UNDERSTANDING RESISTANCE TO COMPUTER CONFERENCING
Where Next?

by Martin E.H. Lee-Gosselin and Helene Lee-Gosselin


Efforts to understand sources of resistance to computer conferencing (cc) are woven into more than a decade of thoughtful exchanges among moderators, facilitators, and designers of online systems. It seems to us that this is the right moment in the history of the medium to try to build some new heuristics around resistance.

Before going further, let us admit that this will inevitably overlap with other efforts to research the "people" side of cc, but we see nothing wrong in this. (After all, isn't the medium allowing us to experiment with ways of belonging in several planes at once?)

What of the current point in cc's history? Excellent cc software has been around since the early '70s, but only in 1985 did the level of interest and activity give rise to an ENA. We subscribe to the view that this has much to do with the diffusion of common-or-garden microcomputers: We do what we do now in this field because suddenly there are a lot of terminals out there.

A major implication of being where we are on the adoption curve is that our learning thus far about what works may be based on the behavior of atypical users--at first, some of the minority who had computer terminals around for other reasons, and more recently, a great diversity of innovative microcomputer users and "netties." We understand that trailblazing is for some its own reward, but we sometimes forget that those who follow do not necessarily want or need the same toolkit to overcome difficulties as was devised by the pioneers, and that they are perfectly capable of thinking up entirely new forms of resistance.

In this article, we want to concentrate on our view of the sources of resistance themselves, with a minimal use of the protest "it all depends" which must accompany the evaluation of tools. At the "Managing Computer Conferences" session of the November 1985 ENA Meeting in Washington DC, we discussed an evolving typology of resistance in the context of the session's cc-creation scenario exercises. We paid particular attention to resistance of a personal versus an organizational nature. Since then, we have added to that some notions about what is peculiarly difficult about cc within and between three broad categories of resistance:

1. resistance to the process of cc itself

2. resistance associated with a user's personal motivation

3. resistance associated with organizational contexts

Below, we say some more about these categories, and discuss ten types of resistance which they contain. But first, we are compelled to admit that much of what we see amounts to problems with unfamiliar, unclear, and emergent NORMS for the use of cc.


A PERVASIVE PROBLEM: UNFAMILIAR, UNCLEAR, AND EMERGENT NORMS

Rather than squeeze the question of norms into one of the above categories, we want to agree with Peter Vaill (the keynote speaker at ENA's conference in November and Professor of Management at George Washington University) that the "meta:difference" between cc and f-t-f is the lack of "cultural grounding" (1985 Online Symposium on Facilitation). High on the list of things we think the culture needs to communicate for many "early adopters" to feel comfortable are:

- how flexible is the membership of "in" groups?

- who is empowered to judge that the cc content has reached success or closure?

- what "leadership" or "in charge" means in a cc environment?

- the ground rules, and expectations laid on users, for participating in defining the norms where few yet exist

As several people have already observed, ENA is probably now playing the most significant role in the achievement of self- awareness by any emergent cc cultures. It would be educational for us to reflect more on differences in cultural grounding between at least the "global community" and "enhanced organization" purposes we espouse.


RESISTANCE TO THE PROCESS OF CC ITSELF

We find it useful to identify here those resistances, peculiar to cc, which may be stumbling blocks even in reaching the point where cc is evaluated from a more specific personal or organizational perspective. Two aspects of the written-language basis of cc seem to be "up front" in this way; we have placed fears about the consequences of the written record in the third (organizational) category. Obviously, these "up front" types of resistance will often manifest themselves (first or again) in connection with overriding personal or organizational considerations.

Incomplete social presence
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Highly related to the pervasive cultural issue, this amounts to new users experiencing a sort of sensory deprivation. It is often much worse than, say, a similar experience with an Expert System, because here is a knowledge system in which minds switch in and out at will. Interestingly, comprehensive cc systems, such as Meta:Net and Unison, allow access to many different styles of social presence at the sub-conference or item/topic level, as well as having a system-level presence.

Substituting "eyes/fingers" for "ears/mouth"
--------------------------------------------

This transition is a formidable barrier to people who are not accustomed to "putting it in writing." It seems such an irony to do business in the newest medium using skills which have gone out of style. But there is much more here than the problem of expressing oneself succinctly and then getting it typed into the system. In particular, the much-discussed paucity of affective clues hampers the development of relationships, and thus makes it harder to get comfortable with whatever social presence is perceived. We have been interested to observe that some totally new users spontaneously interject affective asides after the pattern of Lisa Kimball's famous .

Frustration with editing/correcting input
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We refer here only to the desire to polish spelling and grammar. This is a good example of the impact of microcomputers, because we now have a large number of potential users who know visual (screen) editing, but who have never experienced line editing. Such people may be very intolerant of what most current cc systems offer online, and may not have patience to get to where they can upload input they have edited offline. It takes effort to maintain, and courage to abandon, habitual standards of thyped communications (sic).

RESISTANCE ASSOCIATED WITH A USER'S PERSONAL MOTIVATION

Here are grouped a number of sources of resistance that are encountered as an individual evaluates the personal meaning of the cc opportunity. These are in order of their peculiar pertinence to cc; all three would apply in some form to the adoption of any technology which is an agent of social change. These resistances deal with individual needs and motivation, and Murray Turoff (who among other things is the founder of the EIES network and co-author with Roxanne Hiltz of THE NETWORK NATION) encourages us to recognize that messaging systems have tried to address these with designs that are not necessarily optimal for group activity.

If we try to understand these types of resistance using familiar models of individual motivation, such as utility theory, we must remember that one possibility for the user is to opt out of the many-to-many applications.

Inadequate map-reading
----------------------

This refers both to: (a) failing to develop a good picture of the system design; and (b) losing track of the cumulative content. Specific examples of (a) are poor images of the methods of branching, linking, parallel activity, searching and summarization, and even of the function of different subsystems (messaging, BBSs, real-time discussions, conferencing). Included in (b) are confusions over index maintenance, keywords, closure and archiving conventions, and the function of commands to opt out/forget/ignore previous content.

Mismatched expectations about participation
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We hear a lot of guilt expressed from users about the level of absorption they have chosen. It is almost as if, in the absence of "cultural grounding," some users develop unusually rigid default assumptions about how to participate. It works in both directions: Users wanting only to "lurk" or seek information fear being asked to be more visible, while others seeking group activity feel cheated when everyone else is fading into the woodwork.

Individual payoff inapparent or irrelevant
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This is the most obvious type of personal resistance, often related to how an individual organizes his/her work and his/her willingness to take time to learn new tools.


RESISTANCE ASSOCIATED WITH ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXTS

This category mostly concerns how cc affects the user's roles within the organization. The first two are peculiar to the "written trail" left in a cc system. The remaining two are more general sources of resistance to change in organizations.

Fears about the style of the written record
-------------------------------------------

It may not be enough to make the transition to "eyes/fingers" if there is fear about how rational, reasonable or consistent the user may appear to the organization, based on the cumulative written trace. Potentially, this is resistance to the openness of discussion without which a conference may deteriorate to mere posturing. (We know of at least one constellation of cc's which cannot function across more than three vertical levels of the sponsoring organization's hierarchy because of this.) Trial balloons and intentional ambiguity are examples of styles which often demand guarantees of perishability.

Fears about monitoring of content
---------------------------------

The written trace may also be feared on the grounds that its content may fall into the wrong hands. The resistance is stronger than for the "for your eyes only" type of memorandum because of the accumulation of organized content, and the instantaneous nature of its broad transmission.

Fears about a hidden agenda
for making cc resources available
---------------------------------

Beyond fears of the style and content of the written trace is the idea that working habits and patterns of interaction may be observed. Accounting devices in systems (and who is paying the bills) may or may not make this a realistic concern, but the model of continuous monitoring of VDT operators is well known, and the analogy may be too close for comfort.

Trashing the unknown
--------------------

The Luddites (people who are anti-technology on principle) are getting more subtle: They accuse cc of being a "technological solution in search of a problem." This probably feeds more on misguided or inappropriate applications than on suspicion of something new.


WHERE NEXT?

These seem to us to be the most important sources of resistance to which we should pay attention at the upswing of the cc adoption curve. There are clearly other types of resistance, and others will emerge. We want later to discuss solutions, but we are rather sure that we should look for patterns of answers, not a list of "fixes," one for each type of resistance. Drawing on our collective experience to date, we should look for prototype solutions. This amounts to seeking variety, not consensus, remembering again that the distribution of motivations among early users is not likely to be typical of the majority.

We are sticking our necks out with a purpose in mind. Where we would like to go next is to analyze resistance across up-to-date case examples. Catharine Vinson's article "The Other Side of the Business Culture" (Netweaver, Volume 2, Number 2), is the kind of incisive commentary we need. Her thoughts on "information resentation and overload" and "pecking order," for example, tell us that our "fear about the style of the written record" may need splitting into two points.

We would like to expand our compendium of examples of resistance, and invite you to tell us what you are are seeing as the most important. Have we really identified the "top ten"? We invite you to join us in "RESISTANCE TO CC" off "TOWN SQUARE" in UNISON, to comment in "Netweaver Talk", or to contact us via your porter.

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Authors' note: Both authors are principals of Lee-Gosselin Associes
Limitee, a consulting firm based in Quebec City, which has been applying
cc to many of its projects in social research, policy planning, evaluation
and organizational development. Martin Lee-Gosselin is a behavioral
scientist and planner, working mostly in the fields of transport,
telecommunications and energy. He was formerly Director of Research for
the Michigan Dept. of State. Helene Lee- Gosselin is an organizational
psychologist, and is Director of the Dept. of Management at Universite
Laval's business school, where she is also active in researching personnel
management and the problems of women in organizations.