E-MAIL MEDIATED COMMUNICATION
Mirta Galešić1 and Josip Stepanić2
1Department of Psychology,Philosophical Faculty, University of Zagreb,
Zagreb, Croatia
2Department of Quality,
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Zagreb,
Zagreb, Croatia
Received: 9 September, 2003. Accepted: 26 September, 2003.
SUMMARY
E-mail mediated communication rapidly intensifies, both inquantity and quality and so does the need to understand its psycho-social context.
In this article we formulated a model of psycho-social elements of the process ofreceiving an e-mail. The corresponding technique starts by recognising the relevant statesof a human receiver and a received e-mail. The states are parameterised, paying specialattention to the description of receiver's emotional states, as the event of receiving ismore localised in time than that of sending an e-mail. Possible changes are collected into avertex, a structure expressing the probability that a received e-mail induces the receiverfrom initial state into a given final state. We conducted a preliminary study that included87 e-mail messages. 97 attributes were determined for each of the considered e-mails. Theanalysis shows that acceptance and total receiver's change of state induced by e-mailsdepend on the combination of several e-mail characteristics. These are interpreted asprojections of the sender's states. In this view the e-mail arises as a discrete unit witha finite spectrum of transferable qualities, mediating complex human interaction.
KEY WORDS
e-mail mediated communication, mediators, vertex
CLASSIFICATION
ACM Categories and
subject descriptors: H5.3 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]:
Group and Organization Interfaces - Asynchronous interactionPACS: 89.75.Fb PsycINFO: 2260, 2360
Full paper as pdf version.