My employer allows for gchat conversations to happen online all day and everyday. They can be "on the record" and "off the record". Gchat is an amazing tool when you need to say something fast or ask a clarifying question and just don't want to get up and walk over to a coworkers desk.
It can be gossipy, funny oftentimes work related, but it can also be abused, dreaded and avoided when you work with someone who just won't stop using it.
What you might say to a coworker in the kitchen as you get your morning coffee is surface level conversation, if you know them well enough, you might go a little more in depth with that coworker, but I am always amazed at what a coworker might say to me online in a small little window at the bottom of my computer screen.
People can create a perceived safety when they use gchat and say things that they would never say to someone out loud because the other person they are talking about is right across from them, They feel a need to protect the public space and say something in the private space instead. In the public space if someone is saying something that you don't agree with you have the opportunity to move away, to end the conversation, however in the private space you can get invited into the conversation pattern and are sometimes left feeling defensive if you don't want to discuss it further or at all in the first place.
Hi Tracy,
ReplyDeleteI like how you used modern technology as an example of private communication. In today’s world we can easily communicate without ever speaking a word. Emails, Facebook, imessage, text messages and Gchat are all forms of privately communicating our thoughts even in a crowded public space. One issue that I have encountered with these forms of communication is that even though at the moment they are private, sometimes they can end up being more public than screaming your message into a loudspeaker. Some people unethically violate the unspoken privacy terms between those involved in the conversation by taking screen shots, copying and pasting, or using logs to distribute conversations that were intended to be private. As with other issues we have discussed in class, I find this to be immoral as it devalues private information by making it public without a greater good for both parties as an ultimate goal. I guess it is unfortunate that with great technological advances to increase the modality of communication, there also come great threats to its privacy.