ABSTRACT
Computer-Mediated communication (CMC) systems such as private messaging, public conferencing, bulletin boards, and several variations in between are proliferating. Researchers are increasingly interested in measuring and evaluating CMC. On the one hand, some of the features of CMC provide a testbed for theoretical propositions about human communication. CMC provides a highly controlled, time-sensitive, and automatically audited environment. This not only enables testing of hypotheses about CMC in relation to other variables, but also enables testing of more general propositions about human communication that are not dependent on the type of medium used. On the other hand, the implementation of CMC systems in organizations can benefit from practically guided formative and summative evaluation research.
