Social Affordances : Understanding Technology Mediated Social Networks at Work

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) technology includes messaging systems, such as e-mail, and conferencing technologies designed to facilitate group work. CMC adoption fails when it interferes with subtle and complex social dynamics of groups. Yet empirical studies of CMC use which explicitly associate social behavior with design features are largely absent from the literature. So too are conceptual tools for detecting and describing such behavior. This research addresses this absence by closely examining how CMC design supports social interaction among distributed work groups and thus stimulates or suppress adoption.