How flame wars begin...

[graculus]

According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, people receiving email have only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any message correctly. The study also shows that people think they've correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time.

Comments

[jennixen.livejournal.com]

I think that's an important thing to remember when communicating online or textually at all. :)
A friend of mine wrote this: http://jlsjlsjls.livejournal.com/319819.html

[st-crispins.livejournal.com]

An interesting article. Thanks for the link.

Of course, in the study, the email messages were imposed and sent without the context of an ongoing conversation. That may have affected the results. We often rely on context, either within an ongoing online conversation or an ongoing relationship. We know, for example, which of our friends are likely to be sarcastic and which are not.

That said, online does have a major drawback in that there is only one communication channel: the words in the text (with sometimes a graphic added.) There are none of the several nonverbal channels that we automatically use in face to face communication (and some of us less effectively than others: research shows that most men have a harder time interpreting nonverbal expressions than most women.)

So, we insert the smileys but even they can be read ambiguously.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

It is interesting, though I dare say that the sample was quite small too, really. It's not clear whether these people already knew each other, or if they were just random people dragged in off the campus...

Of course, there's an assumption that people always react the same way, as well, which clearly isn't always the case - everyone has their 'buttons' and so mailing people is sometimes a bit like walking through a minefield and waiting to see if you get 'lucky' or not...

[st-crispins.livejournal.com]

Communicating electronically is difficult. We are often talking to folks we've never even met and have no idea what they look like, never mind how they react to anything.

That's part of the problem, too. The Interet expands our circle of interaction but we're often venturing into unknown territory without so much as a map.

Research has also shown that because we don't see faces, folks will say things and behave in ways they never would in face to face communication. It's easy to forget that there's a living breathing human being with feelings on the other side of that screen typing out that text.

[amycooper.livejournal.com]

I'd believe that.

I had a mishap a while back with an lj buddy. I thought that I had accidently upset and offended her. I apologized only to find out that I didn't.

However I also have another lj friend that was flamed for disqualifying a fic in the Isis awards (because it had graphic rape and incest) and the author of the work wrote her a letter comparing her to Hitler. *rolls eyes* Sometimes judging tone is hard, sometimes it is way too easy.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

Being involved in running anything online provides you with hours of entertainment, whether it's lists, communities, fic awards or archives. Actually, I think the latter may be worse because there's some obvious or subtle 'prize' element involved and therefore people get even more worker up about perceived slights. Like you say, sometimes it's just too easy to tell what people mean... ;)