Clark and Brennan's paper (1991) offer a very interesting framework to discriminate the impacts of media on commmunication, particularly on the grounding process (= the process of building a common understanding of the situation carried out by the participants). Grounding changes with the communication medium. For instance, in a face-to-face conversation, saying « ok » is an easy sign of acknowledgement and grounding. The situation is very different in a chat or a mud (i.e. multi-user dungeon). Indeed, timing precisely an acknowledgement is much more difficult, the « ok » can be understood as an interruption. Clark and Brennan (1991) stress the fact that the acknowledgement cost is higher in the chat case. This is due to the least collaborative effort rule. The effort of making something (producing an utterance, repairing it ) depends on the medium. Thus grounding is affected.
Here are constraints and examples ((inspired from Clark and Brennan, 1991) :
| Constraints |
Definitions |
Examples of medium satisfying the constraint |
| Copresence |
Participants A and B share the same physical environment |
Face-to-face conversation |
| Visibility |
A and B are visible to each other |
Videoconference and face-to-face conversation |
| Audibility |
A and B communicate by speaking |
Telephone, Videoconference and face-to-face conversation |
| Cotemporality |
B receives at roughly the same time as A produces |
Chat, Telephone, Videoconference and face-to-face conversation but not in e-mail |
| Simultaneity |
A and B can send and receive at once and simultaneoulsy |
Chat, Telephone, Videoconference and face-to-face conversation |
| Sequentiality |
As and Bs turns cannot get out of sequence |
Chat, Telephone, Videoconference and face-to-face conversation but not in e-mail |
| Reviewbility |
B can review As message |
e-mail and chat but not the others cited above |
| Revisability |
A can revise message from B |
e-mail but not the others cited above |