Rodney Johns - CMC among gay men

http://vcj.sagepub.com Visual Communication DOI: 10.1177/1470357205048938 2005; 4; 69 Visual Communication Rodney H. Jones computer-mediated interaction among gay men ‘You show me yours, I’ll show you mine’: the negotiation of shifts from textual to visual modes in http://vcj.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/4/1/69 The online version of this article can be found at: Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com can be found at:Visual Communication Additional services and information for http://vcj.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts: http://vcj.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navPermissions: http://vcj.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/4/1/69 Citations at Korea University on July 4, 2009 http://vcj.sagepub.comDownloaded from A R T I C L E ‘You show me yours, I’ll show you mine’: the negotiation of shifts from textual to visual modes in computer-mediated interaction among gay men R O D N E Y H . J O N E S City University of Hong Kong A B S T R A C T This article explores the way users of an online gay chat room negotiate the exchange of photographs and the conduct of video conferencing sessions and how this negotiation changes the way participants manage their interactions and claim and impute social identities. Different modes of communication provide users with different resources for the control of information, affecting not just what users are able to reveal, but also what they are able to conceal. Thus, the shift from a purely textual mode for interacting to one involving visual images fundamentally changes the kinds of identities and relationships available to users. At the same time, the strategies users employ to negotiate these shifts of mode can alter the resources available in different modes. The kinds of social actions made possible through different modes, it is argued, are not just a matter of the modes themselves but also of how modes are introduced into the ongoing flow of interaction. K E Y W O R D S chat • computer-mediated communication • cybersex • gay communication • multimodality New communication technologies have brought new flexibility to the ways the different modes of written text, voice, image and video can be deployed in communication. Questions surrounding how people choose and use these different modes strategically in the course of real-time interaction, however, have yet to be fully addressed. Most studies of text-based computer-mediated interaction have tended to focus exclusively on text (see Jones, 2001b, for a review), ignoring the fact that users of these media often employ other modes, exchanging graphics and sound files, talking on the telephone, or Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi: www.sagepublications.com) /10.1177/1470357205048938 Vol 4(1): 69–92 [1470-3572(200502)4:1; 69–92] v i s u a l c o m m u n i c a t i o n at Korea University on July 4, 2009 http://vcj.sagepub.comDownloaded from engaging in video conferencing, in the context of, or in addition to, their text-based interactions. Parks and Floyd (1996), in their early work on text- based computer-mediated interaction, found that users employed an average of 2.68 channels of communication (e.g. email, phone, postal service, and face-to-face communication) in maintaining social relationships with other users. Moreover, these ‘shifts’ in mode have been found to signal fundamental changes in the relationships between users (Whitty and Gavin, 2001). This article addresses how shifts from one mode to another – in particular from the mode of written text to visual modes involving the exchange of pictures and the use of video conferencing – are achieved in text-based computer- mediated communication and how these ‘mode shifts’ affect the course of the interaction and the ways interactants manage their relationships and identities. Recent work on the phenomenon of ‘multimodality’ has focused on how different modes of communication privilege different constructions of reality and create different relationships between senders and receivers of messages (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996). Kress (2003) refers to these ways in which modes affect communication and social relationships as ‘affordances’. One important difference between texts and images, he says, is that the written word operates within the logic of time and orients readers towards causality, whereas the image operates within the logic of space, and orients viewers towards more spatial analytical perspectives. In multimodal texts, however, the affordances of different modes do not exist separately, but in combination with one another in what Kress and Van Leeuwen (2001) call ‘communicational ensembles’ and Scollon and Scollon (2003) refer to as ‘semiotic aggregates’. Thus, the affordances of a particular mode invariably depend on how the mode and the meanings expressed through it exist in interdiscursive relationships with other co-present modes and meanings. Most of the work in multimodal text analysis has taken as its object ‘finished and finite texts’ (Iedema, 2003: 30), such as magazines, text-books and internet web pages. Some scholars, however, have focused more on the interplay among different modes in real-time interaction. Norris (2004), for example, examines how people in face-to-face communication strategically draw on different modes to foreground or background different actions. What allows interactants to mange multiple communicative actions, she notes, depends not just on the communicative potential of the various modes they use, but also on how they modulate and mix these modes in various levels of intensity, or what she calls ‘modal density’. Another example of this more dynamic perspective on multimodality can be seen in Iedema’s (2001, 2003) concept of resemiotization, the process through which meanings are transferred from one mode (or semiotic) to another, from practice to practice or from one stage in a social practice to another. Iedema’s (2003) concern is not so much with the affordances and constraints on meaning embodied in particular modes as with ‘the social dynamics that shape our multimodal meanings as they emerge’ (p. 40, emphasis added) and ‘the V i s u a l C o m m u n i c a t i o n 4 ( 1 )70 at Korea University on July 4, 2009 http://vcj.sagepub.comDownloaded from social-processual logic which governs how material meanings mutually transform one another’ (p. 30). Underlying both of these approaches is an increasing awareness among scholars that communication cannot be fully understood through the analysis of the tools of communication (language and other semiotic codes) separated from their actual use in situated social interaction, and that what is also required is an analysis of the social actions these tools are employed to perform. This focus on situated action forms the foundation of a perspective on multimodal discourse analysis known as mediated discourse analysis (Scollon, 1998, 2001), an approach that takes as its unit of analysis not discourse, but the social actions that discourse makes possible. From this point of view, whether or not a particular mediational means amplifies or constrains particular social actions depends not on the mediational means themselves but on the ‘tension between the mediational means as provided in the sociocultural setting and the unique contextualized use of these means in carrying out particular concrete actions’ (Wertsch, 1994: 205). The ways different modes and media affect social actions, social identities and social relationships depends upon how they are deployed strategically in relation to the ongoing flow of the interaction. One way to understand this better is to examine those moments in interaction in which participants shift from one mode to another or add an additional mode to the one they are already using. Some of the questions central to such an analysis have already been articulated by Iedema (2003: 29), namely, how meanings are translated from one mode of representation to another as social processes unfold, and why some modes of representation are mobilized to do certain things at certain times. I would add to these the questions of how shifts from one mode to another affect the ways people manage interaction, how they claim and impute social identities within the interaction, and how the potential for particular modes to enable or constrain particular social actions and social identities is affected by the process of negotiation through which interactants move from one mode to another. My interest in visual communication, then, has not so much to do with the images that participants in computer-mediated communication exchange, but rather with the ‘social-processural logic’ (Iedema, 2001: 30) which governs how such transactions take place, and how interactants use these transactions to take social actions and enact social identities. C O M P U T E R - M E D I A T E D I N T E R A C T I O N A M O N G G A Y M E N Computer-mediated communication through chat rooms, email lists, online dating services, instant messaging groups and web-based personal ads have been credited with fundamentally altering the ways gay men organize their social and sexual lives (Jones, in press; Wakeford, 2000; Woodland, 2000), J o n e s : C o m p u t e r - m e d i a t e d i n t e r a c t i o n a m o n g g a y m e n 71 at Korea University on July 4, 2009 http://vcj.sagepub.comDownloaded from particularly in the conservative social environments of Asia (Berry and Martin, 2003). At the same time, meeting sexual partners through the internet has been linked to increased sexual risk-taking by gay men and vulnerability to HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (Bull, 2001; Kim et al., 2001; McFarlane et al., 2000 ). The data for this analysis come from a year-long ethnographic study of the way gay men in Hong Kong use the internet to meet friends and sexual partners, a study which involved participant observation, in-depth interviews with users and the collection of computer records documenting the interaction between men in chat rooms and on public message boards.1 Part of what made the gathering of this type of data possible was the participatory research model used in the project (see Jones, 2002). ‘Participant-researchers’ were recruited from among regular users of the sites being investigated and were trained in techniques of observation, archiving data and keeping field notes. All the data were gathered and selected for submission by participants themselves and ‘anonymized’ to remove any information which might reveal the identities of interactants. Users of the sites under investigation were notified of the procedures at the start of the project and a website was set up to outline the purpose and goals of the project, explain issues of confi- dentiality and privacy, and to facilitate the anonymous submission of data by participants. The chat room which is the focus of this article is the most popular chat room for gay men in Hong Kong, averaging over 100 participants at any given time and more at ‘peak times’ in the late evenings and on Sunday afternoons. Like many other chat rooms of its kind, users log in using a pseudonym and type an optional profile in which they may include information regarding such things as their location, their appearance, their sexual proclivities, or the kind of partner they would like to meet. Unlike some other services, this particular chat room does not require users to register, and so they may change their names and profiles whenever they log on. Also, unlike some other services, this chat room does not provide an area for users to post their pictures. Therefore, the negotiation of pictures, more often than not, must be carried out in the course of the interaction. The interface for the chat room includes a space where participants can engage in public conversations, but this is rarely used. The vast majority of interactions are private chats which users initiate by clicking on the name of another user in the list of chat room occupants. Example 1 below is typical of what transpires after a private chat is initiated. Example 1 A: hi B: hi A: you want fun or friends? B: both A: me2 V i s u a l C o m m u n i c a t i o n 4 ( 1 )72 at Korea University on July 4, 2009 http://vcj.sagepub.comDownloaded from B: i’m into anything A: my stats is 22, 173 cm, 136 lbs B: any pic??? A: your stats pls? B: gwm 46 5′8 80kg stocky fit tanned smooth cut thick vers A: great... B: pic?? A: u B: U first A: http://www.face-pic.com/XXXXXXX B: wait A: ok B: sorry not my type B: good luck B: bb Bye! [B left private chat.] The procedural rules of such interactions are fairly consistent. They usually begin with a greeting sequence and then move on to a progressive and incremental exchange of information regarding such things as age, race, appearance, location, the kind of activity or relationship sought (‘fun’, friends, phone sex, ‘cam sex’), the requirements for the partner, the sexual roles of the interactants (top/bottom/versatile), and whether or not one of the participants has a ‘place’ (for sexual activity). At some point in this exchange of information, participants generally negotiate the exchange of pictures, or, if both have webcams, the beginning of a video conferencing session. Pictures are exchanged in one of two ways. Either participants exchange email addresses (or instant messaging numbers/addresses) and send digital graphic files to each other as attachments, or they direct each other to internet web pages where their pictures are posted using one of the numerous services that exist for such purposes. In the event that both participants are satisfied with the potential partner’s photograph, they generally move on to exchanging phone numbers and engaging in voice communication, and then, if that works out, meeting in ‘real life’. One participant described this sequence as follows: When I arrange to meet someone to have fun, the first thing that not only I require but also the other one is the place, if we are sure we have a place to have fun, then we will keep talking. After making sure that there is a place for us to have fun, we start to talk more deeply, first about appearance by telling each other how old and tall and heavy we are, then we will talk about what we like to do in sex, to see if we match or not, then we exchange photos through links or icq or email, if everything seems ok and we match, we then exchange phone nos. to talk more. At this stage, the main aim is to confirm if we will really meet or not and what time we will meet. J o n e s : C o m p u t e r - m e d i a t e d i n t e r a c t i o n a m o n g g a y m e n 73 at Korea University on July 4, 2009 http://vcj.sagepub.comDownloaded from Several points can be noted from the above observations. First, despite the popular characterization of text-based computer-mediated communication as ‘disembodied’, allowing users to be ‘free’ of the constraints of their physical forms (see, e.g., Turkle, 1995), in these interactions, participants’ bodies are very much present. In fact, they are, more often than not, the main topic of conversation. The mode of existence of the body, however, is not static, but instead incrementally constructed, first through the use of textual descriptions, then through digital images, then through voice communication, and finally, if all goes well, through face-to-face interaction and physical contact. At each point at which a new mode is introduced into the communication, the body becomes more ‘present’, more ‘palpable’. In a sense, then, ‘mode shifting’ is the raison d’être of this type of interaction; the whole point is to transform the textual body into a visual one, and eventually into a physical one. The visual mode is never totally absent from such interactions but, rather, only temporarily ‘muted’ (Jones 2003). This negotiated introduction of new modes, of course, is not unique to this form of communication, but rather common in many kinds of interaction. A similar kind of negotiation occurs, in fact, when gay men ‘cruise’ in physical spaces. In physical spaces, however, rather than moving from the textual to the visual, they begin with purely visual communication – glances, facial expressions and gestures – through which they negotiate subsequent verbal communication and/or physical contact (Jones, 2001a; Jones et al., 2000). In face-to-face interactions, it is the physical body that is used as a kind of anchor for the self, in Goffman’s (1959) words, a ‘peg on which something of collaborative manufacture will be hung for a time’ (p. 253). In computer-mediated communication of the type I am describing, the words and images exchanged become ‘pegs’ on which bodies are constructed. These bodies exist in an ongoing state of becoming, a gradual process of what Scollon and Scollon (2003) call somatization, or what Norris (2004) might characterize as a movement from disembodied modes to more embodied ones. As the interaction progresses, the ‘selves’ of the participants are resemiotized (Iedema, 2001, 2003) from textual descriptions into two-dimensional images, and, eventually, into physical forms, each stage affording different resources for meanings to be ‘read off ’ from participants and used in the production of the interaction order (Goffman, 1983; Scollon and Scollon, 2003). The second point is that this incremental somatization follows a fairly conventional sequencing. The exchange of certain kinds of information, for example (usually ‘statistics’ – age, height, weight – and location), almost always precedes the exchange of photos, and the exchange of photos almost always precedes the exchange of telephone numbers and arrangements for face-to-face meeting. Interaction, then, generally occurs in progressive stages, the initiation of each stage necessitating the satisfactory achievement of the previous one. Indeed, the exchange of photos is widely regarded as a V i s u a l C o m m u n i c a t i o n 4 ( 1 )74 at Korea University on July 4, 2009 http://vcj.sagepub.comDownloaded from prerequisite for face-to-face meeting, as evidenced in the following statement from an online article giving advice to gay men about meeting partners on the internet: Tip #4: Get a Photo Prior to meeting, be sure to get a photo of your date. Ask as many detailed questions about the picture as possible, including the date it was taken. Save the picture in an accessible place on your computer. You can always erase it later. (Johnson, 2004) Understanding and being able to successfully participate in this sequenced series of mode shifts constitutes part of the generic competence though which users enact membership in this community of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Swales, 1991). At the same time, willingness to engage in mode shifting is itself a way of claiming identity as a certain kind of member with certain kinds of intentions. It is regarded as an emblem of ‘seriousness’ or ‘sincerity’. ‘Most genuine guys have pics,’ remarked one of my participants, while another commented: I am much less tolerant now of people who do not provide a pic. I feel that they are either lying or are not up to date or immature. I won’t meet anyone without first seeing a pic. The purpose of exchanging pictures, then, goes beyond simply facilitating the mutual assessment of physical appearance, functioning as well to facilitate the assessment of the other person’s character and trustworthiness (Waskul, 2003). Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that the consequence of not being willing or able to engage in the exchange of pictures is, more often than not, termination of the interaction, as can be seen in Example 2. In ca