Butler Lies: How Media Attributes Shape Deception in Availability Management

Speaker
Jeremy Birnholtz
Assistant Professor, Communication and Information Science at Cornell University, and Computer Science at the University of Toronto

When
-

Where
Newell-Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium)

Video
Video link

Description

New communication media such as email, instant messaging (IM) and SMS text messaging have resulted in a flood of communication activity. Many people report feeling overloaded and regularly take active steps to manage their availability for interaction with others, such as delaying response to messages, limiting attention to all incoming communications or exiting conversations prematurely. Without explanation, however, these tactics may lead to perceptions of rudeness or disinterest in a relationship. In this talk I will present two exploratory studies of how people use IM and SMS text messaging to manage their availability. I will show that people use media strategically, sometimes deceptively, to explain and coordinate their behavior; drawing on both technical properties of media—such as the lack of shared contextual information—and the social norms of their usage—such as acceptable response times.

Speaker's Bio

Jeremy Birnholtz is an assistant professor in the Departments of Communication and Information Science at Cornell University, as well as the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. His research aims to improve the usefulness and usability of communication and collaboration tools, via a focus on understanding and exploiting mechanisms of human attention. Jeremy’s work has been published in the ACM CHI, CSCW and Group Proceedings, as well as in Organization Science and JASIST. His current research is supported by the National Science Foundation, Google and the US Department of Agriculture.

Host
Laura Dabbish