ABSTRACT

For scholars considering the social impacts of new telecommunications technologies, the dissatisfaction presents itself as struggles to define “mediated interpersonal”—but not mass—channels such as telephone, videotex, facsimile, or electronic mail. Some scholars have explored the gray area where theories of interpersonal and mass communication intersect. G. Gumpert and R. Cathcart argue that it is important to preserve the concept of mediation because it represents the line between differing experiences of technology in the communication context. Mass communication theory, in the form of uses and gratifications or sense-making theory, seems to account better for individual differences in perception and participation than do older “bullet” or “hypodermic” theories of the media. Contexts are quite complex, but J. Meyrowitz suggests that the context or situation may serve as a new level of analysis for considering interpersonal and mass-mediated communication behavior simultaneously. In information science there is a contradiction between models of information needs and models of information delivery.