CMC in Personal Relationships Chp7

Now we discuss CMC social support groups. This requires a multi-faceted approach as their are multiple forms of support as well as CMC methods or "channels", each with their own set of attributes. I think its noteworthy to mention that for one of the first times we are dealing more with channels that do not entail communicating with previously established offline relationships but new online relationships. They are mediated in a mostly asynchronous anonymous way, which it turns out can actually be to our benefit. The focus here seemed to be on emotional support and fostering a sense of belonging within a virtual community. They discuss five channels but I want to use just two for an example. Online support groups and discussion channels are very similar in terms of attributes of CMC channels, but their purposes are vastly different. I thought the distinction and importance of purpose was incredibly important to understanding how channels function for the users. Two things bothered me about the chapter. The first thing is the term "face-threatening", I looked and maybe I missed it but I didn't see an explanation of that term. The other is "source perception", which I thought has vast potential as a research topic but was disappointed that they didn't go into it further. Now in the age of online publications of every kind, I think this topic has a lot of practical use for its research.