Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication

“What Is Computer-Mediated
Communication?”—An Introduction to the
Special Issue

Mike Z. Yao1 & Rich Ling2

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1 Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois 61810, USA
2 Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University

At a time when nearly all social activities could be, and likely are, mediated in some ways by some
forms of computing technology, what should be the focus of CMC research? How do we theorize and
study computer-mediated (or should we say digitally-mediated) communication when the topics of
our research—the technology, the concepts and processes of mediation, our sense of what constitutes
communication, as well as the theories and methods used to examine these—are all in flux? Early in
the spring of 2018, the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication invited scholars to submit
ideas for a dedicated issue to consider these questions. The collection of meta-theoretical discussions,
literature reviews/analyses, and concept explications included in this special issue will point to a
general direction and offer a launching point for theory construction and systematic research in a
continuously evolving field.

Keywords: CMC, Social Network Analysis, Human-Computer Interaction, Mobile Phones, Literature
Review

doi:10.1093/jcmc/zmz027

The tension between technological developments and related social processes raises the question
of how we should conceive of, theorize, and study technology, mediation, and communication. In the
quarter-century since the founding of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, a central ques-
tion concerning this area of research has shifted from “what is computer-mediated communication?”
to “what isn’t?” In 1994, personal computers were bulky, desk-top, and hence stationary terminals. The
Internet was only finding its purchase in society. Text-based Usenet and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) were
common platforms. Email (or electronic-mail) was considered cutting-edge communication. Online
social networking sites were still in the distant future, and short message service (SMS) was just debuting

Corresponding author: Mike Yao; e-mail: mzyao@illinois.edu

Editorial Record: First manuscript received on 19 October 2019; Accepted by Ms. Sapphire Lin on 23 October 2019;
Final manuscript received on 23 October 2019

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 25 (2020) 4–8 © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on
4
behalf of International Communication Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
M. Z. Yao & R. Ling What Is CMC?

as a digitally mediated form of interpersonal communication. As of this writing, among the 7.7 billion
people on the planet, 4.33 billion actively use the Internet (Statista, 2019), 5.14 billion are connected
via mobile devices using over 9 billion subscriptions (GSMA Intelligence, 2019), and 3.5 billion are
on social media (Hootsuite, 2019). American adults are spending over 11 hours a day interacting with
various (computerized) media (Nielsen, 2019). In short, the technical landscape has seen a dramatic
shift.
At a time when nearly all social activities could be, and likely are, mediated in some ways by some
forms of computing technology, what should be the focus of CMC research? How do we theorize and
study computer-mediated (or should we say digitally-mediated) communication when the topics of
our research—the technology, the concepts and processes of mediation, our sense of what constitutes

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jcmc/article/25/1/4/5736586 by guest on 06 April 2021

communication, as well as the theories and methods used to examine these—are all in flux? Early In the
spring of 2018, the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication invited scholars to submit ideas for a
dedicated issue to consider these questions. We received 82 proposals. These extended abstracts covered
a wide spectrum of theoretical perspectives, research paradigms, and a variety of topical interests across
all levels of social and behavioral research. These ranged from philosophy, to geopolitics, to personal
relationships, and to neurological activities. The astonishing diversity and richness represented by the
initial submissions are indicative of the urgency and relevance of the exercise.
Primarily based on how they would eventually fit into the theme of the special issue as well as
the continuity and trajectory of the journal, we selected 18 proposals to be developed into full-length
articles. In the next 12 months, these manuscripts went through the journal’s regular peer review
process. After surviving multiple rounds of revision and resubmission, nine articles are ultimately
published in this themed volume. Contributors to this issue include central figures in their respective
subdomains of expertise and junior scholars who have just started their academic careers. With the aim
to stimulate dialogue and debate at the broadest level possible, the journal suspended the criteria of
requiring articles to have a primarily empirical focus. We trust that this collection of meta-theoretical
discussions, literature reviews/analyses, and concept explications will point to a general direction and
offer a launching point for theory construction and systematic research in a continuously evolving field.
While the articles in this volume each stand on its own and addresses a set of unique theoretical and
methodological issues from different perspectives, we encourage the readers to consider and read them
as a dialogue around a few broad questions: what are, and what should be, the core concerns of computer-
mediated communication (CMC)? What distinguishes digitally-mediated communication from other
forms of communication? How do we maintain focus on the fundamental processes central to digitally-
mediated communication as a distinctive field of scholarship while at the same time staying relevant to,
and more importantly, informing other fields that are increasingly looking at us for knowledge about the
impacts of computing technology in a variety of social and behavioral contexts? With these questions
in mind, the nine articles in the special issue cluster around two themes: (a) the focus on enduring
cognitive/social processes vs. a focus on the evolving features of the technology, and (b) expand-
ing the scope of the sub-discipline beyond human-to-human communication and individual-level
processes.

Focusing on enduring processes vs. the evolving features of the technology

The digital devices with which we communicate today include personal computers, smartphones,
smartwatches, digital assistants (e.g., Alexia, Siri, Echo, etc.), home appliances (e.g., smart thermostats,
security cameras, refrigerators, etc.), and even robots. Increasingly (at least in the Global North), people
are living in smart homes controlled by computers and driving autonomous vehicles that essentially

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 25 (2020) 4–8 5

What Is CMC? M. Z. Yao & R. Ling

are computers that carry people around. In a digital age when computing technology is omnipresent
and ubiquitous, what should constitute a “computer” in digitally-mediated communication research?
A device, a software application, the network, or the virtual worlds in which people engage in various
social activities? It is unwise and infeasible for social scientists to be constantly enamored with every
new gadget and application, but it is equally problematic to not recognize, or conveniently ignore, the
role of new technologies in redefining and reshaping fundamental social and communicative processes.
Several articles in this issue directly tackled this dilemma.
In this issue, Caleb Carr traces the evolution of CMC, as a concept and as a body of research and
related theories, to advocate for a shift of attention away from the “computers.” He calls on us to focus
on the “mediated” processes in CMC. He proposes three means with which to help contemporize and

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future-proof the CMC: (a) retiring the term “computer,” (b) reemphasizing that CMC is the study
of mediation, and (c) refocus our scholarship from the devices to the human-based processes being
explored.
Andrew Flanagin makes a similar case. He suggests that CMC researchers should not dwell
on “object-centered” research that overly emphasizes new features and functions of technological
tools. Instead, he argues that we should “consider current technological tools or products mainly as
manifestations of underlying phenomena rather than as objects of study in their own right” and cultivate
a focus on the underlying mechanisms of “mediation” across technologies.
Looking beyond the features and functions of the technological tools, several articles in this special
issue focused on core, as well as emergent theoretical constructs in CMC research. Through concept
explication, Kun Xu and Tony Liao offer a typology of communicative cues in CMC and examines
key differences in how various CMC theories approach this concept. His article neatly ties together
several lines of communication and technology research (e.g., CMC and Human-Computer Interaction)
around a central construct that can help CMC scholars be more precise in articulating their research.
Jeffery Treem, Paul Leonardi, and Bart van den Hooff present a multidimensional view of commu-
nication visibility. They argue that the ability for individual communicators in CMC to choose, often
strategically, how they would present or access information visible to others is a distinctive dimension
of CMC. They also offer an agenda for incorporating communication visibility into future CMC
research.
Eun-Ju Lee examines the idea of authenticity in CMC and discusses three subcomponents of the
concept. These include: (a) authenticity of source, (b) authenticity of message, and (c) authenticity of
interaction. Building around this concept, she develops an integrated framework and a set of testable
propositions for studying authenticity in mass-oriented CMC.

Looking beyond human-to-human communication and individual-level processes

Up to this point, the articles have emphasized the mediating processes of CMC. The focus in these
articles is to generate theoretical insight on how communication technologies impact various social,
psychological, and communicative phenomena. However, technological tools may not only facilitate, or
influence human actions, but could have also disrupted fundamental social and behavioral processes.
Historically, the printing press, steam engine, electrical motor, and electronics were all catalysts to major
societal changes. In the last decade, the convergence of networked computing, big data processing, and
mobile communication have led to an eruption of technological innovations in media and commu-
nication. These smart, mobile, and social media devices/platforms have challenged CMC scholars to
rethink and reimagine the processes, scale, context, and influence of human communication at every
level. Several articles in this special issue examine this issue.

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M. Z. Yao & R. Ling What Is CMC?

Intelligent computing systems in CMC

Developments in artificial intelligence (AI) allow computer systems to move beyond the automation
of labor-intensive and error-prone human tasks to making autonomous recommendations. They can
potentially act on these recommendations with little or no human input or intervention. AI technologies
are increasingly being used to actively filter and selectively present information in media systems. Com-
puters powered by AI not only mediate but also moderate human communication. They are AI-based
sales agents, customer service representatives, DJs, personal shoppers, and even social companions. Two
articles in this special issue deeply reflect on the role of AI in CMC.
Shyam Sundar offers a framework that incorporates theoretical and empirical insights from research
on computer-mediated human-to-human communication as well as human-computer interactions.

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He offers this in order to study the psychological impacts of machine agency in human-technology
interactions. Jeff Hancock, Mor Naaman, and Karien Levy’s article propose the concept of AI-Mediated
Communication (AI-MC) and discuss its incorporation in interpersonal communication. They describe
AI-MC as communication that is not simply transmitted via technology, but rather communication that
is “modified, augmented, or even generated by a computational agent to achieve communication goals.”
They suggest that AI-MC will play out in linguistic patterns and relational dynamics, and eventually in
terms of policy, culture, and ethics.

Mobile media and communication

Yet another technology/platform that plays into the structure of contemporary society is mobile
telephony. To a greater degree than the computer or the laptop, the smartphone is perhaps the most
individualized digital mediation device in the current techno-landscape. At the individual level, the
smartphone offers a wide variety of “affordances.” However, the role and the social impact of mobile
telephony extends far beyond digital mediation when we consider that it connects almost two-thirds
of the world’s population. The smartphone is a device that gives us access to information anywhere
at any time. Information and data can be pushed, altered, and pulled from connected smartphones
without our consent. In his article, Scott Campbell traces the evolution of mobile communication from
communication mediated by portable devices to an entire system of mobile media and communication
that has reshaped the fabric of our social lives through “sociality” (connecting and disconnecting from
personal relationships), and “spatiality” (connecting and disconnecting from spaces).

Social media and a networked society

Since the publication of JCMC’s special issue on Web 2.0 and user-generated content (Walther & Jang,
2012), social media has gone from being an emerging topic in media and communication research to
the main focus of a multitude of disciplines. The analytical techniques developed for studying complex
social networks have also moved from the fringe to the very center of social research. There is the
broader question of how CMC research plays into other dimensions of social science research on
technology.
This is the question examined by Jiawei Sophia Fu and Chih-Hui Lai in the only clearly empirical
study included in this special issue. Through bibliometric analysis, they trace the co-citation patterns of
research articles on technology and communication published between 1997 and 2017. The results are
a systematic mapping of the intellectual network structure of research in this domain. When focusing
on the examination of social networks and interpersonal relationships, perhaps a core area of CMC,
they find that the “cluster was tightly connected and far removed from other clusters. This indicates
that research in this area had its own theoretical frameworks or methods unique to this research sub-

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What Is CMC? M. Z. Yao & R. Ling

stream. It also implies the potential risk of this group of research in limiting the boundary of theory
development.” This is indeed an important insight. The community of CMC researchers should take
heed.

Final thoughts: Recognizing interdisciplinary influences and boundaries of CMC

Given the speed at which new technological innovations are being injected into the media and
communication space, and as the human society is being transformed by the computing technologies,
the scholarly community that centered on CMC related issues will continue to grow in size and diversity.
As a distinct subdomain of communication research, CMC should carefully define its boundaries by

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maintaining its focus on the underlying processes and constructs central to our field. At the same time,
there is a need to recognize that new communication tools and platforms can have unique effects that
play out in society.
It is also important to recognize CMC’s inherently interdisciplinary and evolving nature. As
illustrated vividly by Fu and Lai (this issue), CMC scholarship does not exist in a vacuum, we are
constantly influenced by and at the same time influencing other fields of research. There is a particular
need for CMC research to reach out to kindred areas of inquiry. We need to recognize both the anchor of
common theories and research in our own field while showing the flexibility and openness to consider
the eventual contributions to and from other related research areas.
The collection of articles and analyses included in this special issue do not, and are not meant to be,
a comprehensive representation of the diverse interests in contemporary CMC research today. However,
being a part of the themed discussion, these articles offer several concrete footholds with which to guide
future studies and theory development.

References
GSMA Intelligence. (2019). Real time global data and analysis for the mobile industry. Retrieved from
https://www.gsmaintelligence.com/
Hootsuite. (2019). Digital 2019 reports. Retrieved from https://wearesocial.com/blog/2019/01/digital-
2019-global-internet-use-accelerates
Nielsen. (2019). Nielsen total audience report: Q1-2019. Retrieved from https://www.nielsen.com/wp-
content/uploads/sites/3/2019/06/q1-2019-nielsen-total-audience-report-one-sheet.pdf
Statista. (2019). Global digital population as of July 2019. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/
statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/
Walther, J. B., & Jang, J.-W. (Eds.) (2012). Special issue: Web 2.0 and user-generated con-
tent as communication systems. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 18(1). doi:
doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2012.01592.x

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