For each interactive activity, you may email your responses to your instructor or to yourself. Or, you may answer the questions and then print your responses when they are displayed on the screen. If you choose to print your response, then leave the spaces below blank.

Your Name:
Your Email:
Your Instructor's Name:
Your Instructor's Email:

If you have already joined an on-line group and have observed its interactions for a while, skip to the questions.

If you have not joined a group, read the directions that follow:

1. Subscribe to a mailing list on a topic of your choosing. Check out lists on search engines provided by google at http://groups.google.com/ or yahoo at http://groups.yahoo.com/ to find a group that interests you. Or try www.coollist.com for a user-friendly menu of mailing list topics.

2. View the email discussion of a Usenet group. You don't really join these groups, but instead you use a mail reader (such as Netscape, Explorer, or Newswatcher) to read the messages of the different groups. There are thousands of groups to choose from.

If you are returning to the activity, please answer the questions that follow.

1. What clues do you have as to the identity of the individuals on your discussion group? What roles do the respondents play and what kind of face do they establish? (Hint: You may wish to examine the "sig files" of group members. A sig file is the statement that appears at the end of each email message a person sends.)

2. Choose one person's identity. Does that person's constructed identity match the tone and content of his or her messages?

3. How do those clues help you predict the statements and attitudes of those who post messages to the group?

4. How do those clues help you understand the context of what each person says?

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Functions of Interpersonal Communication | Interpersonal Communication

Content author: Tim Borchers, Moorhead State University
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