Kun Xu, University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications Telecommunication assistant professor in emerging media, is the co-author of “Explicating Cues: A Typology for Understanding Emerging Media Technologies” published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication on Dec. 17.

Xu and co-author Tony Liao studied cues as a concept for understanding technological interaction and created a typology of cues based on how different fields have studied them.

According to the authors, “In face-to-face communication, people interact with each other through cues such as verbal language, eye contact, facial expressions, and gestures. In computer-mediated communication (CMC) environments, these cues come across through text, avatars, online group affiliations, emojis, and even system notifications. Today, as emerging technologies such as voice assistants, augmented and virtual reality devices, and social robots are designed with a mixture of these cues, we propose that future CMC research can benefit from a broader framework of cues.”

Their paper classified cues into four new categories parsing out the different ways that cues have been studied within CMC and other fields like psychology, human-computer interaction, and human machine communication.

Xu adds, “Future technologies can be better understood through analyses of what types of cues are available, the interrelationships between those cues, the psychological effects of the cues, and the integration of theories and perspectives about cues across disciplines.”

Posted: January 6, 2020
Category: College News
Tagged as: Kun Xu