CMC in Personal Relationships Chp8

Its all about the CMC. This chapter looks at the interpersonal relationships in CMSS groups. Like the last chapter this one also has a very psychological perspective, looking at how these groups relate to health outcomes of their users. The general consensus is that CMC has a number of benefits over traditional FtF communication for a number of reasons that I wont list out here. Like any form of communication it has its own set of pros and cons and while it seems to have a lot of positives it is not without disadvantages. The only significant one seems to be that users have a tendency, for various reasons, to not stay a member of whatever support group for long. As I said CMSS seems to be the bees knees but that wasn't the important part of the chapter to me. The last two sections in this chapter deal with theoretical approaches and future research directions. Here we start to dissect not just why CMSS works but how and where we can go from here. I would not be surprised to learn that a participant led support groups work just as well as professionals led groups. I would also venture to guess that once a weak tie relationship develops into a strong tie that relationship is no longer viable as a outlet for open honest support as it once was. A new anonymous weak tie relationship would be need to fill that niche. This is all speculation based on pre existing frameworks for how the relationships work so I would like to see the results of the data and research once they are in.