Going abroad made it difficult for the friends and family to keep in touch with me regularly. Phone calls were expensive and e-mail correspondence was rare because of the lapse in time but one person, my best friend, found a way to communicate with me like I was next door. We were used to talking to each other daily, like sisters, filling each other in on every detail, drama, or problem we encountered. We were each others' support by means of instant calls to our cell phones. Knowing that I would not have a phone, my friend immediately arranged talking times on AIM were we could correspond synchronously. It turned out with the limited internet access I had, my AIM connection was not guaranteed. The only websites that I had guaranteed access to all the time was the university websites which gave me unlimited access to e-mail. We both felt we were out of options until with the need of a new phone aroused with my best friend and she decided to invest in a BlackBerry. With world wide web at the palm of her hands 24/7 we knew that this was the key to access to synchronous contact with one another despite the sixteen hour time difference. We even coined a term for our CMC communication, IE, which stood for instant e-mail. Anytime I had something to tell her I would e-mail her and she would immediately respond which virtually turned our e-mail accounts into instant message. It worked like a charm until I returned back to the states.
Being that we knew each other for years the two McKenna relationship facilitation factors that played a role in our communication was identifiability and the connecting to similar others. Growing up with each other and attending school with each other from Pre-K to eighth grade allowed us to know one another better than we knew ourselves.This through identifiabity we could easily relate to one another, preventing the formation of gates to our self disclosing and hence continuing the open connection in our friendship. We also followed the circumstances of the connecting to similar others theory through the factor of knowing that we came from the same neighborhood, similar family and financial backgrounds and have the same projected future goals of becoming professionals. These factors allows us communicate our thoughts more freely even online because we know that we could understand each other easily on basis of our shared backgrounds without feeling the need to hold back anything or overly explain our thoughts.It was a given that she knew where I was coming from and vice versa.
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2 comments:
I liked reading about your experience abroad. I am going to be studying abroad in Australia this spring and I have been thinking about what would be the best way to communicate with my friends and family while I am there. I have actually recently mentioned to my parents that I think I should get a blackberry. I was happy to read that this method of communication worked for you and your friend!
Sounds like you and your friend found an excellent solution to your communication problem. When I first got online I remember some of my parents friends used e-mail in a similar way, as if it were a IM client. I'm interested in the fact that you think that identifiably was an important factor in your effective communication because your experience doesn't seem to be the typical "stranger in the crowd" nor "stranger on the train" effects. Rather, as you say, you two know each other better than you know yourselves. I'm wondering what effect this had on your self disclosure. Perceived anonymity is essential to the way McKenna's identifiably factor explains increased self disclosure online and that was not present in your case.
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