Sociolinguistics and CMC

There is a most interesting post up at Masters of Media about the virtues of online (text-based) communication. It's not a direct comparison of online and F2F, but it's explicitly a "defense" of online ways of interacting. I leave it to your reading enjoyment, 'cause it's finals and I got papers to write.

I will note that the post immediately made me think of the article "Internet and face-to-face communication: Not functional alternatives." (Flaherty, L.M., Pearce, K.J., & Rubin, R.B. (1998), Communication Quarterly 46 (3), 250-268) I don't know why, but this title has always stuck with me as emblematic of CMC research.