntteexxttss ooff CCMMCC The generation gap phenomenon that has

been a feature of the take-up of CMC and CITs in general highlights an

aspect of this perspective which has so far been overlooked. Whilst it is

interesting to examine how the technical mediums of CMC may, to varying

degrees, directly affect the forms of community and identity which operate

within them, the outer contexts of CMC also need to be assessed. A promi-

nent exponent of this view is Nancy Baym, who argues in her essay ‘The

Emergence of Community in Computer-Mediated Communication’ (1995)

that ‘[t]oo much work on CMC assumes that the computer is the sole influ-

ence of communicative outcomes’ (139). This assumption is exemplified by

what is called the ‘cues filtered-out approach’, which, she says, has come to

dominate the understanding of computer-mediated communication:

Because computer-mediated interactants are unable to see, hear, and feel

one another they cannot use the usual contextualization cues conveyed by

the appearance, nonverbal signals, and features of the physical context.

With these cues to social context removed, the discourse is left in a social

vacuum quite different from face-to-face interaction. (139–40)

Baym identifies five different sources of impact on CMC: external con-

texts in which the use of CMC is set; the temporal structure of the group;

the infrastructure of the computer system; the purposes for which the

CMC is used; and the characteristics of the group and its members (141).

With regard to the first source, Baym argues that ‘[a]ll interac-

tion, including CMC, is simultaneously situated in multiple external

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