Disconnectedness in a connected world: why people ignore messages and calls
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-05-2021-0150 |
| Published date | 14 February 2022 |
| Date | 14 February 2022 |
| Pages | 650-672 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
| Author | Naresh Kumar Agarwal,Tenbit Mitiku,Wenqing Lu |
Disconnectedness in a connected
world: why people ignore messages
and calls
Naresh Kumar Agarwal
School of Library and Information Science, Simmons University,
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Tenbit Mitiku
Department of Sociology, Simmons University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, and
Wenqing Lu
School of Library and Information Science, Simmons University,
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Abstract
Purpose –People are living in a world where they maintain connectivity through sending and receiving
messages and calls. Yet, almost daily, people choose not to respond to certain messages or calls, which can
make the sender anxious, and adversely affect their communication. The aim of this study was to investigate
the receivers’reasons for not responding.
Design/methodology/approach –The authors used theories related to information avoidance, power,
interpersonal deception and emotions and conducted interviews of smartphone users.
Findings –The study found that the receiver’s physical and psychological state, the time of the day and the
content of the message impacted non-response. The findings suggest that the non-response behavior is
moderated by the power relationship between the sender and the receiver. The receiver’s state of mind will
determine the likelihood of non-response, while the sender’s state of mind will determine how the sender deals
with non-response.
Research limitations/implications –The study contributes to research in mobile information behavior,
and the wider fields of information science, sociology and communication.
Practical implications –The process of interviewing itself helped raise awareness about these issues with
the people who were interviewed.
Social implications –The findings shed light on the current communicative practices and ways to overcome
the disconnectedness and stress suffered by people regularly using smartphones.
Originality/value –The study provides recommendations for healthy communication between the sender
and the receiver using their smartphones.
Keywords Mobile communication, Non-response, Avoidance, Power, Emotions, Non-verbal
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
A lot of people spend their free time staring at their smartphones (Choi, 2016)–texting (Coyne
et al., 2011;Schade et al., 2013;DiDonato, 2014) and engaging in other activities like viewing
photos, watching videos, playing games and going on social media (Pew Research, 2017).
This ubiquitousness of smartphones and mobile computing apps has fundamentally
changed the way people communicate. Social media has connected us in ways where we do
not have a full context of the other person’s situation or mood, changing previously
AJIM
74,4
650
The work was supported by the Emily Hollowell grant, Simmons School of Library and Information
Science [grant number 112-2435-20–211356] and the Presidents Fund grant, Simmons University [grant
number 111-300-LOB002-230000]. The authors are thankful for the contributions of Nina Ferry who was
involved in the initial phase of the project.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/2050-3806.htm
Received 30 May 2021
Revised 14 August 2021
12 November 2021
Accepted 25 December 2021
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 74 No. 4, 2022
pp. 650-672
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-05-2021-0150
understood communication patterns of attention, social contact and inter-dependencies
(Kiesler and Sproull, 1992) and underlying phenomena manifest themselves through
technological channels (Flanagin, 2020). However, what happens when you get used to this
“constant connectivity”through smartphones and a person you are connected with chooses
not to message or call back within your reasonable expected time? The receiver might have
different reasons for not responding. They might be busy or tired or base their non-response
on factors such as the importance, urgency or purpose of the message or the reply, their
current location, sensitivity of response content, etc. There isn’t enough research on the
disconnectedness that happens when people do not respond, and on its negative
psychological and other impacts (see Agarwal and Lu, 2020).
In this paper, we are concerned about the receiver’s perspective for not responding. Our
overarching research question is: RQ1: Why are people more likely to participate in non-
response behaviorwhen communicating using smartphones? We also investigate:RQ2:What
factorsof smartphones lead to a rise in non-response?and, RQ3: What recommendationscan be
made for healthy smartphone-based communication? We conducted an interview study of 24
participants to arrive at answers to our research questions. The outcome is to provide
recommendationsfor healthy smartphone-based communication.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. We review the literature and include a
research framework. We then discuss the methodology. This is followed by data analysis,
results and discussion. The paper ends with conclusions and implications, including
limitations and future work.
Literature review
We define below some of the terms used commonly throughout the paper:
The sender is a person who sends a message or makes a call using a smartphone and
expects a response back. The receiver is a person who receives a message or a call from the
sender on their smartphone and can choose whether to respond or not. Timely response is the
response by the receiver to emails, messages or calls within the sender’s expected time and is
the best case in the sender–receiver communication. Non-response behavior is the choice of
the receiver to ignore certain emails, messages or calls made by the sender. Non-response can
include variations such as non-reading (the receiver choosing not to read a message or an
email sent by the sender), late-reading (the receiver choosing to read a message or an email
later than the normal expected time by the sender) and late response (the receiver choosing to
respond to a message, email or call later than the normal expected response time by the
sender). Calls here refer to both phone calls (normally with higher cost) and voice or video calls
from social media platforms such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, FaceTime, etc. The
messages can be those sent using one or more smartphone apps or social media platforms
used by the sender and the receiver in their communication with each other. The expected
response time can range from a few minutes to hours or the next day depending upon the
sender–receiver relationship, the content of the message or other contextual factors
surrounding the type of communication.
A number of theories help inform this study. We used theories related to information
avoidance (Sweeny et al., 2010), and theories that guide the receiver’s non-response –power
(Guerrero et al., 2017), interpersonal deception (Pak and Zhou, 2014) and emotions (Russel,
1980). These are discussed at appropriate places as we review the literature.
Non-response/information avoidance behavior
Goffman (1969) described the capacity of human beings to “acquire, reveal, and conceal
information”(p. 4) during face-to-face interaction, which he sees as gamelike events in which
Why people
ignore
messages and
calls?
651
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