I Text therefore I Am: Message Interactivity vs. Message Exchange in Addictive Use of Instant Messaging
Open Access
- Author:
- Wu, Mu
- Graduate Program:
- Mass Communications
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- May 27, 2016
- Committee Members:
- S. Shyam Sundar, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
S. Shyam Sundar, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Mary Beth Oliver, Committee Member
Mary Beth Rosson, Committee Member
Michael Grant Schmierbach, Outside Member - Keywords:
- Instant messaging
Interactivity
Media habit
Message contingency
Message exchange
Texting addiction
Mobile phone - Abstract:
- Abstract Instant Messaging (IM) has evolved into a real-time, cross-platform, presence-enabled service that allows users to send text-based messages anytime and anywhere. It is very common to see users constantly glued to their mobile devices and texting, but the nature of their messages and the motivations behind such habitual behavior are not fully understood. Do their interactions represent the ideal of message interactivity, featuring threaded conversations, wherein the content of messages are contingent upon previous messages? Or, are they simply mindless chatter, featuring mechanistic exchanges of reactive, rather than fully interactive, messages? Given that addictive use of media tends to be ritualistic and habitual, this dissertation hypothesized that users who are highly dependent on IM will focus more on simple mechanistic message exchanges, as their primary motivation is the excitement derived from sending and receiving messages. In contrast, those less dependent on IM were expected to appreciate message contingency, given their goal of having meaningful and interdependent conversations. To test these hypotheses, the current study (N = 188) employed a 2 (Message Interactivity: Low vs. High) x 2 (Message Exchange: Low vs. High) x 2 (Levels of Addiction: Low vs. High) between-subjects experiment. Message interactivity and message exchange were manipulated, and level of addiction was a measured variable. Participants were asked to complete an IM chat session with a financial customer service representative (i.e., research confederate) by using their own mobile phones, with the conversation topic and content were held constant across conditions. Surprisingly, the findings revealed that both addicts and non-addicts preferred message contingency. While non-addicts’ appreciation of message contingency leads to corresponding content elaboration, addicts’ IM use is rather paradoxical—they do appreciate and demand contingent message exchange, but their actual engagement is still at a relatively superficial experiential level, focused on being absorbed in the experience of texting rather than elaborating on the content exchanged in the experience. The discovery of this paradoxical pattern of IM use is important—not only does it confirm the process-oriented characteristic of IM addiction, but also offers us an opportunity to redefine and reevaluate media addiction in a more qualitative way, based on the nature of user engagement with interactive tools on the interface rather than on individual differences. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.