Zur Problematik der Synchronizität computervermittelter Kommunikation

Web-chats, one of the most popular forms of computer-mediated communication, are usually considered a form of synchronous communication, as opposed to asynchronous forms of communication such as e-mails, forums or weblogs. For the first time in the history of communication, web-chats allow an interactive written exchange between participants, instantly displaying the messages of those present. However, for several reasons, it doesn't seem justified to describe web-chats as a synchronous form of communication, as will be demonstrated in this paper. The first part of the paper will focus on the Theory of Media Synchronicity (Dennis/Valacich 1999; 2002) as a theoretical framework allowing us to determine the degree of synchronicity of a media form by means of five media characteristics. It will not only illuminate some of the aspects specific to chat rooms, due to their relatively low degree of synchronicity, but will also explain, for which kinds of communication processes chats are expected to perform best. The second part will illustrate some consequences of the supposed low degree of synchronicity of chat-communication by means of three linguistic phenomena. Comparing chat-communication to synchronous face-to-face communication within these three examples will give an idea of the empirical consequences of the theoretical analysis proposed in the first part of the paper