The Problem of Context in Computer Mediated Communication

Abstract

This paper explores the inadequacies of models of context built for the study of face to face and written communication to deal with the new interactional terrain of computer mediated communication and suggests new ways of approaching the issue of context. In order to understand technologically mediated contexts, it argues, analysts need to rethink many of their basic assumptions about CMC in particular and communication in general, assumptions that rest upon a number of ‘false dichotomies’ which separate the ‘virtual’ from the ‘material’, the ‘figure’ from the ‘ground’, the ‘sender’ from the ‘receiver’ and the ‘text’ from the ‘context’.