A study on triggers of informal communication using questionnaires

Conventionally, informal communication is said to be contingent. However, it is naturally acknowledged that such a communication may also be intentional, thus may not be entirely contingent. Meanwhile, importance of computational support to informal communication has been put forward, and the concept of awareness has been widely studied. Following such trend, we study on triggers of informal communication through questionnaires and KJ method. As a result, we identify those triggers that are not consistent with the contingency. This paper reports our initial findings and a possible use of fuzzy methods.