Communication Concurrency and the New Media

TLDR

Computer mediation supports unlimited parallel communication episodes, whereas traditional media are serial, creating a fundamental concurrency difference. The study proposes that differences between new media and traditional media stem from their concurrency, the number of distinct communication episodes a channel can support. The experiment compared ideational performance of groups using verbal versus computer‑mediated communication in face‑to‑face and distributed settings. Computer‑mediated groups outperformed verbal groups, and proximity had no significant effect on performance.

Abstract

An experiment investigated the ideational performance of groups using verbal or computer-mediated communication while face-to-face or distributed from one another. Groups using computer mediation outperformed groups using verbal communication. The proximity manipulation had no significant effects on performance. It is proposed that the difference between the new media (e.g., computer-mediated) and more traditional media (e.g., verbal) relates to the medium's concurrency—defined as the number of distinct communication episodes a channel can effectively support. Computer mediation can support an unlimited number of parallel and distinct communication episodes; traditional media support serial communication and therefore have a fundamentally different concurrency.