The elementary forms of digital communication.

ABSTRACT: Although a tremendous amount of modern interaction is electronic, our understanding of everyday digital communications-including what they look like and how their properties vary by medium and relationship type-is still growing. In this paper, we examine digital exchange in two of its simplest forms: email and SMS. Specifically, our data consist of 2,004 messages provided by a diverse sample of college students, supplemented by in-depth interviews with their authors. These data were collected in 2010-a time when both mediums were widespread but devoid of most of their modern complexity. Based on these data, we make two contributions: First, we develop an empirically grounded typology of the basic properties of text-based digital communication; second, we document the distribution of these

SUBMITTER: Brown LS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9439205 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature