|
|
According to websters dictionary, asynchronous is defined as "failure to occur at the same time." So, Asynchronous mass communication is communication between the masses that does not occur at the same time. Daniel Chandler defines this term in his article, "Personal Home Pages and the Construction of Identities on the Web." He says, "web pages are a form of asynchronous comunication, unlike synchronous modes of communication such as the telephone and face-to-face interaction, which involve 'real-time' interaction."This means that someone can construct a web page that displays their identity, and anyone can log on at anytime to see that identity. You do not have to be communicating with each other at the same time. He also says that wep pages are a form of mass communication, because it involves the identity of an individual displayed for the public. It is a one to many type of communication.
Chandler makes a few other points that I feel are important to mention also. He says that even though web pages are compared to face-to-face interaction, this is a bad comparison. Through the internet we lose the nonverbal aspects of communication. In this aspect, web pages are more comparable to print media, however, that is not a good comparison either. In print media, once information is printed, it is there to stay. It is not updated continuously like a web page is. Even if the author rewrites it, there is still a copy of the origional information. When dealing with web pages, however, the new information overwrites the old information. |
|
