Two Types of Conversation: Face-to-Face and Digital

This thesis is a comparison of face-to-face and written digital conversation. I start with the intuition that face-to-face conversation can often appear more engrossing and satisfying than its digital counterpart. I argue that one of the most promising ways of understanding this difference can be seen when we consider the contrasting coordinative structures of these two types of conversation. In face-to-face conversation the task of communication is at all times spread between participants whereas in digital conversation the burden of communication is passed almost entirely from one to the other. One notable result of this is that it gives us good reason to think that communication in digital conversation is in many ways more difficult. I then argue that the difference in coordination in digital conversation has consequences for the nature of the cooperation we find in such interactions. I argue that these consequences of the different structures of face-to-face and digital conversation are what best explains the starting intuition.