Communication and cooperation in networked environments: An experimental analysis

Interpersonal communication and cooperation do not happen exclusively face to face. In work contexts, as in private life, there are more and more situ ations of mediated communication and cooperation in which new online tools are used. However, understanding how to use the Internet to support collabo rative interaction presents a substantial challenge for the designers and u sers of this emerging technology. First, collaborative Internet environment s are designed to serve a purpose, so must be designed with intended users' tasks and goals explicitly considered. Second, in cooperative activities t he key content of communication is the interpretation of the situations in which actors are involved. So, the most effective way of clarifying the mea ning of messages is to connect them to a shared context of meaning. However , this is more difficult in the Internet than in other computer-based activ ities. This paper tries to understand the characteristics of cooperative ac tivities in networked environments-shared 3D virtual worlds-through two dif ferent studies. The first used the analysis of conversations to explore the characteristics of the interaction during the cooperative task; the second analyzed whether and how the level of immersion in the networked environme nts influenced the performance and the interactional process. The results a re analyzed to identify the psychosocial roots used to support cooperation in a digital interactive communication.