ECREA16-Abstract

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Thursday, November 10

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PP 198

A Practices Approach to Mediated Social Relation Maintenance Behavior

J. De Meulenaere

, F. De Grove

Ghent University, communication sciences, Gent, Belgium

Today, media have become integrated in all aspects of social live and mediated communication has become commonplace in everyday social relations.

Recent data shows that digital text messaging and voice services are increasingly used alongside more established communication means. From this reality

emerges the question how people appropriate this wide variety of media in their everyday interpersonal communication within their existing personal

networks. Current research on social relation maintenance behavior predominantly takes an individualistic approach, emphasizing personality traits as an‑

tecedents of media use in this context, and typically singles out one medium. In contrast we take a cultural approach in this research, employing the concep‑

tual lens of practices in combination with network analysis to study how people appropriate media in this particular context. Practices have to be situated

in the cultural turn in social sciences and can be defined as routinized types of behavior, consisting of arrays of activities, things and their uses. Practices

are doubly articulated, meaning that they exist as a shared yet abstract entity and as the performance of the practice by individual actors. The performance

of practices involves the actual carrying out of the activities by an individual actor. Taking both articulations into account, an empirical investigation of prac‑

tices involves its observable activities, how its performers understand the practice, which procedures they follow during its performance and how they ac‑

tually engage with it. Individual performances of a practice can subsequently be discerned in terms of variations along these dimensions.We investigate this

practice of maintaining social relationships by employing a mixed-method approach, combining a diary study, qualitative network analysis and in-depth

interviews. Specifically, we compare two generations, adolescents (aged 13–18) and adults (aged 35–45), and the ways in which they appropriate media

within the performance of this practice. In total fifty respondents participates in the study, evenly distributed over both generations. As such we will be

able to discern between performances of this media related practice, how different media are appropriated within variations of interpersonal relations and

ultimately how they may affect these maintenance behaviors. This will allow us to provide complementary insights to the existing literature on mediated

relation maintenance. Furthermore, our research shows the relevance and benefit of a relational and sociological approach, as opposed to the individualistic

and psychological focus that is currently dominant in this field.

PP 199

Users’ Perceived Credibility of Embodied Social Agents

F. Tajariol

University of Franche-Comté, Elliadd, Montbeliard, France

Animated Conversational Agent, Embodied Social Agent, Chatboot, Avatar : these are different names, coming from different fields (such as computer

science, ergonomics, communication), meaning almost the same digital object : a sort of human-like software agent acting as an assistant in banking

services (Pickard & al., 2013), cultural guide (Lane & al., 2011), security trainer (Kowalski & al., 2013), tutor (Blair & al., 2007), and more other roles.

This kind of software is able to interact with a human being, to give information and, sometimes, to help him (her) to accomplish some tasks. Animated

Conversational Agent, Embodied Social Agent, Chatboot, Avatar : these are different names, coming from different fields (such as computer science, ergo‑

nomics, communication), meaning almost the same digital object : a sort of human-like software agent acting as an assistant in banking services (Pickard,

Burns & Moffitt 2013), cultural guide (Lane, Noren, Auerbach, Birch and Swartout, 2011), security trainer (Kowalski Pavlovska & Goldstein., 2013), tutor

(Blair, Schwartz, Biswas & Leelawong 2007), and more other roles. This kind of software is able to interact with a human being, to give information and,

sometimes, to help him (her) to accomplish some tasks. From a user perspective, this sort of software has an ambiguous identity: neither a simple mouse-

and-screen interface nor a human being, it is rather perceived as a“half-computer half-human”identity built to behave as a « social actor » (Reeves & Nass,

1996). We consider that credibility is an effective concept to understand how human beings can interact with these kind of digital social actors and to what

extent they could trust them. This line of reasoning leads several research questions: how do users perceive the credibility of these Embodied Social Agents

(ESAs)? how could we measure it? Which factors determine, directly or indirectly, the level of credibility that users lend to them? In our view, credibility

reflects the power of an ESA to act as a trusted (or believed) assistant in a fixed open-end human activity, by means of its moral qualities and its expertise.

Nevertheless, source credibility does not necessarily imply a persuasion effect on the receiver, although source credibility is a critical determinant of mes‑

sage acceptance. Our contribution is structured as follows: In the first part, we first highlight most relevant theoretical underpinnings about credibility from

human communication research. In the second part, we describe how previous researches about ESAs deal with the concept of credibility and we also stress

relevant methodological items. In the third part, we suggest a research framework to study credibility in human-ESAs interaction and, in the following

section, we describe how we tried to apply this framework to a longitudinal study to evaluate human-ESAs interaction.

PP 200

Digital Reading Across Europe

C. Ganito

, C. Ferreira

Catholic University of Portugal, Communication, Lisboa, Portugal

The practice of reading is going through a profound change and the development of mobile and connected devices has fuelled that change. Readers

throughout the world are remediating their reading practices taking advantage of the possibilities offered by digital communication devices as e-readers,

tablets, laptops and smartphones. There is the expectation of immediate access anytime and anywhere. In face of the growing importance of mobility

contexts, one ought to consider whether this enhanced mobility is indeed changing readership. Books have always been mobile, but mobile devices offer

augmented mobility – a mobility that is connected, networked and collaborative. We now speak of locative media as, besides content, context also plays

a major role. Mobility contexts are often used as a‘time to read’, as mobile communication devices allow not only to carry a greater amount of books, but also

to take advantage of online communication technologies and enhance the reading activity by accessing complementary information or having the possibil‑

ity to easily manage a digital library or reading notes. Based on a quantitative methodology, the paper will present and discuss the results of an extensive