Cases on Online Discussion and Interaction:

Experiences and Outcomes

Introduction
This book will be a more in-depth study of many of the issues we discussed in our book Human Communication on the Internet. The purpose of this book is to provide cases about online discussion, which apply research and practice.

A close look at online communication takes us headlong into a heated battleground of strongly held beliefs in relation to people talking to one another, face-to-face, versus online discussion. Some individuals maintain that the traditional, face-to-face environment is one of debate, interaction, and immediacy between human beings, and that online communication is a cold and inhuman landscape. Others hold that the online discussion forum extends the opportunity to interact, depth of content, and sense of self-involvement, which surpasses face-to-face discussion.

As human communication on the Internet includes more and more channels associated with ordinary, face-to-face communication, for example, sound and sight, there are now many specific and varied examples of how people are using online discussion. These examples or cases give us the specifics needed to make sense out of how research and theory are being applied—or not applied—in current practices. What is the evolving nature of online discussion today? Can we begin to understand what is likely to make for better and worse online discussions?

The Overall Objective of the Book
Cases on Online Discussion and Interaction: Experiences and Outcomes will attempt to help us better understand how people communicate through online discussion, what its strengths and weaknesses are, what we can do to facilitate better discussions, how communication is evolving, and how we can think about online discussions as we take part in them, lead, moderate or facilitate them, and find new applications in social and work contexts. After reading the case studies, the reader should have a good idea of what is likely to facilitate discussion online, what is likely to encourage collaborative meaning-making, which is appropriately productive, supportive, engaged, and what is likely to foster critical thinking.

We wish to draw together in one book, chapters dealing with an array of research methods, communication contexts, and philosophical perspectives. The cases will observe online discussion in education, business conferences, support groups, social networking, and public and private discussions of all kinds. Often, authors will find it useful to compare the online discussion to the more traditional face-to-face discussion. Hence, this book is going to be useful in helping us better understand the traditional face-to-face discussion, too. Either one-on-one or group discussion analysis can provide insight regarding where we are and where we need to go.

Target Audience
The prospective audience is the academic audience and the practical world of users from business, politics, medicine, information technology, entertainment, short message services, telephony, social networking, and imagined communities. The readers will be people who want to understand how online connectivity works, either to add to the research and theory or to enhance effectiveness of online discussion.

A TENTATIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. FOUNDATIONS.

II. PROCESSES. [Contributed chapters, potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following]:

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