The Relative Importance of Social Cues in Immersive Mediated Communication

Effective interpersonal communication is important to maintain relationships and build trust, empathy, and confidence. In this digital age, communication has become mediated, which filters out many of the social cues that are essential to facilitate interpersonal communication. This paper investigates the extent to which social cues influence social presence in mediated, bidirectional, multiparty interaction. Literature related to six social cues – paralinguistic cues, linguistic cues, body language, eye movements, facial expressions, and proxemic cues – was reviewed. These cues were ranked based on how relevant they are in creating a sense of social presence in mediated social communication (MSC). The most relevant cue was eye movements, followed by facial expression and linguistic cues, and lastly, body language and proxemic cues. Paralinguistic cues could not be ranked due to sparse literature in the context of MSC. Further research is required to better understand how social cues can be incorporated into MSC systems.