| Communication media create new ways of communicating, socializing, knowing, and organizing. This study explores past, present, and future uses of communication media in a military context with a focus on the intersection of work and family.;The study integrates military sociology and communications studies with an emphasis on social presence theory. Social presence is the degree of salience of the other person in the interaction and is aided by communication media. The degree of high or low social presence is dependent upon stimulus-conveying information associated with a communication medium and situational factors: interactivity, context, and privacy. The uses of communication media are explored in relation to gender, rank, race/ethnicity, education, military function, marital status, number of children, previous deployments, parental occupation, and residence. Attributes associated with a military war deployment include loneliness, fear, rumors, knowledge, support, satisfaction, adjustment, morale, and physical separation. Unmediated face-to-face interaction and ten communication media aid in overcoming the spatio-temporal imposition of a military deployment: mail, telephone, Military Affiliate Radio System (MARS), television, radio, audio and video tapes, FAX, e-mail, and television teleconferencing.;Three approaches to social research are triangulated: qualitative, comparative, and quantitative with a large sample of soldiers, family members, and key informants (N = 2787). The data originate from recent U.S. military operations in Panama (Operation Just Cause); the Persian Gulf (Operation Desert Shield and Storm); Somalia (Operation Restore Hope) and; Haiti (Operation Uphold Democracy). A Media Effectiveness Scale (MES) assesses uses of communication media to appropriately convey cownunication activities.;A number of findings emerge: (1) soldiers and their significant others are communication media users; (2) use of communication media is evolutionary (additive) not revolutionary (supplantive); (3) social presence theory moderately explains communication media use in a work-family context; (4) communication media are moderately related to: overcoming the insulating space imposed by wars, saturation, a communication ethic, and group loyalties; and (5) effects of stratification are not widespread; however, universal access is not normative. Overall, communication media in a military contest are a mixed blessing. Eight research hypotheses and some policy and professional practice implications are put forth. |
