Recovering the Human in the Network 209 technologies, while critical scholars may see it as a sign of how technology is enabling ever more oppressive organizational cultures. But we can also see 10 nomophobia as reflecting what the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1927/1996) describes as idle talk: an inattentive, thoughtless, forgetful way Recovering the Human in of communicating in which an overemphasis on empirical elements like the Network: Exploring functionality, effectiveness, and efBciency distracts from the lived experi­ ence and meaning of communicating itself. In light of Heidegger’s concerns, Communicology as a Research we propose defining digital business discourse differently, as die embodied experience of using technology to communicate within organizations. We suggest Methodology in Digital Business that digital business discourse research needs to find ways to pay attention Discourse to the thoughts and feelings that persons have when using communication technologies - the fmstration of receiving a confusing text message, the Craig T Mater and David Deluliis anxiety of hearing the cell phone vibrate at 3:00 in the morning - that are often more meaningful and important than the use of language itself. In this chapter, we will adapt a branch of communication research known as communicology to develop a research methodology that can Introduction help us attend to the "human," experiential element in the technological systems that increasingly define our working lives. Richard Lanlgan (1984, In 2012, the British cellphone company SecurEnvoy (2012) reported p. 2), perhaps the greatest proponent of this area of scholarship, contends that as many as 66% of the United Kingdom's population suffered that communicology deepens our understanding of communication by from what it called nomophobia, the irrational, persistent fear of los­ "refocusing attention on the performance and practice of persons com­ ing access to their smartphone. Short for "no-mobile-phone phobia," municating." Until now, Lanigan and other communicologists have often nomophobia has been reported to induce stress levels comparable to taken a deeply philosophical and autoethnographic approach, thereby those felt when going to the dentist or getting married (Moran, 2012), limiting commutiicology's relevance to applied communication research. and is apparently so strong that it induces 75% of smartphone users Here, we propose to extend communicology's line of inquiry in a new to operate their devices while in the bathroom (SecurEnvoy, 2012). direction by developing it into a qualitative methodology that can redis­ Similarly, Middleton (2007, p. 169) has observed that smartphones like cover digital business discourse as a human practice, instead of a purely the BlackBerry - affectionately called the "CrackBerry" by many users - technological process. Using Lanigan's work as a foundation, we begin by possess an addictive, even "Pavlovian" quality. BlackBerries, she con­ providing an introduction to the field of communicology and establishing tends, intensify the experience of work by enabling people to complete its applicability to digital business discourse, using the case of smartphone small tasks in moments of downtime, lengthening the duration of the usage in the workplace as a point of entry. Then, we describe the com- work day well into evenings and weekends, and expanding the location municological methodology of description, reduction, and interpretation as it of work to anywhere on the globe, even on vacation. Yet, even as the could relate to digital business discourse. Finally, we discuss practical ways participants in her study almost universally praise their devices as help­ of incorporating communicology into the research and practice of digital ing them to negotiate an increasingly intense workplace, Middleton business discourse and offer a case study illustrating its applicability. (2007, p. 165) worries that the unreflective and addictive usage of these "always-on, always connected" devices is ironically sustaining the very Communicology and the study of digital workplace cultures that cause workers to feel such stress. business discourse Researchers and practitioners of digital business discomse can view some­ thing like nomophobia in a number of ways. Psychologists, for instance, The case of smartphones in the workplace and the sense of nomophobia may see it as an example of the addictive power of commimication that they seem to spark provides a particularly telling example of how 208 210 Craig T. Maier and D avid Deluliis Recovering the Human in the Network 211 attending to the experience of digital business discourse has become of digital business discourse and think more aitically about "what" they increasingly important. Even before the advent of the iPhone and simi­ are doing with their technologies and "why" they are doing it. lar devices, Fortunati (2001) referred to mobile phones as charismatic Middleton and Cukier (2006) use Morgan's (1997) metaphor of the technologies whose protean nature enables them to be used in a variety psychic prison to describe how workers can trap themselves into par­ of ways and gives birth to new styles of communicating. Relnsch et al. ticular ways of thinking that encourage them to accept or do things (2008) and Stephens (2012) describe how smartphones foster what they that outside observers would find unacceptable. Employees dwelling call multicommunicating, a form of business discourse in which workers in psychic prisons often have no idea that they are holding themselves participate in multiple conversations simultaneously, both in person captive, nor do they understand that the behaviors that confine them and online. Reinsch et al. note how multicommunicating workers come and cause them such stress are of their own creation. For card-carrying to experience a new sense of being-in-the-workplace that they call con­ nomophobes like the BlackBerry users interviewed in Middleton's nected time. "Multiple persons described being connected and available for (2007, p. 169) study, smartphones are not intrusive but heroic devices, text messaging as 'like breathing,'" they observe. "We heard many persons and only the technology's liberating power and "efficiency, immediacy, speak about 'living,' 'being,' or 'working' either 'on' or 'in' a special form accessibility, and flexibility" are apparent to them. But in making devices of time - connected time" (2008, p. 398). Ivarsson and Larsson (2011) the heroes of their working lives, employees can easily lose sight of ways observe that such intense connectivity blurs the boundaries between in which the quality of their workplace communication has suffered. home and work and places unique pressures on employees, encouraging They come to assume that responses to emails must be instantaneous, employees to turn toward and not away from their devices as a ineans that answering a routine text message in the middle of their daughter's of recovering from these tensions. Connected time thus becomes a self- school play is a form of freedom, and that everyone must have a smart­ perpetuating cycle, with smartphones and other devices serving as both a phone to be a competent employee, ignoring the ways in which these cause of stress for employees and a means of alleviating that stress. Soon, behaviors cause them stress, harm their relationships with others, and workers find that their devices demand ever-greater attention, establish­ diminish their effectiveness. In response, Middleton and Cukier call for ing expectations for communication that take on the appearance of an a shift in research and practice away from what they see as a singular imperative. focus on functionality toward approaches that encourage us to think Phenomena like nomophobia raise important issues for practitioners, more broadly and differently about digital business discourse to make as well. Indeed, while some may view multicommunicating and "con­ its practice less technological and more humane. nected time" as signs of an engaged, active workplace, research has We contend that communicology provides such a perspective. Commu- found that the productivity benefits of multitasking are often illusory nicology, as a branch of communication research, joins two complex (see, for instance, Jeong & Hwang, 2012; Wang & Tchemev, 2012). and rigorously philosophical disciplines: phenomenology, the philosophi­ Beyond the sense of omnipresent distraction, however, nomophobia also cal study of conscious experience, and semiotics, the study of signs in calls attention to how the emotional and relational tolls that commu­ the context of the sign systems that give those signs meaning. As this nication technologies take on workers contribute to broader issues like lineage suggests, communicology represents a complex and difficult organizational communication climates Gablin, 1980), organizational body of literature. But in a nutshell, it comes down to a single, koan-like cultmes (Schein, 2010), incivility in the workplace (Fritz, 2013), and research question: How can we understand the experience of communicating? what Edelson et al. (2015) in this volume call digital emotional literacy. This deceptively simple question illustrates why communicology brings Though these factors may not be measurable or quantifiable or directly phenomenology and semiotics together. Phenomenology can help us contribute to an organization's bottom line, they can point to problems describe our experience of the world around us, but