Meta Views and Reviews

• Meta-theories
  • Rice (1992) recursively summarizes material from CMC reviews. Main point: "Even a general awareness of the diversity of these contexts, much less the numerous studies associated with the various contexts, should obviate the easy and ill-formed introduction found in many CMC studies, that `there is little theoretical or empirical research in this area.' "
  • Rice (1989a) asserts that we need to integrate CMC research around four themes: stakeholders, goals, domains, and tools. Main point: [p. 436] Integrate CMC research across disciplines/tech/research processes via stakeholders, goals, analytical domain, and tools.
• Conceptualizations of Computing
  • Mowshowitz (1981) describes five positions underlying conceptualizations of computing: technicism, progressive individualism, elitism, pluralism, radical criticism.
  • Hirschheim (1985) describes underlying epistemological and ontological stances in office automation research.
  • Turkle (1982) talks about how we project our ideas onto computers.
• Theories, Models, Typologies and Propositions
  • Burge (1992) presents a detailed bibliography for current literature in distance education and CMC.
  • Rice (1992) recursively summarizes material from CMC reviews. Main point: "Even a general awareness of the diversity of these contexts, much less the numerous studies associated with the various contexts, should obviate the easy and ill-formed introduction found in many CMC studies, that `there is little theoretical or empirical research in this area.' "
  • Hacker and Monge (1988) describes theory of communication/information models and designs of CMC systems.
  • Johnston (1989) comments on Rice's article on issues and concepts in research on CMC.
  • McCreary (1990) describes three behavior models for CMC.
  • Rice and Boan (1985) describes journals about CMC.
  • Culnan and Markus (1987) describes media use factors. Main point: CMC is low in social presence (no noverbal); therefore, it is task-oriented and impersonal.
  • Bowers (1992) claims artifacts have politics by analyzing formalisms of design or implementation. Main point: "If we are to take computer technology seriously, we will have to abandon innocent humanism in favor of a cyber politics."
  • Cathcart and Gumpert (1983) talk about mediated interpersonal communication.
  • Feenberg (1986) presents an operating manual for computer conferencing.
  • Ghani (1988) describes flow theory in CMC.
  • Kuehn (1990) asserts that play theory explains CMC as "communication play" when communicators can alter interaction and achieve goals.