Multicommunicating is the practice of engaging in more than one conversations at a time. The possibility and likelihood of such interactions has accelerated with the advent of digital technology and its ubiquitous nature in the form of the smartphone. Turner, Jeanine Warisse, and Sonja K. Foss. 2018. "Options for the Construction of Attentional Social Presence in a Digitally Enhanced Multicommunicative Environment." Communication Theory 28:22–45. . The increasing prevalence of the practice in recent years has also garnered attention from academic fields. From a physiological and cognitive perspective, multicommunication is possible because humans, or presence allocators, Turner, Jeanine Warisse, and N. Lamar Reinsch. 2007. "The Business Communicator as Presence Allocator: Multicommunicating, Equivocality, and Status at Work." The Journal of Business Communication (1973) 44(1):36–58. . are typically able to think faster than they are able to speak or type. Nonetheless, most neuroscientific studies imply that we are not truly cognitively capable of multitasking; we are just able to switch between tasks. This means that those who are most skilled at apparent multitasking, or multicommunicating, are essentially very quick at juggling their attention between messages. Media richness theory (Daft and Lengel) Another important concept in multicommunication is Richard L. Daft and Robert H. Lengel's research on media richness theory, which concerns how employees choose which technologies to use in the workplace. Suh, Kil Soo. 1999. "Impact of communication medium on task performance and satisfaction: an examination of media-richness theory." Information Management 35(5):295–312. . Similar to "the medium is the message" concept proposed by Marshall McLuhan, Daft and Lengel argue that different media have varying qualities that make them more or less suited for certain interactions. Gender The practical implications of multicommunicating have also drawn criticism in gender studies. Soukup's (2000) analysis of computer-mediated communication through a critical ethnography of gendered chat rooms illustrates the normative forms of behavior among genders online. In distinct gendered chat rooms, masculine participants mostly demonstrated more aggressive and argumentative, while feminine participants mostly sought relationships and intimacy .Soukup, Charles. 2000. "Building a Theory of Multi-Media CMC: An Analysis, Critique and Integration of Computer-Mediated Communication Theory and Research." New Media Society 2(4):407–25. . These earlier findings have significant implications on multicommunicating behavior. Paskewitz and Beck (2019) conducted research about texting during workplace meetings and determined that women perceive individuals who practice multicommunicating more negatively than men. At the same time, the gender of the multicommunicator did not play a role in these perceptions.
Multicommunicating is the practice of engaging in more than one conversations at a time. The possibility and likelihood of such interactions has accelerated with the advent of digital technology and its ubiquitous nature in the form of the smartphone. The increasing prevalence of the practice in recent years has also garnered attention from academic fields. From a physiological and cognitive perspective, multicommunication is possible because humans, or presence allocators, are typically able to think faster than they are able to speak or type. Nonetheless, most neuroscientific studies imply that we are not truly cognitively capable of multitasking; we are just able to switch between tasks. This means that those who are most skilled at apparent multitasking, or multicommunicating, are essentially very quick at juggling their attention between messages. Media richness theory (Daft and Lengel) Another important concept in multicommunication is Richard L. Daft and Robert H. Lengel's research on media richness theory, which concerns how employees choose which technologies to use in the workplace. Similar to "the medium is the message" concept proposed by Marshall McLuhan, Daft and Lengel argue that different media have varying qualities that make them more or less suited for certain interactions. Gender The practical implications of multicommunicating have also drawn criticism in gender studies. Soukup's (2000) analysis of computer-mediated communication through a critical ethnography of gendered chat rooms illustrates the normative forms of behavior among genders online. In distinct gendered chat rooms, masculine participants mostly demonstrated more aggressive and argumentative, while feminine participants mostly sought relationships and intimacy . These earlier findings have significant implications on multicommunicating behavior. Paskewitz and Beck (2019) conducted research about texting during workplace meetings and determined that women perceive individuals who practice multicommunicating more negatively than men. At the same time, the gender of the multicommunicator did not play a role in these perceptions.
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Turner, Jeanine Warisse, and Sonja K. Foss. 2018. "Options for the Construction of Attentional Social Presence in a Digitally Enhanced Multicommunicative Environment." Communication Theory 28:22–45. .
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Turner, Jeanine Warisse, and N. Lamar Reinsch. 2007. "The Business Communicator as Presence Allocator: Multicommunicating, Equivocality, and Status at Work." The Journal of Business Communication (1973) 44(1):36–58. .
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Suh, Kil Soo. 1999. "Impact of communication medium on task performance and satisfaction: an examination of media-richness theory." Information
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Management 35(5):295–312. .
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.Soukup, Charles. 2000. "Building a Theory of Multi-Media CMC: An Analysis, Critique and Integration of Computer-Mediated Communication Theory and Research." New Media
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Society 2(4):407–25.