For my blog, I chose to observe the postings of a girl in a group on Facebook as she expresses her feelings to a recently deceased friend. The group was made in remembrance of her friend, as he was very popular and talented, one who did not deserve to die so young; and she frequently posts to share her feelings and good thoughts of her late companion.
On June 19th, she wrote
"sweetie,
i think i told you everything i wanted to yesterday when i saw you....i touched you. but it wasn't the same. i was waiting for my sign that you are in my heart-it happened today...i put my CD player on shuffle and I'll Be Missing You came on...followed right by Hope You Dance.. I laughed a little because I remember the time we went out and I played gangsta rap, and you sat in the passenger seat in complete awe of my horrible attempts to rap and inability to navigate. Then you changed the chanel! I knew that now when I hope You Dance came on that you changed it! The song is your way of helping me move on. I will live on happier and stronger and a better dancer because of you. I told you already that it took losing you to realize how big of an impact you had on my life. I am so glad to have shared my life with you sweetheart. I love you always."
The first thing that I noticed from reading this girl's posts was how open she was. She is expressing her emotions through her writing in a public group, knowing that it will be read by others. Her postings are not anonymous at all, as her picture is right next to her profile and anyone in the same network can view her profile. Maybe she is using this CMC interaction because she can no longer use a FtF interaction with her friend that was dearest to her or maybe it is the only way she can bear to express her herself. She also came off to me as an extravert through her positive emotions, someone who loved and now misses the company of a companion. The conscientiousness of her postings is shown through her daily logging of her feelings. As for agreeableness, she is compassionate in her postings, remembering positive thoughts of the times they shared together instead of thinking of all that could have been. She didn't come off to me as neurotic at all. Instead she seems calm and full of energy despite her sorrow.
You are probably asking yourself why I chose such a sad topic, probably thinking that I am a sick and deranged person. I assure you that is not the case. I chose this example because after reading the beautiful posts as a tribute and recollection of a friend that was obviously very dear to her, I found that it went against the lack of cues hypothesis of the SIDE model. In fact, I think I learned more about this girl through her expressing her feelings in a CMC environment than I would in a FtF interaction. When it comes to situations like this, such as grief, I find that people tend to write down more of what they feel than to actually express the emotions that they are feeling. In this particular case, it is as if this girl uses this psychological space as her own personal journal as she logs in daily and posts how she feels on that particular day. Also, this interaction going against the CFO perspective, I feel that her posts produce a very personal form of communication. My impression of her was more in line with hyperpersonal model in that, I have made very intense attributions just based on what I've read despite the lack of verbal communication that is present in a FtF interaction.
3 comments:
I think this person is using her facebook account as a way to grieve the loss of her friend. The way she writes to this person as if he/she will be reading it is heart wrenching to me, she obviously loved the person a great deal. I think that your impression of her and the hyperpersonal model is right because it seems we learn a lot about her without the benefit of verbal communication in FTF interactions.
I think someone's death is very difficult to endure alone. People bottle up a lot of emotions that are very difficult to explain to others or to even present ftf. I believe writing what one feels helps take the load off one's chest, and helps understand a lot of what their going through when they go back and read it. Taking it to the next step such as writing in a public arena such as a facebook group is, I admit, still difficult since you expose very intimate details about your feelings, but you can at least connect with others that feel the same. So I believe that technological channels will become more popular venues for personal expressions such as these since people not only get to expose what it is that they feel inside, but also find others that can understand them and even help them with their pain.
I agree with your assertion that you believed you learned more about this person via CMC than you would through FtF. In asynchronous CMC, like blog posts or facebook posts, a person is free to write whatever they want for as long as they wish. In sychronous communication, both in CMC and especially in FtF, a person feels constrained by the attention span and flow of the interaction, and would feel like they couldn't just spill all their feelings all at once, which is possible in a post. It would also be quite a depressing discussion to have FtF.
Post a Comment