These were my research questions when I began the study, based on general public perceptions, media representations, and scholarly research about computer-mediated communication (CMC). See CONCLUSION for a summary of my responses to these questions.
1. (?) The zero-sum and either-or assumptions: Time spent on computers is time taken away from (presumably) more valuable face-to-face activities; computer activities and community building are mutually exclusive. See 02, 03.
2. (?) On college campuses specifically, the increasing use of computers tends to isolate students and negatively affect social relations/community building (e.g., Gabriel 1996). See 02, 03.
3. (?) How useful can a dorm mailing list -- surely even more of a "protected conversational space very different from the traditional classroom" (Colomb and Simutis 1996) than classroom CMC spaces -- be for the kinds of critical dialogue encouraged in academic culture? To what extent will announcements, chain letters, forwarded jokes and "Top 10" lists, and pointless bantering or silliness preclude higher-order uses of CMC? See 04, 05, 06.
4. (?) The "How many Internet mail list subscribers does it take to change a light bulb?" assumption: Metadiscussion, or "noise in the channel that interrupts discourse" (Korenman and Wyatt 1996), is a distracting waste of time and bandwidth, disrupts community building. See 07.
5. (?) Women and men use/don't use CMC for different purposes; men dominate/don't dominate CMC conversational spaces as they do f2f conversational spaces (e.g., Hall 1996; Herring 1993, 1996b; Selfe and Meyer 1991). See 08, 09, 11, 12, 13.
6. (?) CMC encourages/doesn't encourage participation by those who are more shy in f2f interaction, potential to "give voice to students silenced in traditional classrooms" (Colomb & Simutus 1996; also, e.g., Batson 1988, Cooper & Selfe 1990) or dorm communities. See 10, 11, 12.
7. (?) CMC encourages widespread participation -- vs. the domination of a "small core group of regular participants" which "corresponds closely to the behavior of participants in face-to-face interaction" (Korenman and Wyatt 1996). See 11, 12, 13.