Are you still waiting for an answer? The Chronemics of Asynchronous Written CMC 78 Are you still waiting for an answer? The Chronemics of Asynchronous Written CMC 1 Yoram M. Kalman Gilad Ravid Daphne R. Raban Sheizaf Rafaeli ykalman@study.haifa.ac.il gilad@ravid.org draban@univ.haifa.ac.il sheizaf@rafaeli.net Center for the Study of the Information Society University of Haifa Ben Gurion University of the Negev and Annenberg Center for Communication University of Southern California Center for the Study of the Information Society and Graduate School of Management University of Haifa Center for the Study of the Information Society and Graduate School of Management University of Haifa This study examines the chronemics (time related messages) of response latencies in asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) by analyzing three datasets comprising a total of more than 150,000 responses: email responses created by corporate employees, responses created by university students in course discussion groups, and responses to questions posted in a public, commercial online information market. Mathematical analysis of response latencies reveals a normative pattern common to all three datasets: The response latencies yielded a power-law distribution, such that most of the responses (at least 70%) were created within the average response latency of the responders, while very few (at most 4%) of the responses were created after a period longer than 10 times the average response latency. These patterns persist across diverse user populations, contexts, technologies, and average response latencies. Moreover, it is shown that the same pattern appears in traditional, spoken communication and in other forms of online media such as online surveys. The implications of this uniformity are discussed, three normative chronemic zones are identified, and a quantitative definition for online silence is proposed. Implications for educators and administrators working with online students and with online teaching staff are discussed. Introduction Teachers who wish to succeed in online education are always encouraged to be timely in their responses to the students (Hiltz, 1995), to have frequent interactions with the students (Schrum & Hong, 2002; Walther & Bunz, 2005), to respond quickly to student contributions (Berge, 1995), and to log on frequently (Palloff & Pratt, 2000). Nevertheless, the literature fails to provide empirically validated norms of responsiveness beyond average response latency, or criteria to determine whether specific response latencies are appropriate. This is not surprising, since the norms will vary between various technologies, contexts and environments. 1 An extended version of this paper has been published under the title: Kalman, Y. M., Ravid, G., Raban, D. R., and Rafaeli, S. (2006). Pauses and response latencies: A chronemic analysis of asynchronous CMC. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(1), article 1. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue1/kalman.html