Exploring Potential Factors in Sticker Use Among Japanese Young Adults: Effects of Gender and Text Messaging Dependency

Emotional Aspects Of Text-Based Forms Of Communication

Early research on CMC published in the 1980s observed that traditional forms of communication such as face-to-face interactions, nods, smiles, eye contact, distance, and other nonverbal behavior give speakers and listeners information they can use to regulate, modify, and control exchanges, but electronic communication has insufficient cues to give CMC users such information (Kiesler, Siegel, & McGuire, 1984). Because of these restrictions, some research suggests that CMC is more suitable for task-oriented purposes, and that CMC is likely to be described as less friendly, emotional, or personal, and more serious or businesslike (Rice & Love, 1987). Research from this period suggested various theories and models based on the lack of nonverbal cues. The media richness theory (Daft & Lengel, 1984, 1986) argues that it is better to use rich media so that sufficient information can be transmitted to allow equivocal communication, such as sarcasm (Sarbaugh-Thompson & Feldman, 1998). The cuelessness model (Rutter, 1984, 1987; Rutter, Stephenson, & Dewey, 1981) states that because CMC lacks nonverbal cues that are present in face-to-face communication, the tendency is for communication to become task-oriented rather than socioemotional. The reduced social cues approach proposes that in CMC lacking nonverbal information, users experience depersonalization, which results in uninhibited communications, and thus behaviors that are outside of social norms are more likely to occur (McGuire, Kiesler, & Siegel, 1987; Siegel, Dubrovsky, Kiesler, & McGuire, 1986; Sproull & Kiesler, 1986).