4 - Niche, Media Displacement, and Multimodal Relationships

Summary

This chapter introduces theories of the niche and media displacement to address the idea that although there is an ever-expanding array of personal media options, the displacement of one type of media for another is slow and gradual. This chapter starts by exploring text-based communication in the context of both interpersonal communication and classic CMC literature. The emergence of email and then-new phenomena such as chat rooms, message boards, and the listserv will be examined, followed by the emergence of SMS. This chapter also examines the rise of social media. Finally, this chapter documents the frequency of social interactions on various modes of communication, and concludes by focusing on the coexistence, rather than total displacement, of various communication options. The chapter finishes by suggesting a set of modalities that are likely to endure as technology changes.