Developing Relationships in Computer-Mediated Communication and Face-to-Face Setting: A Longitudinal Experimental Study

The widespread use of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) in Malaysian society today hasprovided new opportunities for the development of relationships. Hence, the need to understand thedevelopmental aspects of relationships in an online setting has become increasingly important, particularly those that concern the effects of time and channel synchrony on the development of interpersonal relationships in CMC. The study used a longitudinal experimental design to achieve the objectives of the study. A total of 110 participants were involved in this experiment and they were randomly assigned to a face-to face control group and treatment groups (synchronous CMC and asynchronous CMC groups). The findings show that time is a significant factor for the development of relationships in CMC.The development of relationships in both CMC channels (synchronous CMC and asynchronous CMC) was significantly greater at the later time than at the initial time. However, time was not a significant factor for the development of interpersonal relationships in the face-to-face control group. The findings exhibited that channel synchrony is a significant factor for the development of interpersonal relationships in CMC. The development of relationships in both synchronous channels namely face-to-face and synchronous CMC was significantly greater than that of asynchronous CMC. The study concluded that interpersonal relationships occur over time in CMC, despite obvious channel limitations as compared to face-to-face communication.