Distinguishing technologies for social interaction: The perceived social affordances of communication channels scale

The concept of affordances in communication technology research has proven to be heuristically provocative, yet perceived affordances are rarely measured. After extracting commonly cited social affordances from the literature, we developed a measure to assess participants’ perceptions of these affordances. The scale was tested across eight communication channels in two studies (face-to-face; texting; phone; email; posts on social networking sites, specifically Facebook; instant messaging; Skype videoconferencing; and mobile app Snapchat). A factor structure was developed in Study 1 and confirmed in Study 2. The resultant Perceived Social Affordances of Communication Channels Scale includes 41 items measuring 10 communicative affordances: accessibility, bandwidth, social presence, privacy, network association, personalization, persistence, editability, conversation control, and anonymity. Potential methodological and theoretical applications are discussed.