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Presence

Presence is the sense of being in an environment, according to Gibson (1979). Some scholars
distinguish between presence as direct experience and telepresence as technology-mediated
experience (Coyle & Thorson, 2001; Klein, 2003; Steuer, 1992). To other scholars, however, the
terms are interchangeable. Lombard and Snyder-Duch use the term “presence” as a shortened version
of “telepresence.” Li, Daugherty and Biocca (2002) also refer to “telepresence” as another word for
“presence,” which they define as an illusory sense of location in a mediated environment. Lombard
and Ditton (1997) say that a medium is a necessary condition for presence, which they define as an
illusion of non-mediation.

Experience perceived directly, i.e., without mediation, through one or more of the five
senses affords a sense of being in an environment. Experience perceived indirectly through
technology affords a sense of being in an unmediated environment when an individual fails
perceptually to acknowledge technology. The personal experience rather than the collection of
hardware determines presence. However, technology affords consumers the opportunity to be present
subjectively wherever and whenever they choose. Presence occurs as an affordance wherever and
whenever consumers perceive themselves to be present.

The definition of presence developed by Lombard and Snyder-Duch (2001) includes three key
components. Presence is: (1) a current experience generated or filtered by human-made technology,
(2) inducing a psychological state or subjective perception, (3) that fails to acknowledge
accurately the role of technology in the experience. In other words, the concept of presence refers
to the subjective perception that a mediated environment is not mediated either in time or
space.

A sense of presence depends on the vividness and interactivity of an experience. (See
Figure
19-1.) Vividness and interactivity are isolated properties of an object, technology.
Presence appears as an affordance of technology through the combination of the two properties.
Presence, as an affordance, does not inhere to the object, technology, but to the use context.
Occurring only in the user’s mind, presence is a perceived affordance of sufficiently vivid and
interactive technology when, in the use context, the user fails on some level to interpret the
experience as mediated.

Figure 19-1

Vividness

Researchers define vividness with two dimensions: depth and breadth (Coyle & Thorson,
2001; Klein, 2003; Li, Daugherty & Biocca, 2002: Steuer, 1992). Depth refers to the richness of
input to a specific sensory system, i.e., the amount of detail or resolution in formal features.
Breadth refers to the number of perceptual systems that a given environment potentially stimulates.
An environment that can stimulate all perceptual systems is more vivid than an environment that can
stimulate fewer perceptual systems. This definition of breadth is external to consumers, however,
who may not use all perceptual systems in judging the vividness of an environment.

The probability of the simultaneous occurrences of specific inputs to the five perceptual
systems (Gibson 1966) determines the consumer’s interpretation of a situation. Consumers obtain
further perceptual cues from sensory inputs that occur in close temporal proximity to a situation.
A sudden flash of light could have several interpretations: a nearby photographer, a nearby welder,
a brief reflection of sunlight from a passing motor vehicle, or lightening. However, the presence
of dark clouds makes the third possibility less probable. The sound of a loud boom from the sky
makes the fourth possibility more probable. Although the sound could be a sonic boom from a passing
jet, other sensory inputs reduce the probability of that interpretation.

Just as sensory inputs influence the perception that determines interpretation,
interpretation determines the perception of sensory inputs. Based upon the interpretation of a
situation, consumers perceive that they see, hear, feel, taste or smell that which does not
objectively occur. Because consumers associate specific situations with simultaneous inputs to the
sensory systems, consumers perceive absent sensory inputs after interpreting a situation based upon
present sensory inputs. Given that certain sensory inputs occur in a situation, given a consumer’s
interpretation of the situation, and given the probability of occurrence of other sensory inputs in
such a situation, non-occurring sensory inputs “must have” occurred.

The relative importance of input modalities also determines consumer interpretation (Steuer,
1992). Consumers attend to those inputs central to interpretation while disregarding peripheral
inputs. When visual and auditory inputs have greater influence on a consumer’s interpretation than
inputs to the other sensory systems, computermediated environments can be effective in creating a
sense of vividness.

Interactivity

Definitions of interactivity usually include control over the environment as a central
component, as Klein (2003) and Lombard and Snyder-Duch (2001) point out. Steuer (1992) implicitly
includes control as a component in discussing interactivity as the ability to modify the form and
content of an environment. Departing from his consumer-based criteria for virtual reality, Steuer
(1992) adopts a structural approach to interactivity based on media technology that rejects
Rafaeli’s (1988) communication approach to interactivity. However, the definitions that Klein
(2003) and Steuer (1992) propose and the definition that Rafaeli (1988) proposes address different
dimensions of the concept.

Interactivity has mechanical and interpersonal dimensions. Mechanical interactivity refers to
the consumer’s relationship with the technology. It can apply equally to a computer or a shovel. In
using technology, the consumer must be able to observe that the technology has responded to inputs.
The consumer should not be able to detect any mechanical or electronic delay from the technology.
This is distinct from any delay in the virtual environment that may probably occur in a similar
actual environment. Presence depends upon the speed of mechanical interactivity, or participation
in real time (Lombard & Snyder-Duch, 2001; Steuer, 1992). The range of responses must
accommodate the range of choices a consumer may make. The consumer’s control movements and the
results, known as mapping, in the computer-mediated environment must be similar to what the
consumer would expect in an actual environment. The movements and results must make sense, as in
turning a knob to open a door.

In actual reality, consumers rarely can control completely their actual environments. They
can control their responses and relationships to their environments. In fact, as the discussion of
affordances explained, consumers and other animals utilize not only objects but also each other to
control their responses and relationships. Software such as SimCity, in attempting to duplicate
unintended consequences of actions and behaviors, recognizes the limits of control in actual
reality. Although one cannot control all outcomes, one can at least observe outcomes. The
definition of interactivity, then, includes ability to modify the relationship to environment
rather than ability to control the environment. Further, the definition includes outcomes based
upon conditional probability: given a set of prior actions, behaviors, reaction and responses,
subsequent actions and behaviors will probably elicit certain reactions and responses.

According to Rafaeli’s (1988) definition, full interactivity occurs only when later states
depend on the content and reactions of earlier transactions. In an intuitive process of uncertainty
reduction through conditional probability, communication is quintessentially interactive when based
on intuitively culturally and socially acquired expectations of probable occurrences. Consumers’
responses to environmental stimuli fall within a range of probable occurrences. Those responses
affect changes to the environment that fall within a range of probable occurrences. In turn,
consumers respond to the affected changes, and so on. Consumers select behaviors they think will
have the greatest probability of eliciting the desired environmental modification.

For social presence to occur, individual perception must fail to acknowledge accurately the
role of technology in communicating, or the appearance of communicating, with others. For a
perception of social presence, real or apparent interpersonal interactivity is a necessary
condition. The richness of the social representation depends on perceptual inputs relevant to
consumers. Human-made technology must generate detail not only in probable appearances, but in
probable behaviors as well. As Watzlawick, Bavelas and Jackson (1967) illustrated, to be human is
to communicate. Therefore, a communication approach to interactivity is especially valid for, and a
critical component of, social presence. Social interaction within a culture or society uses sets of
action and response behaviors with probabilities of occurrence within specific contexts. The
mediated social environment must conform according to cultural or social probabilities. The
environment must also anticipate the range of consumers’ probable response behaviors and react
according to consumers’ expectations of probable reaction behaviors.

In a consumer culture, consumption is not a mechanical act but rather a social act. Through
consumption, consumers define, reinforce and modify their relationships to their environments.
Consumption is communication. Consumer behavior affords consumer behavior. Each later state depends
on the reactions and content of earlier states. Culture provides the context in which consumer
behavior makes sense, affording the behavior of others. Specific behaviors have occurrence
probabilities in specific contexts. Attention to these probabilities not only contributes to
vividness, but also induces interactivity to generate a sense of presence.