Filter Effects of Mediating Technologies

Mediation technologies like phones and IM can be viewed as filters on communication. The present study investigates which conversations are filtered and which are not by recording conversations in an office environment and later asking the workers to indicate which utterances would have been initiated over phone or e-mail if they were not co-located. The results indicate that 76% of all conversations would be filtered. It is argued that the filtering would be perceived as positive due to less disruptions in a telework setting, but that the long term effects would be negative. The filtering is explained by three mechanisms involving behavioral cost, memory and social cost respectively.