Reflection on "Media Equation"

“Media equation” is a new conception to me. At first sight, I cannot help asking what “equation” means here and what equates to what. According to Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass (1996), “media equal real life” (p.5), which indicates peoples’ interactions with computers, television and other media are “fundamentally social and natural” (p.5) like how they respond to other people in real social life. The authors emphasize that the key word is “fundamentally,” saying the rules that people expect media to obey actually originate from their interpersonal interaction in real life and are based on the studies on how people interact with the real world. Chapter 1 mainly introduces what media equation means and states the steps how they did the research. Actually, I’m quite impressed by the following two chapters in which the authors describe two specific experiments: politeness and interpersonal distance. They demonstrate in details how the authors test some rules of human-human interactions to human-media interactions.

The research methodology in this book is very interesting. In Chapter 1, the authors have stated their assumption that social science findings on people’s social interaction can be used to “explain how people respond to media” (Reeves & Nass, 1996, p.13). Therefore, based on the social science findings concerning their research interest, they replace the words “person” or “environment” with media, for example, “a computer.” This is how they made their hypotheses about people’s response to media. Then, they borrowed the research methods the social science researchers used to test their hypotheses. To me, the methodology in this book is really creative and eye-opening but I keep cautious about its validity and reliability. Indeed, the methodology is questioned by Paul Dourish (n.d.), who is suspicious of the methodology Reeves and Nass used. According to Dourish (n.d.), social action unfolds everyday interactions whereas the experimental situation in the study may overshadow the essentiality of social interactions.

In elaborating on the rule that “politeness” in social response can be applied to human-media interaction, the authors use “Grice’s Maxims” to depict how to design polite media. I have come across “Grice’s Maxims” when I learned pragmatics as a subsystem in linguistics. In fact, I failed to perceive of the implication of “politeness” after reading the experiment. Introducing “Grice’s Maxims” to explain what polite media means helps me to understand what the authors argue that some benefits of considering the media equation. Indeed, “Grice’s Maxims” including quality, quantity, relevance and clarity makes it clear that the finding of media equation can be used to evaluate media and improve the design of media. It is important to note that the authors stress that any violation of the rules of Grice’s maxims leads to “negative consequences for media” (Reeves & Nass, 1996, p.32). However, in linguistics, a speaker may intentionally violate the maxims, or in Grice’s (1994) terms, “flout” the maxims to convey some implicit meanings such as sarcasms.

The examples given at the very beginning that people might confuse media and real life reminds me of my own experience in Second Life. Every time when I wander around in the virtual world, I feel I have a strong connection with and attachment to the avatar “JJ” I created to represent “me” in the real world. Whenever someone in the virtual world initiates a conversation with me by text message, I respond to him/her politely as I do in real life. Sometimes, even I am busy with other things and do not really want to spend time chatting, I think I have the courtesy to respond to him/her. Otherwise, I would feel uncomfortable just as I ignored a friendly stranger who says hi to me in real life. Actually, this experience is very common in computer games, especially role-playing games. Though Second Life is not a game, everyone in Second Life has a virtual identity, which connects someone’s identity in “first” life to what s/he is like in his/her “second” life. When it comes to computer games, Gee (2003) suggests there are three identities involved when one plays the games. First, there is a virtual identity. The player creates an avatar as a virtual character in the virtual world. In my case, “JJ” is my virtual identity in Second Life. Second, the player has a real-world identity, namely, each player as “a nonvirtual person playing a computer game” (Gee, 2003, p.55). The third identity is what Gee (2003) calls “a projective identity” (p.55). There are two dimensions of the word “project”: “to project one’s values and desires onto the virtual character” and “to imbue with a certain trajectory through time” for what the player want the character to be and become (p.55). In my understanding, the player transfers his/her values and aspirations in real life by creating the virtual identity to represent him/herself. Meanwhile, the player may go beyond his/her real “being” in the current stage to “project” him/herself in the near future by playing in the virtual world. To some degree, the game provides a locus of trying out one’s “projective identity.” As stated before, the phenomenon of multiple identities involved in gaming is more evident in role-playing games. For example, I have observed one gamer play The Sims2. The gamer says that usually it takes half an hour for him to just work on his avatar. He’d like to spend time on making a life-like “him” in the game. When he needs to create avatars that represent his friends or family members, he may even have their photos at hand to make the avatars more real. Besides the avatars’ appearances, he defines his and each other avatar’s personality based on what he and the real person are like. When he interacts with the “sims” representing people around him in real life, he feels it is just the way he interacts with them in everyday life. Meanwhile, he “projects” himself as a knowledgeable person rather than a romantic or entertaining type in The Sims2. He says “It is pretty much what I am like.” As Reeves and Nass (1996) points out, the Sims2 gamer respond “socially and naturally” (Reeves & Nass, 1996) to the game even though he knows it is not real life. It is worth to knowing more about “media equation,” which can be applied to my further research on gamers’ identity construction.

The notion “media equation” is developed from social scientific findings on interpersonal interactions. In addition, the authors states that “[c]omputers are social actors” (Reeves & Nass, 1996, p.28). Therefore, the research on “media equation” should be embedded in a certain social context. However, it seems that the authors generalize social contexts by ignoring cultural differences sometimes. For example, while describing the rules of etiquette in media, the authors exemplify one rule that “it’s polite to look at people when speaking” (Reeves & Nass, 1996, p.34). In explaining eye contact in real life, the authors say “When we can’t see someone’s eyes, we get worried, and this is likely why it is impolite not to show your face” (Reeves & Nass, 1996, p.34). In fact, in some Asian cultures, people tend to avoid eye contact when they speak with elders and the respected ones. Fortunately, the authors use “this is likely” rather than “this is” in the above sentence. I haven’t read the whole book, so I don’t know if there are other similar examples. Anyway, it is crucial to contextualize the discussion whenever it comes to social interactions.


References
Dourish, P. (n.d.). Book review: The media equation: how people treat computers, television and new media like real people and places. Retrieved April 12th,2008,from http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/publications/media-review.html

Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Grice, H. P. (1994). Logic and Conversation. In Jannedy et al. (Ed.), Language Files (pp. 236-238). Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.

Reeves, B., & Nass, C. (1996). The media equation. In The media equation: How people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places (pp. 3-18). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Reeves, B., & Nass, C. (1996). Politeness. In The media equation: How people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places (pp. 19-36). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Reeves, B., & Nass, C. (1996). Interpersonal distance. In The media equation: How people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places (pp. 37-51). New York: Cambridge University Press.