 |
| Centraal Station |
Teaching
I've been leading a seminar with masters degree students
that focuses on self-disclosure in
online relationships and virtual groups. Online relations and virtual groups
are among places where disclosure “touches down”so to speak, but our
approach is very broad. We started with landmark works on disclosure from the early 1970s, long before the Internet, because that's where the roots of
so many of the current questions are
that people ask about the Internet: How do we get to know
each other, become familiar with each other, develop trust online, and what happens when people share
information about themselves with us using computer-mediated communication? What happens to us when we disclose
aspects about ourselves to others? These questions are occupying research in
virtual teams, online courses, electronic dating sites, and a variety of
applications, yet the answers are guided by inquiries surfaced by Jourard in 1971 or
Altman and Taylor in 1973. It appears for some reason that disclosure has a
stronger impact online than it does in face-to-face settings, and we are
running through the possible explanations for this—and looking at the empirical
support for the explanations—week by week.
I like the masters students here. They are attentive, and well-prepared
for class. As is the case at home, some students are unlikely to say much. Some
are always willing to venture a guess to a question I put, even if they are not
sure of themselves, which I appreciate (and they are cool when I suggest they
are off track). It’s a nice environment for me. I have no idea how my approach
compares to other instructors they have had. When I ask them, they tell me
there are a lot of different styles. (I wonder if that is politeness? Then
again they tell me that the Dutch are very open about their opinions. I haven’t
seen anything very blunt yet.)
Most of the students are Dutch but not all. There are German
students, Croation, and Latvian. One spent time in America and sounds a little like
me. Despite the differences they all have had similar experiences using the
Internet especially when they were young. I am not doing enough to learn from
their different perspectives. I tend to help students learn to dissect
arguments and evidence so they can distill ideas clearly from what they read,
and decide whether to believe them or not. I need to listen more.
 |
| A 2x2x2x2 research design! |
Research
I have been having very stimulating conversations with my
hosts. I am well aware that I have plunged myself into their busy lives and we
have carved out regular times to meet so that we neither let the opportunity to
work together go by, nor do I wear out my welcome by being in their faces too
much. Our conversations range from designing research studies that may help
resolve some puzzles about online self-disclosure and feedback to the discloser
from others. There is mixed evidence in
the research about what happens when someone discloses to another.
Sometimes it
appears that liking someone leads to disclosure, but other studies show that
disclosing to individuals causes us to like them. Both, of course, are
possible, but it’s important sometimes to see if we can get at the chicken-and-the-egg
conundrum this is. It is also known that
disclosing aspects of ourselves to others can lead to self-adjustment. Both of
these processes should, theoretically, involve responses from other people to
our disclosures. But if disclosing itself causes these effects—the chicken/egg
thing-- then the hypothetical role of feedback from others becomes murky. If that is not trouble enough, we’re asking
what kinds of feedback might one receive from others?
Concurrence, evaluation,
describing similar experiences and views, affirmation, negation withdrawal –
all are possible and we need a conceptual framework with which to consider
them. Finally, we are considering whether and why these processes appear to be
intensified in computer-mediated exchanges, and there are a number of
theoretical possibilities for that. Patti Valkenburg and Jochen Peter and their
colleagues have advanced some, and I have advanced some, and we’re looking at
those. But we’re also looking for new ideas and refinements of our thinking.
It’s causing us to ask questions about the manner in which face-to-face
communication might temper the potential intensity of verbal content, or how
the persistence and visibility of our online actions might increase their
impact, or both.
.
I have an office at the university’s
Bushuis, or
Oost-Indisch
Huis, a building that was once the Dutch East Indies Company in the early
1600s. One can see what looks like some of the original timbers in the top story.
The basement, where bicycles are parked now, used to be the store holds for
spices brought back from the New World. There is a lot of activity in the
building, and a lot of coffee. And occasionally there are musicians outside.
The Neighborhood
Nieumarkt
Five minutes from the apartment is the Nieuwmarkt, aside Den Waag, which was a weighing station in Amsterdam's great shipping era. There is a fruit and vegetable stand and a cheese shop there daily. On Saturday it comes alive with a larger market of tent stands. I have taken to doing some weekly shopping here for smoked meat, cheese, vegetables, and who knows what. Some of the merchants are getting to know me and they humor me.
I like being particularly friendly with people because it is pleasant and sometimes disarming. I always wave enthusiastically to the two veteran working girls as I walk by their red-lit windows on Geldersekade, and they seem to have come to expect it, and no more, from me. So they wave back rather than crook their fingers now.
Back at the market, one of the cheese vendors has put me to work.
A man who sells fine woolens
tells me that wearing knee socks will make me “feel like a gentleman.”
Other landmarks
 |
| Sint Nicolaaskerk |
I needed some medical supplies and was having no luck finding them. There are not Rite-Aids on every corner the way there are back home (which is refreshing most of the time). Many vitamin and health-related stores, but I could not find a pharmacy. I would ask, people would point in one direction or another, but I never found one.
Finally someone told me a specific street corner to seek, and it is really just two block from where I live. I
stopped in the Apotheek, and they had what I needed. I mentioned that I had
walked by their store a hundred times and never knew they were there, and the saleswoman
said that was funny because “We’ve been here for four hundred years.” It turns
out, they say, that theirs is the oldest apothecary in Amsterdam, established
in 1696. They have medicine jars going back who knows how long, although they
do not dispense from those (they said). Can you imagine anywhere in America
where someone in a business or a building would say we’ve been here four
hundred years? That would not be on a list of monuments or something?
Excursions
Haarlem
I visited Allison Eden and her family one weekend at their
home in Haarlem. Allison took her PhD in communication at Michigan State and
now is an assistant professor at VU University in Amsterdam. Her family settled
in Haarlem, a short (and very easy) commute from Amsterdam. It is a smaller city
that seems to have many of the charms of its larger cousin only in less overabundance.
That is, it appears you could find anything you wished for in Haarlem, but with
fewer choices. That was refreshing. After all, how many Heineken bars or
Argentine steak restaurants does one need in a four-block area? Amsterdam might
have a dozen where I live (no kidding).
In Haarlem there are some—plenty—but
one doesn’t trip over them. Allison told
me of a recent comment to her, that many people in Amsterdam turn their noses
up at the idea of living in the suburb of Haarlem, until, that is, they have
children and a dog. Then they, too, go where you get a little more space for the
money, you’re closer to an off-leash dog park, with a great Saturday market,
wonderful gothic churches, and a couple of excellent museums.
It was fun to
hear Alllison’s views of living here, of how the Dutch take seriously issues of
work/life balance, encourage productivity while incorporating flexibility into
faculty assignments and duties. It is really nice to see one of “our people”
from MSU doing well and feeling good about life. Being an assistant professor
is a lot of pressure, and Allison seems to be thriving.
Haarlem had a museum containing a number of old scientific
instruments. How do you measure light? What is sound and how can you examine it
in other forms of representation? How do you store electricity? Cool old gizmos.
Beautiful building.
Don’t forget the windmill.
Duisburg-Essen
Last week I made an excursion to Germany, to visit with
Prof. Nicole Krämer and her associates. I must say I handled finding a schedule
from home via computer, buying a ticket, downloading and printing it, all just
fine. I am amazed. Amsterdam Centraal Station is 4 minutes from the apartment
so off I went easily. Found the platform, and my reserved seat on the train. Arrived in Dusseldorf two hours
later. A group of us went out to a fun restaurant (that had beers from all over
Germany, not just the dark beer from Dusseldorf, a topic over which we debate.)
 |
| Mark and I discuss MOOCs |
We spent the next couple of days discussing research and course collaborations, dissertation strategies, MOOCs, and the like. I have been meeting several of these people once or twice a year for several years now, and Tina Ganster and Stephan Winter did some research at Michigan State with us, so we are growing quite familiar.
 |
| Nicole and me doing science |
It almost got lost on me how crazy great this is. In a way I have grown a little accustomed to visiting colleagues in Europe or elsewhere, and I like how it gets easier for me to do it without getting anxious about how to do it or whether I’ll know how. But for some reason I remembered this time how special it is to be able to say to myself, I’m going here or there, to another country, where I have friends and colleagues who I know and who welcome me. I know that’s pretty run-of-the-mill for a lot of people, especially Europeans. But for me it’s something I stumbled into that I never imagined. I do tell people I am the luckiest person I know, to get to do these things in far off places. I am quite fortunate and I am glad I remember to remember that.
I did something quite different on this trip. A couple of
years ago while going documents my father left us from when his family emigrated
to America in 1938, I discovered that my grandparents were married in Essen in
1926. My visit was to the University of Duisburg-Essen. I asked Nicole if it
was far to where the restored synagogue stands, and she generously asked if
she could take me there.
It was a beautiful synagogue, and it’s now known as the Alte Synagogue Essen, where it stands as a Jewish cultural center. I showed a copy of my grandparents’ marriage record to one of the cultural center officials, and he said that yes, this had been the place.
So I stood where my grandparents must have stood 87 years ago, when they surely had no idea they would ever end up so far from this spot, or, at another point, that anyone would ever come back to places like this.
There was a mystery, though. Although all of the weddings and Bar Mitzvahs were recorded in a book at the center, my grandparents were not listed. That is because, it seems, they were not from Essen, and the records feature only the Jews of Essen. My grandmother came from Gelsenkirchen, not far from there, whereas my grandfather came from Hechingen, much farther south, where they would go and live, where my father would spend his first 11 years.
Why, then, did they get married in Essen? Maybe that was where the closest synagogue was to Gelsenkirchen? Nicole saw a map and, of course, could read the sign over it, that showed all the cities where Jewish synagogues had been before they were destroyed or desecrated. And there had been one in Gelsenkirchen. Maybe they didn’t daven the right way in Gelsenkerchen? Maybe they sang the wrong version of L’cha Dodi there Friday nights? Why Essen? I am not sure we if we could ever know or if it matters. It’s curious though.
Thanks, Nicole.
Back to the Netherlands from Duisburg. A German train that did not run on time. It is true that travel helps to break stereotypes!
Home again.
