While reading through McKenna’s Relationship Facilitation Factors, I agreed with a lot of them as to how it helped my long distance relationship. Two years ago I was dating a senior, and after he graduated we decided to continue our relationship long distance when I came back to Cornell. Since he was busy starting a job in the city I knew he would not have much time to come visit, so most of our interaction was through mediated communication (both telephone and instant messenger). The five factors McKenna recognized are identifiably, removal of gating features, interactional control, connecting to similar others, and getting the goods. While not ever single one necessarily contributed to my relationship, I can see how they all relate.
The identifiably factor discusses how the more a person self-disclosed about themselves, the more the relationship will evolve. Essentially, the less anonymous you are, the more a relationship will develop. Of course this factor influenced my long distance relationship because every time my ex-boyfriend and I would talk on the phone or through IM we would disclose information, get to know one another better and make our relationship stronger. This was extremely important because he was trying to identify himself as a post graduate, trying to make it in the New York City business world. I have no idea what that is like since I am still in school, and thus, if we did not talk often, he would start to become anonymous to me. Unfortunately, as time went on, we did not have as much time to talk as I would have liked, and we did slowly start to drift away. Eventually I did feel like we know longer understood each other, our new ambitions, or connected at this point in our two different lives. Had we spoke more often, and disclosed more information, maybe I would not have felt like the person I talked to was so much of a stranger who seemed so anonymous. Once when we talked, he disclosed a lot of information that I did not know about, that used the medium to disclose a lot of personal information that perhaps he was not comfortable telling me in person. At the beginning of the school year, though, it certainly did help to continue our evolving relationship and keep us closer.
I think the factor of removal of gating features had a small affect on our relationship. We had already been dating for quite some time and been close before our relationship became long distance, so it is not as though we needed to use the medium to be less shy or get over status cues. However, perhaps it helped a little bit with physical attractiveness. Either one of us could look as ugly as we pleased when talking on the phone or IM because the other one would not know. Thus, we could each imagine the other person looking like how we remembered.
I think interactional controls was a very important factor of our relationship. Since we did not see each other every day, and were not in the same place, we could tell each other stories however we wanted, choosing what information to say and how much detail to go in. For example, when we were on campus together, in face to face we may tell each other about funny conversations that happened with friends, or about small things that happened during the day. On the phone or via IM, however, we didn’t always know who the person was that either of us were talking about. For example, he would not tell me about his day in depth, because I did not know who the people in his office were, I would not care about small things that happened that day, and he did not always feel like talking about his stressed he was or something negative that maybe happened at work. Instead he could just tell me about the best parts of his days and about how things were in general. I too, could edit my message and share how I would like. For example, whereas when we were at school together I may have ranted to him about a bad exam. However, since we had limited time on the phone or via IM, I would rather spend the time talking about good news and editing out bad parts of my days or insignificant parts.
Connecting to similar others (or lack thereof) also was very important to our long distance relationship. When talking on the phone or IM, it was hard to establish the same common ground that we once had shared. We were both at very different points in our lives and going through new experiences. While we both could talk about Cornell and relate to that, and share stories about friends we both knew, it was hard to continue this overtime we made new circle of friends. It was hard to connect across space and time because he was working in a set business time frame and could go out at night, whereas I am constantly working, studying, and doing activities. Thus, even though our basic day to day agendas differed a lot more than they once had. While McKenna talked about mediums helping people connect to similar others, it actually caused my boyfriend and I to be disconnected. Especially since we could not see what each others normal days were like and did not see each other often. This was useful, however, in terms of getting the goods. Since we were able to continue our relationship for a while by talking via telephone and IM, it helped us to be updated on one another’s lives and know what we would be doing when we had a chance to see each other again. We could discuss what we would to together when I would visit in NYC, prior to our actual meeting up in the city.
McKenna’s Facilitation Factors provide a lot of insight into relationship development between people in mediated communication forums. The evidence we learned in class provided a lot of support and I am sure they help develop weak relationships into stronger ones as people can use these factors to get to know one another better. Sadly, when it comes to long distance relationships, these factors can actually inhibit an already once well-established relationship.
My comments:
http://comm245purple.blogspot.com/2007/09/assignment-5.html
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3186874989969223722&postID=1089413166221384556
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment