Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication

Special Section
What Will We Study When the Internet
Disappears?
Malcolm Parks
University of Washington, Department of Communication
doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2009.01462.x
The Internet is not really disappearing inany literal sense, of course. But it is becoming
less visible as the result of widespread use and incorporation into everyday activity.
Internet use has become a regular activity for 6070% of the population in North
America, Europe, and several Asian countries, and for over 20% of the population
worldwide (World Internet Usage Statistics News and World Population Statistics,
2008). Many Internet-based applications are so commonplace and so integrated into
our daily activities that they are easily taken for granted. In recognition of how
ordinary Internet use has become, we should probably stop capitalizing the word
Internet, as others have suggested (Turow & Kavanaugh, 2003). More important,
we should recognize that while the growth of the Internet has attracted large numbers
of people to CMC research, the eld has suffered from some of the same hyperbole
and chaos that has characterized the growth of the Internet itself. As we pause to
refocus our priorities, I believe we might benet from appreciating the value of
better descriptive research, the need to organize research efforts around underlying
communicative processes rather than surface technologies, and the benets of
tracking changes in CMC and its contexts over time.
Far too much of what we think we know about Internet use comes from
uncertain combinations of commercially motivated marketing research, global
surveys (e.g., PEW Internet studies), proclamations of self-appointed Internet
experts, breathless rst-person accounts, and low grade ethnographies. Lacking
is high-quality descriptive research that identies the prevalence of and variance in
theoretically relevant variables in generalizable samples. Although it may not have
the cach e of theoretic work, high-quality descriptive plays several essential functions
in theory development. First, it helps counterbalance the understandable tendency
to overemphasize the newest, most fashionable applications. Second, descriptive
work with large representative samples promotes critical evaluation of prevailing
stereotypes and assumptions regarding Internet use. For example, social network
sites, as well as several other social venues onthe Internet, are oftenviewedthroughthe
724 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 14 (2009) 724729 2009 International Communication Association
lens of a community metaphor, but we actually do not know whether they generally
display the level of engagement or connectivity characteristic of communities. Third,
descriptive research assists in identifying the triggering or boundary conditions of
theory (see Walther, in press, for a discussion of this often overlooked theoretic
requirement). Liu and his colleagues, for example, have conceptualized applications
such as MySpace as arenas for elaborate taste performances involving expressions
of personal preferences and group afliations (Liu, 2007; Liu, Maes, & Davenport,
2006). This theoretic perspective is, however, constrained by an unstated triggering
conditionnamely that most users display their preferences and afliations in
sufcient number and detail to constitute a performance. Yet recent descriptive
research suggests that only a small proportion of MySpace users display preferences
and afliations on their proles (Parks, 2008; Thelwall, 2008). This in turn limits
the generalizability and application of the theory. Finally, descriptive research calls
attention to overlooked phenomena that merit explanation. For example, although
broadband access has reached a clear majority of Americans, descriptive work has
revealed that a substantial portion of people either make light use of it or are
holdouts (Horrigan, 2007). Hargittai (2007) noted that variations in the use of social
networking applications are not adequately accounted for in the existing literature.
The same observation can be made about variations in the used of nearly every CMC
form.
Advances in our understanding of computer-mediated communication will, I
believe, come more rapidly if we place the fundamental communicative processes
involved in the foreground. This may require shifts in our ways of organizing
professionally. The long termintellectual value of grouping ourselves intoprofessional
associations and divisions for Internet research is open to question. At a minimum,
progress requires shifting our attention away fromthe surface features of technologies
to the underlying communicative processes they serve. This will assist CMC
researchers in recognizing common cause with researchers working on broader
domains and theories of communication. It will also encourage a greater level of rigor
and theoretic care. As Walther (in press) recently observed, CMCresearch has not yet
adequately addressed underlying assumptions, has failed to develop typologies that
would allow meaningful comparison of technologies, failed to articulate boundary
conditions for theoretic perspectives, and, in too many cases, has devoted inadequate
attention to underlying explanatory mechanisms. These are the issues will sustain
CMC research in the long term.
Moving beyond a technocentric focus will also make it easier to examine the
broader context in which CMCnowoccurs. I note two examples. Increasing numbers
of people appear to text message, check their social network application, surf the
net, watch television, and listen to their iPods all at more or less the same time. We
know something about distraction effects, but we know very little about the effects,
if any, of regular, simultaneous multimedia use on attention, problem-solving, and
face-to-face interaction. We know very little about the motivations for simultaneous
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 14 (2009) 724729 2009 International Communication Association 725
media use and very little about the strategies people use to manage the challenges of
simultaneous media use.
Another set of research priorities are suggested by the fact that many of
our relationships have become mixed-mode (Walther & Parks, 2002). That is,
relationships have become multimedia affairs in which people draw on different
interactive media at different points for different tasks. Understanding how people
make these choices will inform theory and may have practical implications for
media designers who often appear to operate as if every social process is an
equally good candidate for a web-based application. We also need to understand
more about mode-switching in everyday interaction. An excellent foundation is
provided by the research on how people manage long-distance relationships and the
research on how people who have met online transition to face-to-face interaction
(e.g., Dainton & Aylor, 2002; Ramirez & Zhang, 2007). We should build on that
foundation by, rst, moving beyond dramatic changes in mode (e.g., going from
being exclusively on line to meeting F2F) to examine how people in established
relationships make, interpret, and manage each others media choices on a daily
basis.
Finally, our understanding will benet from greater attention to the way in
which CMC technologies and their uses change over time. At the outset we should
not assume that the newest applications are necessarily the most important or that
the use and impact of applications does not change over time. Media researchers
are often early adopters and are easily drawn to studying the next big thing.
But early effects may be quite different than later effects. The reversal of fortune
suffered by advocates of the Internet paradox is a powerful reminder that user
behavior may change greatly with experience (Kraut et al., 2002). Results that are
here today can easily be gone tomorrow. Moreover, given that the Internet is
characterized by small populations of rapidly evolving technologies, most of which
fail, focusing on the newest applications can easily lead us to invest time and energy
in applications with very limited prospects. I sometimes wonder, for instance, if some
aspects of my own early work on MOOs might not simply be obsolete (Parks &
Roberts, 1998).
Tracking social technologies over time will not only inform CMC research,
but also opens windows to a new understanding of the way in which innovation
and diffusion occurs more generally. Research on the diffusion of innovations
has traditionally focused on relatively nished products or services that do not
change much during the diffusion process. But this approach is questionable with
regard to the Internet, which is, after all, not a discrete technology but rather a
sort of metatechnology that hosts populations of related and rapidly evolving
applications. The design of many of these applications is uid, responding not
only to adoption decisions, but also to direct modication by users (Neff & Stark,
2003). Innovation in many technologies has become a much more user-centered,
user-driven process (von Hippel, 2005). One of our research priorities should
726 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 14 (2009) 724729 2009 International Communication Association
therefore be to examine the mutual inuence processes linking innovators and
users.
As communication scholars our interests extend beyond social technologies to
the discourse regarding those technologies. I also advocate much more systematic
attentiontothe arc of public discourse surrounding newcommunicative technologies.
Many have noted the tensions between utopian and dystopian narratives regarding
the Internet. Others have explored historical narratives on social technologies (e.g.,
Marvin, 1987). A few have examined the way technologies such as the personal
computer are covered in the press (Cogan, 2005). I know of no attempts, however,
to track the public discourse surrounding a given Internet application over time.
Have public narratives about social networking sites, for example, changed over the
past 34 years in predictable ways? Do we talk about instant messaging or online
dating sites the same way now as we did in the past? Do public narratives on diverse
social technologies follow similar trajectories over time? Research on questions such
as these could inform both theory and public understanding.
The enormous growthof Internet-relatedapplications andcomputer-basedgames
over the past 15 years generated global interest and attracted a new generation of
researchers to CMC research. But these technologies are rapidly becoming a normal
part of everyday life. Put simply, the new media are no longer so new. Sustaining
and growing CMC research will require that we move beyond current fashions and
become much more serious about describing our phenomena of interest, situating
those phenomena within the broader context of communication theory, and tracking
CMC-related phenomena over time. These are the tasks that will energize us long
after the Internet disappears from the spotlights of popular and academic fashion.
References
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About the Authors
MalcolmParks, Associate Professor, conducts researchoninterpersonal relationships,
persuasion, organizational change, and social networks. Current projects include
studies of how social network factors might account for differences in the strength
of attitudes on controversial issues, ways organizations can inuence the health of
their employees and clients, and the nature of interaction on social network sites like
MySpace. His work examines interaction in both face-to-face and online settings. He
teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in interpersonal communication, social
scientic methods, computer-mediated communication, communication networks,
and community. He is also afliated with the Health Marketing and Communication
Research Center.
728 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 14 (2009) 724729 2009 International Communication Association
Parks was the recipient of the 1996 Woolbert Award for disciplinary impact from the
National Communication Association and the Hammer Award fromthe Ofce of the
Vice President of the United States for his applied work in organizational innovation.
His research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for
Disease Control, and the Army Research Organization, and the U.S. Air Force Ofce
of Prevention and Health Services Assessment.
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 14 (2009) 724729 2009 International Communication Association 729